MailChimp WordPress plugin lets you expand the functionality of your subscription forms with Custom Fields.You can have additional inputs, textareas, multiple and single choice fields, integrate your form with PayPal for payments and more.
When the user submits, the data from custom fields is being kept in Submissions page of MailChimp WD. Whereas the values of the fields in your MailChimp list are being sent to your MailChimp account as well.
Let’s describe all custom field types and discover how useful can each of them be.
Custom HTML. This field lets you place basic HTML content, i.e. images, description text with links and so on. For instance, you can use Custom HTML field in case you need to add more information about your newsletter.
Text input. With this custom field you can add inputs with the following types of validation:
- Simple text will allow the submitter to provide any kind of text, including alphanumeric and special characters.
- E-mail input makes it easy for you to place additional e-mail field to your form, for example, in case you need contacts of a referee or simply a second e-mail address.
- Send copy to submitter custom field lets users to choose if they want to receive a copy of their submission to their email addresses.
- Password input type has the same validation as Simple text. The difference is that the entered text in Password input type is being automatically replaced with dots.
- Text area can be used in case you need the submitter to write a large amount of text, e.g. a statement of purpose. It accepts alphanumeric and special characters, line breaks.
- Address custom field will help you skip many steps and place this field set to your form with just a few clicks. It has two Street Address lines, City, State, Postal/Zip Code and Country options.
- Number field lets you to add an input which accepts only numbers as its value.
- Hidden field is an input hidden from visitors. Can be useful when you want to write additional Javascript code, and assign a custom hidden value, for example, referrer URL.
Multiple Choice. Lets you add a checkbox field to your form, allowing the submitter to select more than one values. You can have as many options in your Multiple Choice, as you need. Scroll down a bit to find Optionssection, click the small button with plus (+) sign and fill in the necessary values.
Single Choice. Similar to Multiple Choice, Single Choice allows having a list of options. The difference is, that the submitter can select only one value with this field.
Survey Tools. In case you need to place a survey to your MailChimp form to get a general feedback from your customers, Survey Tools of MailChimp WD will help you achieve this. The following fields are available for this purpose:
- Star Rating lets you have a graphical rating field on your form. You have as many stars as necessary with __Star Amount__field.
- Scale Rating field can be placed to have radio buttons which indicate rating from worst to best. Use __Scale Amount__option to set the number of radio buttons.
- Spinner will let you add a numeric input field with spinner arrows. You can define Step for up and down arrows. I.e. if you set it to 3, each time you click the spinner arrows, the number will be added or subtracted from the value.
- Slider adds a rating field, the value of which can be selected by dragging the handle between Minimum value to Maximum value.
- Range field allows users to set a numeric range with two spinners.
- Grading lets users to grade selected items, which will sum up to a maximum total value. You can set the Total to any number from the field options.
- Matrix custom field is a set of radio buttons with their values. It can have any number of rows and columns, letting the submitter to provide feedback for several topics with one field.
Time and Date. This custom field lets you add date or time indicators on your MailChimp form. It has the following three types:
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Date (Single field with a picker) is an input with a date picker. It allows the submitter to easily provide a date value by navigating through months, years and calendar dates. These options are available for configuring this field:
- Date format lets you choose between Month/Day/Year and Day/Month/Year formats for your date field value.
- First day of the week allows having Monday or Sunday as the first weekday in calendar of the date picker.
- Default date is the default value that you can set for your date field.
- Minimum date will define the earliest date which can be provided by the user.
- Maximum date will set the upper limit of date value, which submitter can select with Date Picker.
- Dates to exclude option allows you define certain dates, which will not be permitted for users to select.
- Selectable Week Days can be chosen to allow users to only select certain weekdays.
- Show date picker button will add a date picker sign to the input, if enabled.
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Date (3 separate fields) consists of three select boxes, indicating day, month and year. They can also be set as inputs with Day field type, Month field type and Year field type options. Here are the rest of its settings:
- Fields separator indicates the character, which will be used as the divider of day, month and year fields. Default value is slash (/).
- Day field size(px), Month field size(px) and Year field size(px) can be used to define the width of corresponding elements of this fieldset.
- Year interval option will set lower and upper limits for year field values.
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Time field can be used for the submitter to provide time value. Additional options of this field are the following:
- Time Format sets the time field to accept values in 24-hour or 12-hour formats. In case of selecting 12-hour format, an AM/PM dropdown menu will be added to the fieldset.
