Set up your Subscription by Publication Webform
You can use the Subscription Web form by publication to create a web form for each of your publications or different web forms for the same publication. You will have the option to update labels, set attributes to display or not display and choose default items like invoice templates.
Create or edit a web form by navigating to Settings > System Design & Info > Web Forms
Select Subscription Form by Publication from the drop-down box.
Click on Add Subform and fill in the pop-up information, be sure to select the Publication(s) for this Web form and a Name. You can choose a default lead source and invoice template. The system will use a basic styling by default, but you can modify the CSS of your form under Settings > System Design & Info > Custom Site Design.
Important
You can set up a form to NOT accept payment information. Make sure to set up subscription plans for 0 dollars if you don't plan to require payment.
Now, you can edit the webform by clicking on the pencil next to your new form name.
On the Base Fields tab, select the information that your form requires by checking the appropriate boxes. You can change the labels for each input by clicking on the edit icon. You can change the labels for a regular subscription and for a gift subscription. The gift subscription labels appear on the first step of the form when a customer select 'is this a gift?'
You can also choose to make some fields required or have them disabled. The system will require you have fields needed to create a valid subscriber and subscription.
You can also update the billing section of the form by editing input labels and making fields required.
On the Dynamic Attributes tab, select which subscription dynamic attributes you want your subscribers to interact with on the form. You can choose to show attributes on the form as optional fields, make them required, or even make them required, but not show on the form. You may do this if you want to track an attribute for any subscriber who comes to your form, but you don't want them to enter the fields; this would be for any internal tracking purposes.
Click on 'View Web Form Page' to see what your customer will see when entering a subscription and test the form to make sure it works as expected.
Tip
You can update the sort order of the subscription plans and set a default plan on the subscription plan page under Settings > Products > Publication & Issues and clicking on the subscription plan action.
You can copy the URL and frame it on your website to start selling subscriptions.
If you want to add an extra layer of security to your subscription forms you can add a reCAPTCHA option on a form-by-form basis. reCAPTCHA is a tool used on websites to help the system determine if the entity interacting with your page is human or not. If you find your website and forms have a lot of suspicious or fraudulent submission, adding reCAPTCHA is highly recommend. Your customer will have to check one extra box and it is a standard practice on most websites.
To add reCAPTCHA you need to go to your Settings > System Design & Info > Web Forms and select your webform type.
You will see the option to add when you select the contact form, subscription form, or client center registration form. Once added, it will always appear on the page.
You have to add the option to the Subscription Webform by Publication on a form-by-form basis. You need to edit the settings of each form to add the reCAPTCHA.
Once added, anyone (or thing) that comes to your system will need to mark the field before they can submit the page to your site. If a person using your form gets an error about not being human, it means they didn't click on the reCAPTCHA field.
Updated 12/20/2024
Adding Subscription Webform Restrictions
By default, the subscription webforms do not have restrictions for subscription plans or countries that the subscription can be sold to. This default setting can be problematic in situations where you would want the shipping costs to be higher than normal – for instance, if you need to ship a print subscription to someone in New Zealand, but you are based in the United States. Read through the following directions to learn how to set up both country, and subscription plan restrictions on your webforms, for when situations like this arise.
The easiest way to set this up is to create a subscription plan for each location you are planning to sell to:
Navigate to Settings > Products > Publication & Issue Setup to manage your subscription plans. Click on the action icon next to a Publication and select ‘Subscription Plans’.
You will want to create a subscription plan for each location you want to sell to. For this example, we will be selling our subscriptions to the United States and Canada. If you are based in the US, it will cost more to ship your subscriptions to Canada. So, in this example, there is a subscription plan for $20 for the US customers, and the same subscription is being sold to Canada for $30.
Once you have your subscription plans configured, you can begin setting up your webforms:
Navigate to Settings > System Design & Info > WebForms, and click on Subscription Form by Publication. You can either edit an existing webform for your publication or create a new webform.
Configure your webform with the settings you would like (adding dynamic attributes, choosing an invoice template, etc.), then click ‘View Web Form Page’. When on the Web Form page, select the desired publication, which will bring you to the ‘Add Subscription’ page.
