MaxBlogPress Opt In Form Adder

Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 5:56 pm

Just saw MaxBlogPress Opt In Adder and had to test it out. It is created to allow you to easily add an opt in form to your sidebar or the bottom of the post. It works with a few caveats.

Those are enough that I won’t be using it here but if you are not comfortable with playing in the theme this can be a valuable addition.

There are a lot of customization available and it is easily done. You can change the background color, border color and button display. The WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface allows you to customize the text and works well.

The problem is the size of the table it creates. It is not customizable and if you have a narrow sidebar it may create theme problems. On this blog it works quite well in the wide top portion but can’t be used in any of the narrower sidebars.

You can also automatically add in an opt in form at the bottom of the posts. This works well but again I have a problem with the size. Being relatively narrow I did not care for the way it looked on this blog with a wide text area and could not add it in exactly where I would want it to display.

The only other complaint I had was that the set up for it displays under tools and not either settings or directly under plugins like most plugins. Took me a bit to find it when looking to change settings.

Now to be perfectly clear here I am not the target market for this plugin as if I want an opt in box at the end of the post it is easy for me to add it in and format it to suit me. I do the same with adding them to the sidebar. The plugin does work as advertised and makes it very easy to add your opt in box to the blog.

If you aren’t comfortable with doing those things this does a good job of creating an opt in box as long as your theme side bar is (and this is a guess) over 200 px wide.

Being brand new I am sure as input comes in that some of these items might be addressed in future updates.

All in all a nice plugin for those that aren’t comfortable playing in the theme with the caveats mentioned.

As always your comments and questions are welcomed.

Still looking for more ideas on the plugin Robert Plank has offered to make for my readers. Have a good idea let me know.

Mike Paetzold