- Display Seconds will enable an input for providing seconds.
Select Box. Lets users to choose options from dropdown field. Two types can be added to your forms:
- Custom Select allows you to create a dropdown menu with options that you set. You can create unlimited number of options with Options section of the toolbox.
- Country List provides a built-in dropdown menu with all countries as its options.
File Upload. You can let submitters to upload attachments with their form submission by placing a File Upload field. You can customize this field with the help of the following options:
- Maximum size(KB) will set a limitation on the size of the uploaded file.
- Destination option lets you choose the directory, where these files are going to be uploaded.
- Allowed file extensions defines all the file formats, which submitter can upload. You can add the values separated by commas.
- Allow Uploading Multiple Files allows users to select more than one files with a single upload field, if enabled.
Section Break. This is a horizontal divider between form fields. You can place it at any point of your form by moving the form fields above or below Section Break.
Page Break. You can use Page Break to separate your form fields into multiple pages.
- Page Title lets you provide a name for each of your form pages.
- Next Type/Previous Type allows setting Image or Text as navigation buttons.
- Next text name/Previous text name define the text for navigation buttons, in case they are set to Text.
- Next img src/Previous img src set the icons for navigation buttons, if they are images. Make sure to provide the full URLs of the icons.
- Check the required fields validates required fields page by page, if enabled. If users skip a required field, they will not be able to go to the next or previous page.
PayPal. PayPal integration of MailChimp WD is a functional and useful addition for your MailChimp forms. If you would like your users to pay for subscribing to a list, or sell a product with your form, you can add one of the plugin’s PayPal fields.
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Amount (Price) allows to set a fixed amount of payment to your form.
- Range can be defined for this amount, which will set upper and lower limits to the value.
- Readonly option will not allow users to edit this field. You might need this if you wish to provide the amount yourself.
- Hide payment currency option can be used to remove the currency symbol.
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Select, Checkbox and Radio of PayPal fields let you list options of products, which user can choose to purchase. Use Options section to setup your product list and their prices.
- Quantity property will let users to select the number of items they want to purchase.
- Product properties allows you add properties to your products, such as Color, Size, Screen Resolution.You can also set your own custom product property.
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Shipping field lets you set shipping types and define prices for each of them.
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Total field will calculate values of all PayPal fields of your form and display the details of selected products.
Button. Subscribe button is automatically added to your subscription form. But you can add new ones with Button field type.
- Submit button validates the values of all form fields and saves them to your website database. Also values of MailChimp fields are being transferred to your MailChimp account.
- Custom button type is created to complete custom actions. You can write a Javascript function in Form Options > Javascript tab, and call it as OnClick function of your custom button.
Captcha. MailChimp WD has word verification field (Captcha), which you can add to your form as a protection from spambots. Press Add Captcha button and choose one of these three options:
- Simple Captcha
- Arithmetic Captcha
- ReCaptcha
Please note, that ReCaptcha needs Public and Private keys, which you can get by registering your website here. Make sure to copy them to Global Options of MailChimp WD afterwards
Each individual custom field has its unique options which we described above. Besides these MailChimp WD Custom Fields also have the following settings, which refer to most field types:
- Field ID and Field name identify the dynamic ID and Name attributes of form fields. These are changed when your form is viewed on frontend. Therefore in case you need to use IDs or Names in custom Javascript and CSS code, look for actual IDs/Names from your published form.
- Field label option is used to provide custom label for fields.
- Field label size(px) sets the width of the field label in pixels.
- Field label position places the label to the Top or Left side of the field.
- Field size(px) defines the width of the size of the field in pixels.
- Value if empty is the placeholder of your form fields, you can use this to provide help texts for users.
- Deactive Class name and Active Class name are the values of class attributes. For example, if the user clicks on an input, it becomes active, whereas before that action the input is inactive.
- Required option will set the field to be required. An error message will display in case the user clicks submit without filling it out.
- Validation (Regular Exp.) allows setting up Regular Expression pattern for your input fields. MailChimp WD provides a list of built-in patterns, which you can see within Common Regular Expressions option after marking Validation (Regular Exp.) as checked.
- Allow only unique values can be used to set a form field to accept only unique values. For instance, you can activate this if you want the user to submit only once from the same email address.
- Additional Attributes is an advanced option which lets you add HTML attributes to fields. E.g. if you want to set a limitation of 25 characters on an input, set Name to maxlength and Value to 25.