Integrating AWeber with ASP.NET Web Sites

Ever since our company decided to use AWeber to manage our email lists, I've been in the business of integrating AWeber services with our ASP and ASP.NET web sites. I have to say that few tasks have been more frustrating. It's not so much that AWeber causes problems, it's just a Murphy's Law kind of thing exacerbated by the fact that lots of things CAN go wrong!

The difficulties in integrating AWeber with an ASP.NET Web site are particularly challenging, and I know I'm not alone in my frustration. Each time I've fallen into the AWeber time vortex, I've done Web searches and found many blog posts expressing similar angst. In the end, I get things working, but not without a lot of trial-and-error-and-trial-and-error-and-trial-and-error.

In an effort to save some of my fellow ASP.NET developers from a similar experience, I've written articles about various AWeber integration topics and I developed and published a free conversion tool for AWeber subscribe forms.

I recently published another AWeber-related article on my Nerdy Musings web site, which is where I publish most of my software development articles, and I thought I would take this opportunity to cross-reference all of the AWeber articles here in my blog.

Posting to an Off-Site Page in DotNetNuke

The "posting" article describes how to get an AWeber subscribe form to work in DotNetNuke. The same basic techniques can be applied to any ASP.NET Web site, as described in the next article.

Embedding Forms in an ASP.NET Web Page

This "embedding" article explains how to embed any kind of form-based widget (such as an AWeber subscribe form or a PayPal button) in an ASP.NET page.

Subscribing Customers to an AWeber List with an ASP.NET Application

The "subscribing" article is the latest in my AWeber series. It explains how to subscribe your site visitors to an AWeber list without making the visitor fill out a subscribe form. It also shows you how your application can detect and respond to successful subscribe confirmations.

AWeber Form Conversion for DotNetNuke

This free utility converts the form code generated by AWeber into something that can be pasted into an ASP.NET Web page.

If you are an ASP.NET developer tasked with integrating AWeber subscriptions into your applications, be sure to give these articles a read as they could save you boatloads of time.

Enjoy!

The Written Word Still Rules

The proliferation of high-speed Internet access and powerful computers with massive hard drives has made it possible for you to deliver more of your content in audio and video format. But just because you can, that doesn't mean you should. At least, not exclusively.

Granted, many people are visual or auditory learners, and a picture can definitely paint a thousand words, but A/V content seems to work best as an accompaniment to written material, not as a replacement for it.

The main problem with A/V content is that it is serial and linear. You can't "skim" it. You can't "speed read" it. You are stuck accepting the information at the pace it was originally recorded. Sure, you can fast forward or skip around, but that process is slow, cumbersome, and leaves you with no idea of what you might have skipped.

How many audio programs have you downloaded with the intent to "listen to it one of these days," but you never have? Conversely, how many times have you done an Internet search and quickly scanned dozens of pages to locate the information you need?

The book industry is seeing a rapid transition to electronic media with supplementary content in the form of audio, video, and Web page links. But that doesn't mean books are going away. It just means that digital books will provide extra resources that improve the learning or entertainment experience for readers who enjoy and benefit from the additional materials.

The key is to make sure you don't segregate any important part of your message into these alternative formats. When considering what content to provide in audio or video format, think "supplementary" or "alternative," not "essential." Your audience, or more to the point, your readers, will appreciate it.