Adinserter Pro, despite being a plugin, possibly the best, designed for managing advertisements, can be used for other purposes.
On this occasion we will see how to create a pop-up window in which a subscription form will be displayed, although you can use it to add any other content, whether it is your own or external advertising, a call to action with an image or simply an informative text as a warning.
This option is not available for the free version of Ad Inserter, you have to use its Pro version which allows you to create ads in fixed positions with in and out animations and close button.
These are the steps:
1- Create a new block in Ad Inserter and add the HTML or PHP of your form. In my case it is created with GenerateBlocks and I simply copied and pasted its code.
2 - Select "Entries" (or wherever you want it to be displayed). In "Lists" you can exclude the posts or pages where you don't want it to be displayed.
3 - In "Insert" select "Footer".
4 - In "Alignment" we mark "Custom CSS"
5-6- Select the horizontal and vertical location.
7- Optionally you can add more CSS to fix the position anywhere, set the opacity of the background colour or whatever you need.
The close button can also be customised to use your own design.
9- At this point we have a couple of ways to configure the number of times it will be shown so as not to annoy the visitor.
In this case, once the user closes the window, it will not appear again until after 5 days. If we don't want it to appear again, we only need to add a high number of days. Here you can also configure the automatic closing after X seconds or that it is only shown every X page views.
Finally, in the "Limits" tab, you can choose to limit the number of impressions and/or clicks per day in general or individually.
Before saving the block to start displaying your pop-up it is advisable to click on "Preview" (see first image) which will allow us to see the final appearance on a test page like this one:
Note that the final appearance will vary because the preview is presented without formatting, in my case this is the final appearance of the draft with the CSS of the template and GenerateBlocks
As a final step, you can now polish the layout of your window and add a border, shadow, adjust the colours, centre the texts, add spacing, padding, margins, etc.
Some considerations
Pop-up windows that open automatically abruptly interrupt the natural navigation, can appear when the page loads, after a period of time or when scrolling, and are very annoying for the average person.
In addition, as they have historically been used for intrusive advertising, many browsers already block them by default and they are often penalised by search engines, damaging the SEO of your site.
Therefore, it is advisable not to abuse this type of windows and show them only once per visit and only for short periods of time. It is also good practice to configure them to stop appearing for a reasonably long period of time, or not to appear again, after the user has closed them.
Ad Inserter is not a plugin specifically for creating modal windows so it has its limitations in terms of the variety of triggers with conditions that other dedicated plugins have. If you prefer something a bit more configurable and free you can use this plugin, or this one.
Pros
- Quick and easy configuration.
- You can set impressions, clicks, days and times to display it.
- Absolute flexibility to define size, position and appearance.
Cons
- Annual subscription fee option.
- Poor fit in mobile version.
- Limited triggers.
- Cannot be configured to appear when leaving the page.
