How to test GRO on this site

GRO Test Kitchen is a practice food blog connected to the test version of GRO, called “staging”. Nothing you do here reaches real readers or real customers, and no real money changes hands, so sign up, unlock and join as often as you like. Each section says where to go, what to try, what should happen, and where to check the result in GRO.

1. Join the newsletter

Where: the “Get one great recipe every Sunday” box on the home page.

1. Type a first name and your email. The box under them starts ticked: untick it and click Subscribe. It should ask you to tick the box first.
2. Tick the box again and click Subscribe.

What should happen: you land on the “Welcome” page.

Check in GRO: your address is in Contacts, and on the Forms tab “Test Kitchen – Newsletter (home page)” shows one more signup.

Also try: the newsletter’s own sign-up page, the kind of link you would put in an Instagram bio: staging.linksta.io/f/223a7cb5.

2. Sign up from a recipe or the footer

Where: the “Loved this recipe?” box at the end of recipes like Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes, and the “Join the list” box at the bottom of every page.

1. Enter your email, leave the box ticked if there is one, and click the button.

What should happen: a thank-you message appears in place of the box, and you stay on the page.

Check in GRO: in Contacts, a signup made on a recipe is tagged with that recipe’s category, for example “Category: Breakfast & Brunch”.

3. Email a recipe to yourself

Where: the “Save this recipe!” box near the top of recipes like Baked Shakshuka with Feta, and “Save This Recipe” inside the recipe card of 20-Minute Spaghetti Pomodoro (in the card’s notes).

1. Enter your email, untick “Also send me new recipes and updates” (it starts ticked), and click “Email me the recipe”.
2. On another recipe, do it again with a new “+” address, and this time leave the box ticked.

What should happen: “Sent! Check your inbox.” Within a minute or two an email arrives with the recipe’s picture and a link back to it.

Check in GRO: only the address that left the box ticked is added to Contacts; the other one just gets the email. The email itself is set up under Save to Email.

4. Unlock a recipe with your email

Where:

• Brown Sugar Banana Bread: everything after the first paragraph is locked.
• Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies and Crispy Roast Potatoes: the tips and the recipe card at the end are locked.

1. Open one of them in a private window. You see the start of the post, then a blurred preview with a sign-up box on top.
2. Try to select or copy the blurred text. There is nothing real underneath.
3. Enter your email, leave the box ticked, and click the button.

What should happen:

• The locked part appears straight away, without the page reloading.
• Reload the page: it stays unlocked. Open another locked recipe: it is unlocked too. The site remembers you in this browser for a year.
• Open a new private window: everything is locked again.

Check in GRO: the address is in Contacts, and “Test Kitchen – Unlock the recipe” shows one more signup on the Forms tab (the Banana Bread lock uses “Join the list”).

Good to know: while you are signed in to this WordPress site as an editor, you see everything unlocked. Use a private window.

5. Members-only recipes

Where (as someone who is not a member):

• Irish Beef and Guinness Stew and Irish Apple Cake: the whole post is for members.
• Lemon Herb Roast Chicken and Traditional Irish Soda Bread: the post is free, but the recipe card is blurred.
• The Members’ Kitchen page: the whole page is for members.
• The Membership page explains what members get, with a Join button.

1. Open each one in a private window. Instead of the recipe you should see an invitation to join, with the price ($10 a month or $100 a year on staging).
2. Click Join at the top of any page, or “Join to unlock” just above a blurred recipe card.
3. Create an account with a new “+” address and a password. If it asks for a code, it is in your inbox.
4. Pay with the test card 4242 4242 4242 4242, any future expiry date and any 3-digit code. Nothing is charged: staging only takes test cards.

What should happen: you come back to the site signed in as a member, and the members-only posts, the blurred recipe cards and the Members’ Kitchen all open.

Also try: “Log in” in the menu, from a new private window, with the same email and password.

Check in GRO: Memberships → Analytics shows the new member and the page they joined from.

Good to know: being a member does not unlock the email-locked recipes in section 4 yet. Members still enter their email there once.

6. Shopping links

Where: the “Kitchen tools I used” line near the end of recipes like Baked Shakshuka with Feta and Lemon Herb Roast Chicken. On the email-locked recipes they appear once you unlock.

1. Click one of the tools.

What should happen: Amazon opens, showing that item. The link passes through GRO’s link service first (you may see staging.linksta.io flash by), and on a phone with the Amazon app installed it should open in the app.

7. Try the Forms tab in GRO

Where: the Forms tab in GRO staging, signed in with the GRO Test Kitchen account.

