I've been using Wordpress to build most of my sites lately because it's so easy to get the structure of the site set up. You can just focus on the content and let Wordpress handle everything else.

Well, I'm a bit of a testing nut. I like to have as much information about my websites as possible. One of the things I like to know is which pages people are opting in from. That way, if opt-ins are my main goal for the site, I know which pages to promote more heavily.

I use Aweber for my list management and they let you assign tracking codes to your web forms so you can track which form your subscribers used to sign up.

The trouble is, you don't want to put a unique form on every page. That's one of the advantages of Wordpress - it handles it all through the theme's structure.

There is a fairly simple way around this, however. Because Wordpress stores all your content in a database, each page or post has it's own ID #. This technique uses that ID # to identify where your opt-ins are signing up from.

The first thing you'll need to do is download and install the ExecPHP Wordpress plugin. It can be downloaded from the following page:

http://ottodestruct.com/blog/2006/04/09/fun-with-widgets/

Once you've installed and activated the plugin, you'll have a new option in your "Widgets" screen under Presentation. Towards the bottom, there will be a drop down box titled "PHP Code Widgets"

Make sure that drop down is set to at least 1.

Now in the "Available Widgets" section, there will be one called PHP Code 1. Drag that box up to the Sidebar 1 section.

If you already have widgets in your sidebar, you'll need to decide where you want the opt-in box to appear. I recommend the very top if your main goal is getting opt-ins.

Next, log into your Aweber account and copy the HTML code for your web form.

Back on your blog's widgets screen, click the configure button for the PHP Code 1 widget.

Give it a title in the first box (whatever you want) and then paste the web form code into the large box.

In the code for your Aweber web form, find the following line:

<input type="hidden" name="meta_adtracking" value="">

Whatever you put between the quotes after value= is the tracking code. What we want to do is have Wordpress automatically insert the page ID for whatever page your visitor opts in from.

Change that line to the following:

<input type="hidden" name="meta_adtracking" value="<?php if (is_home()) { echo('home'); } else { echo the_ID(); } ?>">

We've included a Wordpress function that will insert the ID for the page. Because the home page of the blog doesn't have a page ID, we're also checking to see if it is the home page. If so, it will assign a tracking code of "home".

Close the widget (click the X in the corner) and click the "Save Changes" button.

Now go to your blog's home page. You should see your opt-in box in the sidebar, wherever you inserted it in the list of widgets.

If you view the source for your home page and find the Aweber web form code, the ad tracking line should look like this:

<input type="hidden" name="meta_adtracking" value="home">

If you click on one of your posts and view the source for that page, it should have a number instead of home.

To track where people are signing up, you can use Aweber's reports to find the ad tracking codes that appear the most and cross-reference that number with the post ID's in your Wordpress blog to find the pages in question.

How you use that information will depend on several factors, which I'll go over in my next post.