Video Transcript: Using the Easy Sign Up plugin for WordPress
Introduction
Hi I’m Andrew the developer of the free Easy Sign Up plugin for WordPress.
This video is intended to give a quick overview of the plugin’s uses and features.
The main function of the Easy Sign Up plugin is to creates a simple form that asks a user to fill in their name and email address.
The plugin then redirects that user to a web address chosen by you.
This could be a thank you page, a download page or an affiliate page.
Your user will receive a thank you email sent from your website, and you’ll receive a notification email containing the users contact information.
The Easy Sign Up plugin does not store that information in a database, so don’t delete those emails. I suggest creating a folder or filter in your email account to keep track of them for you.
If you’d like to store those emails in a database we do have an Easy Extra plugin that works together with the Easy Sign Up plugin, creating a database entry for each sign up.
Those entries are displayed in a report within your WordPress admin.
They can be downloaded as a spreadsheet compatible with the major NewsLetter systems like Constant Contact and MailChimp. Easy Data Extra can be purchased at beforesite.com.
Installation and Activation
Once you have installed the Easy Sign Up plugin and activated it, you’ll notice an upgrade message at the top of the screen.
If you have an Easy Extra installed please use the link in the right hand corner of the message to view an article on how to update your Easy Sign Up Extra.
For those of you that don’t know what an Easy Extra is, they are plugins that expand the features of the free Easy Sign Up plugin.
If you don’t have any Easy Sign Up Extras installed feel free to ignore the message and it will disappear in sixty seconds.
Options Page
If you’re updating the plugin all of your settings will be as you left them.
If this is your first installation you’ll notice that the settings already populated with data that the Easy Sign Up plugin has pulled out of your WordPress website’s settings.
Let’s cover what the different settings do.
At the top of the settings page you’ll notice two email addresses the first email address is where the Administration notification email be sent. This is email that is sent to you.
Second email is the email address that your user will see in the reply to the area of the email sent to them from your website after they fill out the Easy Sign Up form.
Please make sure that both of these emails are valid and that they work or you’ll never known who used to Easy Sign Up form.
The third options field is the URL of the webpage you’d like the user to be redirected to once they complete your Easy Sign Up form.
Just to recap this address can be any location on the Internet we could even be direct link to a file.
The next field is a huge update from Easy Sign Up version 2. This is the auto-responder email that your client receives after filling out your Easy Sign Up form.
In version two of the Easy Sign Up plugin it was a text field now it is a HTML WYSIWYG editor. This is because we are now sending out the auto-responders as HTML emails.
This gives you the ability to brand your emails with links and images.
You use the auto-responder editor the same way as you would use the post and pages editor.
When you create your responding email you can add a personal touch include the full name of the person who filled out the Easy Sign Up form. This is done by adding in the #fullname# into the email. See the default example or if you don’t have that anymore look under the email editor for an example and definition.
Below the email editor are two final options for the Easy Sign Up plugin both of these options are new to this update.
The first option will integrate the Easy Sign Up plugin with the Akismet. This will effectively stop spam in its tracks. Just ensure that you have the Akismet plugin installed and activated.
The final setting will allow you to remove all of the Easy Sign Up plugin settings from your WordPress website if you ever need to uninstall it.
Embedding the Easy Sign Up Form
Embedding the Easy Sign Up Plugin’s form is as easy as pointing and clicking.
You have a choice between adding the form as a shortcode or using the Easy Sign Up form widget.
To use the shortcode navigate to or create the page you’d where you’d like the Easy Sign Up form to be.
Once you’re there click on the orange button in the visual editor toolbar and the shortcode along with optional attributes will be added to your page.
Let’s briefly look at what the different attributes do:
title, The value for the title attribute is displayed above the Easy Sign Up form.
phone, Setting phone equal to 1 will add a phone field to your Easy Sign Up form.
fnln, Setting this attribute equal to 1 will separate the name field into first name and last name fields
esu_label, This field excepts a string of text, it is not displayed to the user. It is only displayed to you in your notification email or in the easy data extra table. A great use for this would be A/B testing, using the Easy Sign Up form in different locations and tracking where you get the most conversions. Another use could be if you use the form for different uses at different times, giving you a method of sorting the email addresses you have collected form the different forms.
esu_class, This attribute allows you to add a CSS class to the DIV tag that encapsulates the Easy Sign Up form. Using CSS you can change the forms layout and look.
If you would like more control over the layout and labels of the Easy Sign Up form have a look at Easy Styles plugin at beforesite.com.
Adding the form as a widget
Navigate to the widget admin screen locate the Easy Sign Up widget then drag and drop it into the sidebar of your choice. Then just check and fill out the options provided by the widget and you’re done.
Visit the beforesite.com for Easy Extras, tips , tricks and the support forums.