1. Each form shows Edit, Embed and, on signup forms only, Share link. Click Share link on “Test Kitchen – Newsletter (home page)”, copy the link and open it in a private window: it is the newsletter’s own sign-up page, the kind you would put in an Instagram bio. Save to Email forms and content gates have no Share link, because they only work on a website.
2. A form called “Content gate” is in the list. Every account now gets one, next to “Join the list” and “Save to Email”. Click its Embed: it tells you to add the GRO Content Gate block in WordPress.
3. Click New form. You can make a signup form, a Save to Email form or a content gate. Archive anything you make to test with.
4. Open “Test Kitchen – Newsletter (home page)”. Under Fields, “Add an email consent checkbox” is on, with “Start with the box ticked” below it. Turn “Start with the box ticked” off: the preview on the right shows the box unticked straight away. Save. Within about 5 minutes the home-page box starts unticked (reload in a private window). Turn it back on afterwards.
5. On the same form, under Landing page, “At the top of the page” can show your profile photo, your logo or nothing. Pick one, save, and open the Share link page to see it. With no logo added in Email settings, “My logo” shows just the handle.
6. Under Tags, click “Add a tag” and type a name that doesn’t exist yet: a “Create tag …” option appears in the list. Remove the tag again before you save if you don’t want signups to get it.

Good to know: someone who unsubscribed from a GRO email is subscribed again when they sign up on one of these forms: a signup form, or a Save to Email form or content gate sent with its box ticked (it starts ticked). If they untick it, they stay unsubscribed. A contact marked “Mark not mailable” in Contacts is different: signing up again does not undo that. You can try the second one: mark your own “+” address not mailable in Contacts, sign up again with it on the home page, and it stays not mailable.

8. Open a form’s sign-up page (the Instagram bio link)

Where: a private window. Open staging.linksta.io/f/1a0a8310 (the “Join the list” form) or staging.linksta.io/f/223a7cb5 (the newsletter).

1. Look at the address bar. It should still say staging.linksta.io/f/…. It should not change to staging.gro.co, and it should never show “api”.
2. Enter your email (on the newsletter, also a first name, and tick the box). Wait a couple of seconds, then click the button.

What should happen: “You’re in! Check your inbox.” appears. On the newsletter, you land on the “Welcome” page instead.

Check in GRO: your address is in Contacts with the source “Landing page”, and on the Forms tab that form shows one more signup.

Also try:

• staging.linksta.io/f/deadbeef, a link that doesn’t exist. You should land on GRO’s home page (gro.co).
• staging.linksta.io/f/198f3da6, the Save to Email form, which has no sign-up page. You should land on GRO’s home page (gro.co) too.
• An old-style link, staging.gro.co/api/v1/shortlinks/f/1a0a8310. It should end on staging.gro.co/f/1a0a8310 with the form showing.

If the form says “Please reload the page and try again”, GRO’s spam check didn’t trust the browser. Tell Mike which browser you used, and whether you were on a VPN.

9. New on 1 October: check these too

These came with the 1 October update to this site and to GRO staging.

Signing up again after unsubscribing

You need: three addresses that have unsubscribed from GRO Test Kitchen. Ask Mike to set them up, or use “+” addresses that clicked Unsubscribe at the bottom of a GRO newsletter or sequence email. (The Save to Email email has no unsubscribe link.)

1. With the first address, use the “Join the list” form at the bottom of a recipe. It has no checkbox.
2. With the second, use the “Save this recipe!” box and leave “Also send me new recipes and updates” ticked.
3. With the third, use “Save this recipe!” again, but untick the box.

What should happen: each form shows its usual success message, and both “Save this recipe!” tries send the recipe email.

Check in GRO: in Contacts, the first two addresses are no longer unsubscribed. The third got the recipe email but is still unsubscribed. This is Mike’s rule from 1 October: a form without a checkbox, or with its box ticked, signs someone back up; a box they could see and left unticked never does.

One address, ten sign-ups an hour

Where: a private window, the sign-up page staging.linksta.io/f/1a0a8310, and the “Join the list” form on this site.

GRO now allows each email address 10 sign-ups an hour with this creator, counting the sign-up page and this site’s forms together. Use a throwaway “+” address: once it reaches the limit, it can’t sign up anywhere for up to an hour.

1. Sign the same address up 10 times, some on the sign-up page and some with the “Join the list” form. Wait a couple of seconds before each click.
2. Try an 11th time on the sign-up page.

What should happen: the 11th says “Too many signups for this address. Please try again later.” A new “+” address still works straight away.

The sign-up page also allows each network 10 sign-ups every 10 minutes. If you see “Too many signups from your network” first, wait 10 minutes or switch your phone to mobile data.

The checkbox and the Back button

• The checkbox row under each form is a little taller, so it’s easier to tap on a phone.
• A ticked box shows in the form’s own colour instead of the browser’s blue.
• Join the newsletter on the home page (it takes you to the “Welcome” page), then press Back. The form should show “You’re in!” straight away, not “Subscribing…”.

