Extra Boxes on Subscribe Form

Hello Rick,

We aren’t able to replicate the issue on our end. We suspect that it may be due to a plugin conflict.

Will it be possible for you to perform a conflict test on your site? You may need to temporarily disable all other plugins except the Email Subscribers plugin.

We recommend doing the troubleshooting using the Health Check plugin which disables all the plugins and switches the current theme to the default theme only for the current logged-in user when troubleshooting mode is enabled. It does not affect other users or site visitors. You can get the Health Check plugin from here. After enabling the troubleshooting mode in Health Check plugin, activate the Email Subscribers plugin, and check if the issue is resolved or not.

If it is resolved, then you can activate plugins one by one and check which one is causing the issue.

If the issue persists with only Email Subscribers active, do let us know if this is the case. We may then need to debug it further.

I hope this helps you.

Let us know what comes out or if you have any further queries.

Thank you.

Further investigation, using a different site, with different themes. The extra field seems to be coming from this code just before the submit button:

<label style="position:absolute;top:-99999px;left:-99999px;z-index:-99;"><input type="email" name="esfpx_es_hp_email" class="es_required_field" tabindex="-1" autocomplete="-1" value="" /></label>

In addition, the form is wrapped in a block, so any theme CSS that has defined will cause issues with the form. Example:

<code class="es-code">

So, two issues: why is there a field that has an absolute position off screen? And why is there a tag wrapped around the form?

Those two issues are causing problems in some themes.

Hello Rick,

Thank you for your response.

why is there a field that has an absolute position off screen?

— This is a honeypot field that is used in protecting forms against bot attacks. Since this field is only for bots, it is set off-screen so that site’s normal users don’t feel it.

And why is there a tag wrapped around the form?

— We checked this issue on our end but could not replicate it. Also by default, the plugin doesn’t wrap the form inside <code class="es-code"> tag. Can you let us know the steps that you are following on your end? That would be helpful in replicating the issue.

Hope this helps you. Let us know if you have any further queries.

Thank you.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by kishanranawat.

Hello Rick,

We haven’t heard from you in a while.

We hope our previous replies were helpful in resolving your issues.

I am closing this thread for now. Feel free to reopen it in case if you are still having the issue with the latest version of the plugin.

Also if you have any other queries, you can open a new thread from here. We will be happy to assist you further.

Thank you.

In regards to your last reply:

This is a honeypot field that is used in protecting forms against bot attacks. Since this field is only for bots, it is set off-screen so that site’s normal users don’t feel it.

Putting a field off screen does not protect against bot attacks. Bots don’t ‘read’ the screen, they look at the source code of the screen. Putting a field off-screen doesn’t do anything to block a bot. It’s a waste of time. (As are hidden fields, whether they have a ‘hidden’ type or CSS that is set to display:none. )

None of those techniques block bots. And some browsers may ignore that offscreen display attempt.

— We checked this issue on our end but could not replicate it. Also by default, the plugin doesn’t wrap the form inside <code class=”es-code”> tag. Can you let us know the steps that you are following on your end? That would be helpful in replicating the issue.

I see the ‘code’ tag on multiple sites, with multiple themes, including the ‘twenty’ theme. There is no reason to use a ‘code’ tag around your form. You should be using a unique class to do stuff like that.

I’ve had to put this CSS to get around the issue. But your ‘honeypot’ technique of putting things off screen is just not a valid way to block bots.

input[name="esfpx_es_hp_email"] {
	display: none;
}

This will get rid of that useless off-screen field.

Hello Rick,

Thank you for your response. We are able to replicate the off-screen field-related issue using the information you have provided. We are currently looking into the issue and will fix it in upcoming releases.

Related to the <code >tag issue, it seems a bit strange since the plugin doesn’t wrap the form inside the tag when showing it on the front end. Can you please let us know the steps that you are following to add the form?

Thank you.