[Mailman-Users] Custom Sign-Up Form

[Zbigniew Szalbot]

Hello,

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006, Brad Knowles wrote:

> That's a wonderful idea.  However, since most of the people who contribute to 
> these efforts are people who've been around for a while and who understand 
> the importance of things like reading the FAQs, this is kind of a 
> self-selecting community.

English is not first language for me so I am not sure I should contribute 
but a couple of very simple things for starters.

1. Place all list templates (like a sign-up page, 
confirmation page, email text, etc.) in one place in admin. I may be wrong 
but at present not everything can be directly edited in admin. Even if it 
can, the information could be much better organized so that I knew what I 
am dealing with.

2. By default I would offer a very simply sign-up form with a clear, 
succint message. Something like:

If you would like to subscribe to NAME mailing list, please enter your 
email address in the field below and press Enter.

Below the email field I would put a link like "Advanced options". If 
someone clicks it, it would reveal more options like password, digest, 
etc. By default these options should not be dislayed. It would already 
make it a lot easier for people who now have a VERY long page full of 
information and not really sure what to do.

3. Absolutely and by all means hide the Subscribers part on the sign-up 
page.

4. Instead of a link to unsubscribe or edit options (these should NOT go 
together), just make a radio button under the email field (mentioned in 
point 2) where you simply choose Subscribe or Unsubscribe.

5. Information about archives should be somewhere below the form, not 
above. If I want to subscribe to the list, I do not need information about 
archives in the first place, though I can see some merit of it being 
there. But why as a first line of the sign-up page?

These changes would make it a lot easier for people to follow.

Hope all this makes sense.

P.S. English text is at least to some extent understandable but 
translations are much more difficult to follow. As much as I am thankful 
that there are wonderful people here who did the translation into Polish, 
I cannot speak favourably of its quality. It is not to criticize them. By 
no means. It is just that when I read it, I do not understand what the 
text means. Make the English templates simple and I am sure translations 
will also be better.

Thank you.

--
Zbigniew Szalbot