Add a Newsletter Signup Form to your SmugMug site

A great way to gain followers on your SmugMug site is to offer a free newsletter. A newsletter is a great way to keep your customers informed of promotions, deals or even your latest image post.

This tutorial is divided into three sections – the first section is about creating an account on a great newsletter service – MailChimp. The second and last section is about embedding your signup form on your SmugMug site.

Mailchimp

For the first part of the tutorial we will need to start with MailChimp – this is one of my favourite services that provides a very easy way to create beautiful looking newsletters without using any code { drag and drop editor }. You will need an account on MailChimp to store all the email addresses of your subscribers. They offer a free subscription as well {Send 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers for free. No contracts, and no credit card required. It’s free forever}.

OPEN  A FREE MAILCHIMP ACCOUNT

Great! Now your MailChimp account is active – you have to create your first mailing list { this is a list where all the email addresses of your subscribers will be saved }. To create a new mailing list →  please login to MailChimp →  click LISTS →  CREATE LIST { button located on the top right side of the page }.

Once your form is created, you will need to generate a HTML code that is supported on SmugMug, which will allow you to embed the signup form on your SmugMug account.

At the end of the list creation process you will see a screen like this one:

Click the SIGNUP FORMS link.

Mailchimp will give you few options to create your form, but for now choose the second option:

Now copy the HTML code, which appears at the bottom of the page { make sure you are copying the whole code}.

Embedding Mailchimp form on a SmugMug page

Open a page on your SmugMug site, where you would like to embed the newsletter signup form. Then add a HTML content block to your page and paste the HTML code that you have created on Mailchimp.  Mine looked like this:

<!-- Begin MailChimp Signup Form -->
<link href="//cdn-images.mailchimp.com/embedcode/slim-10_7.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<style type="text/css">
	#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
	/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
	   We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */
</style>
<div id="mc_embed_signup">
<form action="//photom.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=b0044a88892b54baf5a017cc0&id=60aa78d3e1" method="post" id="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" name="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" class="validate" target="_blank" novalidate>
    <div id="mc_embed_signup_scroll">
	<label for="mce-EMAIL">Subscribe to our mailing list</label>
	<input type="email" value="" name="EMAIL" class="email" id="mce-EMAIL" placeholder="email address" required>
    <!-- real people should not fill this in and expect good things - do not remove this or risk form bot signups-->
    <div style="position: absolute; left: -5000px;" aria-hidden="true"><input type="text" name="b_b0044a88892b54baf5a017cc0_60aa78d3e1" tabindex="-1" value=""></div>
    <div class="clear"><input type="submit" value="Subscribe" name="subscribe" id="mc-embedded-subscribe" class="button"></div>
    </div>
</form>
</div>

<!--End mc_embed_signup-->

And that is it! Your newly created signup form is up and running!

CSS Code to make the form look good – updated!

Open the same html content block, where you have added the MailChimp embed code and then paste the CSS code below to the CSS tab of the HTML content block:

#mc_embed_signup form {text-align:center; padding:10px 0 10px 0;}
.mc-field-group { display: inline-block; } /* positions input field horizontally */
#mc_embed_signup input.email {font-family:"Open Sans","Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; border: 1px solid #ABB0B2;  -webkit-border-radius: 3px; -moz-border-radius: 3px; border-radius: 3px; color: #343434; background-color: #fff; box-sizing:border-box; height:32px; padding: 0px 0.4em; display: inline-block; margin: 0; width:350px; vertical-align:top;}
#mc_embed_signup label {display:block; font-size:16px; padding-bottom:10px; font-weight:bold;}
#mc_embed_signup .clear {display: inline-block;} /* positions button horizontally in line with input */
#mc_embed_signup .button {font-size: 13px; border: none; -webkit-border-radius: 3px; -moz-border-radius: 3px; border-radius: 3px; letter-spacing: .03em; color: #fff; background-color: #aaa; box-sizing:border-box; height:32px; line-height:32px; padding:0 18px; display: inline-block; margin: 0; transition: all 0.23s ease-in-out 0s;}
#mc_embed_signup .button:hover {background-color:#777; cursor:pointer;}
#mc_embed_signup div#mce-responses {float:left; top:-1.4em; padding:0em .5em 0em .5em; overflow:hidden; width:90%;margin: 0 5%; clear: both;}
#mc_embed_signup div.response {margin:1em 0; padding:1em .5em .5em 0; font-weight:bold; float:left; top:-1.5em; z-index:1; width:80%;}
#mc_embed_signup #mce-error-response {display:none;}
#mc_embed_signup #mce-success-response {color:#529214; display:none;}
#mc_embed_signup label.error {display:block; float:none; width:auto; margin-left:1.05em; text-align:left; padding:.5em 0;}
@media (max-width: 768px) {
    #mc_embed_signup input.email {width:100%; margin-bottom:5px;}
    #mc_embed_signup .clear {display: block; width: 100% }
    #mc_embed_signup .button {width: 100%; margin:0; }
}

This will result in your form to look like on my example page.