Mailchimp Newsletter Setup

[Robert Mlenek]

I can’t get my mailchimp Newsletter sign-up to work. I have the API and the List unique ID but nothing shows up when I sign up? Also the Sign-Up Here button covers most of the field where you are supposed to enter your email address.

Can you please help?

I have really appreciated everything you guys have done to help out!

Rob

[Bill Robbins]

Sorry about that. Any chance you could send a link to where you’re working on it so I can take a closer look?

[Christian Hine]

Hi.
The problem is with IE7. I have duplicated the issue. Something in the CSS isn’t catching right. I have no idea how to fix this, but hopefully that helps Bill.

[Christian Hine]

Can’t seem to edit the above, so let me add that in IE7, the entire sign-up bar (“action bar”) also looses it’s margin-top: 22px and ends up bumping into the slider photos above it. The margin is there when the page first loads, but then it “jumps” up. I imagine this is all tied in together.

[Bill Robbins]

Christian, I’d be happy to look for you. Can you send me a link?

[Christian Hine]

Well, my site is proceedwithcaution.us, but I’ve already run it through Adobe browserlab to confirm that the base theme has the same errors in IE7. My site works fine in all other browsers. I had flipped back over to my old theme, but turned foundation on again once I got your response. If you can look at it overnight, great, but I’ll have to flip it back in the morning since I don’t want this theme live yet. Just look at any foundation website in ie7 and you’ll see the issue. Thanks in advance.

[Christian Hine]

Hi again. Sorry for all the posts. No “edit” feauture?
I’m at work now (I’m a 3rd shifter) and working on it in IE8. Now that I can actually see the working site, when I type my email address into the mailchimp subscribe bar, upon “submit”, an error appears below the bar that says “Error: FNAME must be provided – Please enter a value”.
I didn’t think you could subscribe to a mailchimp account with only an email address. It’s obviously looking for a first name, but there is no form.
Again, thanks in advance. This theme fits our group so much better than what I have been using. Looking forward to getting it all set up.

[Bill Robbins]

I’m afraid I actually headed off to bed shortly after my last post. Sorry about that. I stayed up late Sunday working and we had tornadoes in our area right about the time I finished up so I didn’t sleep then and have been a bit tired since.

MailChimp will actually let you just use an email address for subscriptions, but inside your list settings you can require other fields such as names. Here’s a link to a screenshot from inside the list settings on one of my email lists:

http://d.pr/AWy9

You might try looking there under list fields and see if you have anything other than the email address set to be required.

I’ll flip Windows in a minute and see if I can get you any more specific help there.

If you have any other questions, please let me know.

[Christian Hine]

Oh, absolutely not a problem. When tornadoes are involved, life takes a whole different direction. 🙂 Glad you’re safe.

I did in fact have first and last name as required fields in my mailchimp account. I have unchecked those, and will see if it works now when I get to work tonight. It may be that I just remove the entry feature on the bar and make the submit button link to the full mailchimp signup form. We really do want to collect names and addresses along with emails. Just the email is helpful, but the option for more is preferred. I guess I just thought the submit button would open up the form with the email address typed in pre-propogated. Not sure that’s not the case yet, but I’ll find out in a few hours.

That brings me back to the original question though.

In IE7, you can not type in an email address because the submit button takes up the entire field. The entire action bar is also pressed up against the slider picture/video. The margin is lost.

I know IE7 is getting old now, but let’s face it, IE9 is just absolutely terrible. The layout is horrific. I’ve dreaded updating, and I know lots of others feel the same way. That’s why I’m concerned about this working with 7.

Thanks now.
~Christian

[Bill Robbins]

I made a change not all that long ago to the sign up form and that seems to be what introduced the bug with the huge button and the disappearing margin. Here’s how to change it.

1) Go to the appearance section and select edit to open up the theme editor.
2) From the list of files on your right, choose ie.css
3) Paste this at the bottom of the file:

.action-form input.btn { width: 100px !important; top:7px; }
#home-top { height: 460px !important; }

4) Save your changes.

See if that doesn’t help you out.

You could do a two-part form with the email address taken on the home page and then the rest filled out on the inside. I’m a big fan of Gravity Forms for creating forms like that. They also have a MailChimp add-on with their developer license that lets add people to your lists. I use that on most every project that I do.

If you need any other help, just let me know.

[Christian Hine]

Thank you much. The CSS worked perfectly.
I’m decent when it’s straight forward, it’s the darn browser compatibility that throws me off.

I will check out gravity forms. For now, I just have the submit button link directly to the mailchimp form directly. Sort of removes the need for the email address entry, but it looks cool on the front page and the form is self explanatory. A minor fix I’ll probably get back to once the entire site is finished.

Cheers,
Christian

[Bill Robbins]

Glad that worked for you Christian. If you need anything else, just let me know.

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