At this stage in the process, you will need to manually generate a new URL:
As is, the Add Subscription webform page will display all the available subscription plans and allow customers to choose from any country. To create a country or subscription plan restriction, you will need to edit the page’s URL. There are no restrictions applied in the screenshot below, which shows a normal webform URL, multiple subscription plans, and no country restriction.
Country Restriction
To create a country restriction, all you need to do is add ‘&country=XX’ to the end of the webform’s URL. For example, your normal webform URL will likely look something like this: https://adorbit.com/webform/?form=subscription_by_pub&id=11&pub_id=19.
Warning
You can only create this type of restriction for a single country. The web forms will NOT work if you enter more than one country. If you need multiple location restrictions, you will need to generate an individual form for each country.
If you would like the webform to only allow sales to Canada, then you will add ‘&country=CA’ to the end of the webform, so it would end up being https://adorbit.com/webform/?form=subscription_by_pub&id=11&pub_id=19&country=CA.
Note
For the URL to work, you need to use a valid two-letter country code, such as US or CA. If you type out 'Canada’, for example, the restriction will not work.
Subscription Plan Restriction
There are two ways to create a subscription plan restriction. If you would like to restrict the webform to only allow for a single subscription plan, do the following:
Add ‘&plan=ID’ to the end of the webform’s URL. When adding to the URL, you will not actually enter the letters ‘ID’, instead you will substitute that for the subscription plan’s ID number. For example, it could be '&plan=45.'
To find out what your subscription plan’s ID is, you will need to navigate to Settings > Products > Publication & Issue Setup and click on the ‘Subscription Plans’ action. On the Subscription Plans page, you will see an associated ID with each plan.
Let’s say your normal URL looks something like this: https://adorbit.com/webform/?form=subscription_by_pub&id=11&pub_id=19. For this publication, you have two subscription plans, one for the US (ID=57), and one for Canada (ID=59), and you would like the webform to only use your Canadian subscription plan. You would add ‘&plan=59’ to the end of your URL, so it would turn into something like this: https://adorbit.com/webform/?form=subscription_by_pub&id=11&pub_id=19&plan=59.
The above instructions are if you would like to restrict your webform to a single subscription plan. If, however, you would like to set a restriction for your subscription plans, but would like to use more than one plan, use the following steps.
Add ‘&plan[]=ID&plan[]=ID', repeated for as many plans as you need, to the end of the webform’s URL. When adding to the URL, you will not actually enter the letters ‘ID’, instead you will substitute that for the subscription plan’s ID number. For example, it could be &plan[]=45&plan[]=72&plan[]=34.
To find out what your subscription plan’s ID is, you will need to navigate to Settings > Products > Publication & Issue Setup and click on the ‘Subscription Plans’ action. On the Subscription Plans page, you will see an associated ID with each plan.
Once again, let’s say your normal URL looks something like this: https://adorbit.com/webform/?form=subscription_by_pub&id=11&pub_id=19. For this publication, you have three subscription plans, one for the US (ID=57), one for Canada (ID=59), and one for Argentina (ID=60), and you would like the webform to only use your US and Canadian subscription plans. You would add ‘&plan[]=57&plan[]=59’ to the end of your URL, so it would turn into something like this: https://adorbit.com/webform/?form=subscription_by_pub&id=11&pub_id=19&plan[]=57&plan[]=59.
Notice
You can use both a country and a subscription plan restriction on the same webform. The order you add to your URL is not important, it will work whether you put the country restriction before or after the subscription plan restriction. If you would like to enter both, then your URL will end up looking something like this: https://adorbit.com/webform/?form=subscription_by_pub&id=11&pub_id=19&plan=59&country=CA.
You have now successfully generated a new URL containing the country and/or subscription plan restrictions. This URL, however, does not automatically save for future use. The next step in the process, so ensure the restrictions are implemented properly, is to embed this new webform URL into your website.
Begin by creating your URL and copy the URL you’ve created.
Assuming you want to frame the form on the site, you can go into your website admin system and copy the exact URL on to your web page.
The page will show your set country and plans.
Updated 4/27/2023