Creating & Configuring Signup Forms

A signup form is how visitors join your lists. This article covers building one in the form editor – the fields, styling, success message, and the choice between an inline form and a popup. For embedding a saved form see Using Forms with Gutenberg and the Shortcode Reference; for fine styling see Styling Forms; for popup behaviour see Popup Forms. This is the article that ties them together.

Create a form

1. Go to Super Speedy Emails → Forms and click Add New.
2. Give the form a name (admin-only – visitors never see it).
3. Tick the lists this form subscribes people to. A form can add a subscriber to several lists at once. (No lists yet? Create one first under Lists.)
4. Configure the fields, style, and (optionally) popup behaviour – below.
5. Save Form. A live preview appears on the right after the first save.

Fields

Every form collects an email address – that field is always present and required. You can optionally also collect:

• First Name
• Last Name

That’s the full set by design – Super Speedy Emails keeps the form short, because shorter forms convert better. First/last name are used later for personalisation (e.g. {{first_name}} in emails). If a visitor subscribes again later and supplies a name they didn’t give the first time, it’s filled in then.

Success message

The Success Message is what the visitor sees after subscribing (default: “Thanks for subscribing!”). Because submission is AJAX, this appears in place, instantly, without a page reload. If any of the form’s lists require double opt-in, the visitor is still shown this message, and a confirmation email goes out separately – see Double Opt-in.

Status

A form can be Active or Inactive. An inactive form won’t accept submissions (the endpoint rejects it) and won’t render – useful for retiring a form without deleting it or losing its stats.

Style

Pick a preset as a starting point, then adjust:

Then tune:

• Colours – background, text, button, and button-text colours (colour pickers).
• Border radius – corner rounding in pixels (0 – 50).
• Button label – the call-to-action text (default “Subscribe”). Make it specific where you can (“Get the newsletter”, “Send me the guide”).

Deeper CSS customisation (targeting the sse- classes from your theme) is covered in Styling Forms.

Inline form vs. popup

By default a form is inline – it appears wherever you embed it. Tick Enable as Popup to make it appear as an overlay instead, with these controls:

• Target pages – All pages, Homepage only, specific page/post IDs, or “URL contains” a pattern.
• Trigger – show after N seconds, and/or after scrolling X% of the page (set 0 to disable a trigger).
• Frequency – Every visit, Once per session, Once per day, or Once ever.
• Hide from subscribers – don’t show the popup to people who already subscribed (recommended).

Full popup guidance is in Popup Forms. A popup form still needs to be saved here first; you don’t embed it – it injects itself on the pages you targeted.

Embedding an inline form

Once saved, embed an inline form anywhere:

• Gutenberg: add the Super Speedy Emails – Signup Form block and pick the form. See Using Forms with Gutenberg.
• Shortcode: [sse_form id="1"] (use the form’s ID, shown on the Forms list). See the Shortcode Reference.
• Theme/PHP: call SSE_Forms::render( $id, 'inline' ) where you need it.

How submissions are handled

When a visitor submits, the request goes through Super Speedy Emails’ fast capture path (the Ultra AJAX mu-plugin, when installed) so the response is near-instant – see Native-Speed AJAX Signups. The subscriber is created or matched by email, added to the form’s lists (as subscribed, or pending if a list needs confirmation), and a cookie is set so the same person is recognised next time (Cookie Handling). Spam is filtered by a honeypot, per-IP rate limiting, and a nonce (Spam Protection).

Tips

• One purpose per form. A homepage newsletter form and a footer “product updates” form should be two forms targeting different lists, so your stats and targeting stay clean.
• Keep it to email-only where you can – every extra field costs conversions. Add a name field only if you’ll actually use it.
• Preview before you embed. The live preview on the editor (after the first save) shows exactly what visitors get, theme styles aside.

Further reading

Related products

Super Speedy EmailsProgrammable, MCP-controllable emails – let an AI agent run your campaigns