GKauten Consultingv1.2

Now using the Cross Registration Integration plugin with MailChimp is just a matter of setting a few simple options and before you know it, users registering on your blog will be seamlessly added to your MailChimp mailing list. If you have not done so already, you will need to install the Cross Registration Integration plugin on your WordPress blog. You can get the plugin by following the WordPress link from the plugin page. For those of you who do have the plugin installed already, I am going to assume you have also already signed up for MailChimp.

Step 1: Log in to MailChimp and click on “Lists” in the navigation bar. If you have not yet created a list, be sure to go ahead and do so. Once you have created a list and it appears in the “Lists” section of the site, click on the “Forms” link for that list item.

Step 2: By default the first screen to load is the “Build It” screen with a visual editor to create your form. Again by default, the fields that will be displayed on your form is the required email field, as well as the first and last name fields. Go ahead and remove the “Last Name” field. Once it has been removed change the “First Name” field to just “Name” and be sure to set the field tag to “NAME”. The field tag for the email address box is already set to “EMAIL”. Save all field changes before proceeding.

Step 3: Click on the “Create Embed Code for Small Form” link just above where the form text editor appears. You will now see the preview for your signup form and the “Define Form Structure” settings on the right. First select the “Include All Fields” radio button. To make the next steps easier, go ahead and uncheck the next three select boxes. Now under “Form Colors” go ahead and select the “I’m a Pro” radio button. Then check the “Disable Javascript” select box. This should have sufficiently removed a fair amount of the excess code so click “Create Embed Code” and direct your attention to the “Copy / Paste Into Your Site” box on the left.

Step 4: Scroll through the “Copy / Paste Into Your Site” box until you reach the “<form>” tag line. You can find an example of what this looks like in the box below. From this information you will want to copy the URL value from the “action=” section.

<form action=”http://gkauten.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=c0b1a9ad9cb5a648fd501582d&amp;id=e55ce80978″ method=”post” id=”mc-embedded-subscribe-form” name=”mc-embedded-subscribe-form” target=”_blank” style=”font: normal 100% Arial;font-size: 12px;”>

URL Value: http://youraccount.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=c0b1a01582d9aa648fd5d9cb5&id=ee5587809c

Step 5: Log in to your WordPress blog and go to the Cross Registration Integration settings page. Now paste the URL Value that we located in the previous step into the “Transaction URL” field. Don’t get save happy just yet because we aren’t done here. You will now want to cut out all of the information starting at the question mark after “/subscribe/post” through to the end of the URL Value. Take this information and paste it into the “Special Parameters” field of the plugin. Make sure that the question mark gets removed from either the Transaction URL or Special Parameters field or else things might get messy.

You should now have something like this:

Transaction URL: http://youraccount.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe/post

Special Parameters: u=c0b1a01582d9aa648fd5d9cb5&id=ee5587809c

Step 6: Go ahead and save what we have this far just for safe keeping. Once saved, focus your attention on the “Transmit” fields above Special Parameters and beneath the Transaction URL sections. Make sure that “Username” and “Email” are both checked. For “Username” you will change the “as” value to “NAME” which we set in the MailChimp form editor. Then set the Email “as” value to “EMAIL”. Uncheck password as we will not be using it here.

Step 7: Click save again, and give it a whirl. One important thing to note is that I would very strongly recommend that you use the Email Verification Double Opt-In method with your campaign.

Let me know if you run into any problems along the way as I would be more than happy to help. Also if you enjoy the plugin and the features it provides, donations are always greatly appreciated. If you are not the donating type, then at least please be sure to rate the plugin on the WordPress page you downloaded it from and mark which version of WordPress the plugin is running on so other users can rest assured that the version combination will work for them as well.