Can an unregistered (public) viewer subscribe to a mailing list?

[jackcorbae]

I admit I am very new to and VERY impressed with CiviCRM and intend to deploy it to a couple of community groups I manage websites for.

Aside from occasionally having to reload multiple times to get past the random white pages ... I was struggling to find out how, if it is possible, to add a link on a website to allow a public visitor to register for our mail outs.

Is it possible? I found a {subscribe} thingy that you can put in headers and footers of mailings ... but I don't think it works on the web page.

Ideally, I would like a link at the top of the page that says "Add me to the mailing list" and lets people subscribe to our general mailing list.

Hope that makes sense, is possible and simple! 

[emilyf]

Yes, this is very easy. Every CiviCRM installation comes with a built-in mailing list subscription page. On the Drupal CiviCRM demo site, that page is:

http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/civicrm/mailing/subscribe?reset=1

So on your site it would be http://yoursite.com/civicrm/mailing/subscribe?reset=1

That page will show ALL groups that you have enabled as "mailing list" when you create/modify the group. If you don't know what I'm talking about in terms of "mailing list" groups, go to CiviCRM > Manage Groups and edit/add groups. On the add/edit for there is a check box that says "Mailing List".

If you want to have users subscribe to only one specific group, you can add "&gid=yourgroupid" to the end of the url. So, for example,
http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/civicrm/mailing/subscribe?reset=1&gid=5
allows users to put in their email address and get subscribed to the mailing list group with a group id of 5. You can find the group id by going to CiviCRM > Manage Groups and looking in the "ID" column.

Also, in terms of your "random white pages", that more than likely is the result of fatal php errors or something of the like. You should check your apache logs to see what's causing them, as they are not normal activity.

emily

[petednz]

That page will show ALL groups that you have enabled as "mailing list" when you create/modify the group. If you don't know what I'm talking about in terms of "mailing list" groups, go to CiviCRM > Manage Groups and edit/add groups. On the add/edit for there is a check box that says "Mailing List".

Emily - slight tweak - it will only show those groups that are set as 'mailing lists' AND are set as Public User Pages.
Jack - this is set in the same 'settings' as the Mailing List as described above by emily

[jackcorbae]

Sensational! Thank you folks!

[millionleaves]

Yes, this is very easy. Every CiviCRM installation comes with a built-in mailing list subscription page. On the Drupal CiviCRM demo site, that page is:

http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/civicrm/mailing/subscribe?reset=1

So on your site it would be http://yoursite.com/civicrm/mailing/subscribe?reset=1

That page will show ALL groups that you have enabled as "mailing list" when you create/modify the group. If you don't know what I'm talking about in terms of "mailing list" groups, go to CiviCRM > Manage Groups and edit/add groups. On the add/edit for there is a check box that says "Mailing List".

This works brilliantly but for one thing ... when I navigate to the page, my breadcrumb trail shows CiviCRM › CiviMail. As an anonymous user, clicking either of these links will take me to a page telling me I am not authorised to access the page. Any suggestions or workarounds?

Also, I want to embed the signup inside a contribution page. Is this doable?

[Dave Greenberg]

We'll look at removing the breadcrumb for 2.1 (as we do for other front-end facing pages like online contributions).

You can embed a profile in your online contribution form that includes the "Group(s)" field. Starting in 2.1 - any group which has Mailing List as group type will generate an opt-in confirmation email (same as the subscription form).

[Dave Greenberg]

This works brilliantly but for one thing ... when I navigate to the page, my breadcrumb trail shows CiviCRM › CiviMail. As an anonymous user, clicking either of these links will take me to a page telling me I am not authorised to access the page. Any suggestions or workarounds?

This has now been fixed (as of 2.1 alpha 4). CiviCRM breadcrumb trail is suppressed for this page - as it is for all other "public-facing" pages (e.g. Online Contribution pages, Event Info and Registration, etc.)

[millionleaves]

Many thanks for this - now all I need to do is upgrade to Drupal 6!

 

[petednz]

Just pointing out here (and elsewhere if I spot relevant place) that the Mailing List Subscription only works with Smart Groups - not sure if that is intentional or a limitation or an oversight.

Only spotted it as I have a Smart Group used for a Mailing List that I thought I would try out for public subscriptions but not to be. Easy work around is to set up a Standard Group for this purpose and have them included in the Smart Group.

[Donald Lobo]

hmm, that does not sound the right behavior to me. can u replicate on sandbox? can u get chris to investigate and check what happens in the db

thanx

lobo

[mrengy]

This looks great - however I tried and it is not working for me.

I'm using CiviCRM standalone.

My CiviCRM installation lives at http://recycleabike.org/crm/standalone/

I navigating to the following:
http://recycleabike.org/crm/standalone/mailing/subscribe?reset=1
http://recycleabike.org/crm/standalone/civicrm/mailing/subscribe?reset=1
http://recycleabike.org/crm/civicrm/mailing/subscribe?reset=1
http://recycleabike.org/civicrm/mailing/subscribe?reset=1

... all of which gave me 404 not found errors.

Then I found that there is a directory on my site called http://recycleabike.org/crm/CRM/Mailing/

If you navigate there with a browser, you can see a directory list, but no page called subscribe or anything like it.

I also tried navigating to http://recycleabike.org/crm/CRM/Mailing/subscribe?reset=1 and got another 404 not found error.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance

[Dave Greenberg]

The format for URL's in standalone is similar to the format for Drupal URL's WITHOUT the "clean URL" feature.

So, your base URL is:

http://recycleabike.org/crm/standalone/index.php

... and then you add q= with the civicrm path (in this case it's civicrm/mailing/subscribe), plus any additional parameters separated by ampersands (in this case &reset=1). So this is the complete URL for your site for the subscribe form:

http://recycleabike.org/crm/standalone/index.php?q=civicrm/mailing/subscribe&reset=1

[mrengy]

That worked. Brilliant. Thanks.

[mrengy]

Okay, another question - is it possible to require people to input their names in the Mailing List Subscription page? Just so we have names with the e-mails for our own records?

Right now the only field is email and checkboxes for our mailing lists.

[dharmatech]

Yeah, absolutely.  You can create a profile with the fields you want like name, phone, etc. and then include the groups field which will show any groups that are mailing lists and publicly visible.

hope this helps
tony