10. New on 5 October: a split form inside a Row or Stack

A form whose layout is Split (set in GRO → Emails → Forms) used to shrink to a thin strip, with its title running down the page one letter per line, when it sat inside a Row or Stack block. It now keeps its width.

• Open the split layout check page in a private window (an ordinary window may still hold the old look). Every form should show its title on normal lines, with the inputs beside it on a computer and below it on a phone.
• On a phone, or with the window narrowed, the page should never scroll sideways.
• One section, “Width set to Fixed”, is narrow on purpose: its note explains why, and the form under it is just as narrow.
• At tablet width (about 800–1000 px), where a split form’s email box and Subscribe button share a line, the email box sits on the button’s centre line, not at its top.

Autofill, a blank address and the wait message (October 5 build)

1. Autofill is not “too quick” any more. On any signup form, click the email box, let your browser or password manager fill your address (or paste it), and press send right away. You should get the success message. Before this build, that showed “That was too quick”.
2. A blank or mistyped address never leaves the page. Press send with the email box empty: the box is outlined, the line under it says “Please enter your email address.”, and no request is sent. Try foo@bar: “Please enter a valid email address.” Typing again clears the line.
3. The wait message tells the truth. Submitting a Save-this-recipe form 11 times in 10 minutes shows “Too many requests from here. Please wait about N minutes and try again.” — N matches the real wait, and it locks Save-to-Email forms for everyone on your network for up to 10 minutes, so leave this one to the end of a session. A signup form over its limit says “Too many signups from here.” the same way.

Only real sign-ups count (October 6 build)

Most of this one you cannot see, which is the point. Until now, if anything other than GRO answered a form — a security plugin, a “site is down for maintenance” page, or the hidden trap the forms use to catch spam bots — the form said You’re in! anyway, remembered the address, and sent the visitor on to the thank-you page. That inflated sign-up numbers with visits that never reached GRO. Now a form celebrates only when GRO really took the address.

What to check: that nothing changed for you. Everything below should behave exactly as it did before.

1. Sign up through the home page newsletter form. You get the success message and land on the welcome page, as before.
2. Email yourself a recipe with a Save this recipe form, with the box ticked and again with it unticked. Both still work.
3. Unlock an email-gated recipe (Cookies or Roast Potatoes) in a private window. The recipe still appears straight after you subscribe.
4. Use the footer sign-up and the one inside a recipe card. Both still work.

If any of those now says “Something went wrong. Please try again.” where it used to succeed, that is worth reporting — it is the one thing this change could get wrong.

If your site uses Google Analytics or a Meta pixel. A GRO form announces a successful sign-up to your page so your analytics can count it. That announcement used to include the visitor’s email address; it no longer does, and nothing scrambled stands in for it either — Google’s and Meta’s terms do not allow sending them personal data. It now says which form it was, where on the page it sat, whether the visitor ticked the consent box, and what GRO did. Your hashed-email ad tracking (Raptive and Mediavine) is unaffected and still works exactly as before.

One thing you may notice in your address bar. If your form sends people to a thank-you page, that page’s address now ends with something like ?gl_eid=muwqiwvq-hcravdld. It is a one-off reference number for that single sign-up — not an identifier for the person, and nothing is stored against it. It is there so that, if you count sign-ups both on the form and on the thank-you page, your analytics can tell it was the same sign-up and not count it twice. You can ignore it; it changes nothing about how the page works, and links shared from that page are harmless.

Where to see results in GRO

• Contacts: everyone who signed up, with their tags.
• Forms: each form’s signup count, its Embed instructions and, for signup forms, its Share link. Open a form to change its wording, colors, button, checkbox or what happens after someone signs up. Changes show on this site within about 5 minutes.
• Save to Email: the email that “Save this recipe” sends.
• Memberships → Analytics: new members and where they joined.

Which form is where

• Test Kitchen – Newsletter (home page): the home page.
• Test Kitchen – After the recipe: the end of most recipes.
• Test Kitchen – Save this recipe: near the top of free recipes, and above the lock on Cookies and Crispy Roast Potatoes.
• Test Kitchen – Unlock the recipe: the lock on the Cookies and Crispy Roast Potatoes recipe cards.
• Join the list: the bottom of every page, and the Banana Bread lock.
• Save to Email: inside the Spaghetti Pomodoro recipe card.
• Content gate: not placed on this site. A new content gate added in WordPress picks it unless you choose another form.

Found a problem?

Send Mike the page link, what you did, what you expected to happen, and a screenshot. Say whether you were on a phone or a computer, and which browser.