How to automatically select checkboxes in Mailchimp forms

Using groups in Mailchimp lists makes managing subscribers with varying interests simple. For example your local library may send out different email newsletters containing news of the latest library events and newest books in the library. It’s clumsy and difficult to have a list for each of the interest groups so having a single list divided into groups is the optimum solution.

In Mailchimp forms, a single group or multiple groups may be selected by subscribers by checking a select box. By default Mailchimp checkboxes aren’t enabled. But what if we want one or more of the check-boxes enabled by default? This is actually incredibly simple if we are embedding the Mailchimp provided form HTML into our WordPress Website (or Drupal, Joomla, Weebly, Wix or other CMS).

All we need do to enable a checkbox by default is to add the word (property) checked to the HTML as follows (your HTML as provided in your Mailchimp form may differ slightly):


<div class="mc-field-group input-group">
    <ul><li><input type="checkbox" value="1" name="group[1][1]" id="mce-group[1]-1-0" checked><label for="mce-group[1]-1-0">Events</label></li>
<li><input type="checkbox" value="2" name="group[1][2]" id="mce-group[1]-1-1" checked><label for="mce-group[1]-1-1">New Books</label></li>
</ul>
</div>

If I only added the word checked to one of the checkboxes then only that checkbox would be selected upon page load.