Integrating AWeber with vBulletin using Email parser has many drawbacks. One of them was double email confirmation. Other is when you have more than one way for users to subscribe. For e.g. if you have an AWeber form where user can subscribe to your list ideally you need to have 2 different type of confirmation emails. One for forum user and other for non forum users but as of now this is not possible in AWeber for a single list. You can opt for double list and setup automation rules but managing 2 lists can be a headache as well.
So here I am with a new product for vBulletin which actually makes your vBulletin registration 2 step registration processes by adding an AWeber subscribe as first step and in the second step he can register at vBulletin.
Before I describe about how to install the plug-in make sure you know basic of HTML. If you have no knowledge of HTML I can help you install this plug-in for you. Also remember this plug-in is compatible with vBulletin 4+ and I have no plans to make it work for vBulletin 3 currently.
Now let us begin.
Step 1
Generate an inline AWeber form but remember to have your vBulletin registration page as form thank you page.
Point to note here is the query string that you need to pass to your vBulletin registration page which is
?do=step2
Step 2
Download the plug-in and Upload startregister.php file to your forum root where you have your vBulletin’s register.php file.
Step 3
Go to your forum admincp and import the product.
Go to AdminCP > Plugins & Products > Manage Products > Add/Import Products and import the product using the XML file attached in the zip file.
Step 4
After you have successfully imported the product you will see a new template called aweber_register in your Styles & Templates > Style Manager.
Edit the template to input your AWeber form details that was generated in step 1. We have used inline form in step 1 and so we have option of using Raw HTML for our AWeber form.
You will need to edit the following in the aweber_register template.
<!-- AWeber Tracking Image -->
<div style="display: none;">
<img src="http://forms.aweber.com/form/displays.htm?id=jMycnEyMLOws" alt="" />
</div>
<!-- / AWeber Tracking Image -->
<!-- AWeber Hidden Form Fields -->
<div style="display: none;">
<input type="hidden" name="meta_web_form_id" value="139921474" />
<input type="hidden" name="meta_split_id" value="" />
<input type="hidden" name="listname" value="mbaguys" />
<input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="{vb:raw vboptions.bburl}/register.php?do=step2" id="redirect_2f5e6f9337080be57c07213dc55e3325" />
<input type="hidden" name="meta_redirect_onlist" value="{vb:raw vboptions.bburl}/register.php" />
<input type="hidden" name="meta_adtracking" value="BeforeVBReg" />
<input type="hidden" name="meta_message" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="meta_required" value="email" />
<input type="hidden" name="meta_forward_vars" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="meta_tooltip" value="" />
</div>
<!-- / AWeber Hidden Form Fields -->
You have to edit
<img src="http://forms.aweber.com/form/displays.htm?id=jMycnEyMLOws" alt="" />
This is for tracking of form display and submissions. You will see image code in your AWeber HTML form code which you need to replace in the template.
Content between the hidden div needs to be changed to your AWeber hidden field value.
<div style="display: none;"> // Hidden Fields of AWeber. </div>
AWeber arranges the hidden fields just under the <form> tag and you can copy them and replace with those in the template.
Step 5 (Optional)
You can edit the register template to make the email address on the original vBulletin form as read only so that user from step 1 of AWeber cannot edit email in vBulletin registration.
To edit the register template, find
<input type="text" name="email" id="email" maxlength="50" value="{vb:raw email}" dir="ltr" tabindex="1" />
Replace with
<input type="text" name="email" id="email" maxlength="50" value="{vb:raw email}" dir="ltr" tabindex="1" readonly />
Find
<input type="text" name="emailconfirm" id="emailconfirm" maxlength="50" value="{vb:raw emailconfirm}" dir="ltr" tabindex="1" />
Replace with
<input type="text" name="emailconfirm" id="emailconfirm" maxlength="50" value="{vb:raw emailconfirm}" dir="ltr" tabindex="1" readonly />
Support
I will be giving full support to this plug-in and if you have any difficulty just post your issues in comments. I will be more than happy to help.
But if you are not planning to subscribe through Email. Try subscribing to RSS.
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
this is awesome.
Do you have a printscreen of the registration form where there is the option to sign-up?
Do the users receive the confirmation e-mail?
Is it compatible with vb4?
Its not an Option but mandatory as of now but if you want it optional I am sure this can be edited for you. Use the contact me and the way you want it to be and I may think of doing that for you.
Yes users receives email and it is compatible with vb4+
This is great, thanks. We do however we would like to know if it is possible to have a
loose standing [not interwoven as part of forum subscription] auto-responder subscription.
Please kindly advise,
Thanks, Yolanda
Yolanda, Yes that is very much possible.
Shabbir,
Is there any possibility to add a checkbox for “Also register for newsletter” somewhere in the default register.php?
When people enters his username and email, it'll be reported to aweber and they'll send the confirmation mail?
Abhik, No that is not possible because that means we have to submit multiple forms to two different URLs i.e. to AWeber and to vBulletin system which is a bit tough
BTW, I tried this.
But found no tracking image in my code.
What does it mean? Will there be any problem if I skip that?
No. It works perfectly fine without that but stats for the form may not work. You may not have selected that option to start with in the form interface.
Does this plugin work with vBulletin 3.8.x ?
Yes it does work with vBulletin 3.8 and I myself is using it on http://www.go4expert.com
Nice post Shabbir thanks for sharing such stuff. Is there a way? If we can set this to multiple lists. For example three people send visitors to forum via their optin form from other websites. How to get user name and email address already filled in the registration page step two.
You have to pass them as parameters in vBulletin and rest should be taken care by vBulletin. The example of an error in registration and vBulletin pre-fills the entered data.
Can this plugin be used along with the Facebook Connect Registration option ?
Hi Thomas, You can use it with vB Facebook registration because the AWeber part is before the vBulletin registration form. Else you can use the email way of integration.
Great mod, Shabbir! The only problem seems to be it works a little too good. I’m getting about 400 bots submitting their emails each weak to the first page of the form. While not the end of the world, this means I have to delete all these unconfirmed emails each week. That’s not the end of the world, either, but it’s a distraction I’d rather not have to deal with.
Do you have any plans of adding some kind of spam bot protection? I’d be willing to pay for it.
Hi Brandon, Not sure but unconfirmed emails in AWeber cannot be deleted and so how are you deleting them in the first place
I noticed after this mod was installed for some time that Aweber was unsubscribing about 400 visitors per day. Back in the old days when I used one of my home-grown scripts that I was only getting about about 30-50 signups per day. This was after they registered through vBulletin so it’s safe to say that these weren’t bots.
I did some digging and noticed that 99% of the unsubscribes were from exactly one month before. It turns out that Aweber automatically unsubscribes anyone who hasn’t confirmed for 30 days.
Using the Search tab on the main page (once you log in) and searching for Unsubscribes, I can then delete all of these. I noticed at one point I had about 20,000 unsubscribes….enough to jack up my monthly bill significantly.
It’s possible I goofed some of this is up, but that’s how I remember it.
Yes that is bad part of AWeber and it counts the unsubscribes when billing.
On my site, the aweber registration page displays all crunched together on IE7.
The spacing is all messed up, the footer is overlaying on top of the form.
http://www.recipesecrets.net/forums/startregister.php
Looks fine on all other browsers and IE8/9. Any ideas on how to fix this display issue on IE7 ?
Hi Thomas, vB4 Does not support IE7. See the official announcement here