In this edition:
- New lists and new newsletters made eaiser
- How to flag urgent Newspack problems
- A reminder about the end of AMP
- Get our meetings on your calendar
Newsletter feature lets you easily create new Mailchimp mailing lists and sign-up blocks
One of Newspack’s newest features caters to publishers who want to add a newsletter to their offerings, and give their readers a way to sign up for just that newsletter.
This primarily benefits publishers who use the low-end plan on Mailchimp and are therefore limited to just five Audiences, or sets of people they can send to. (Other email-service providers generally don’t have such limits)
And while Mailchimp Audiences can be broken down into segments, we haven’t had an easy way to let readers sign up for a specific segment.
So here’s how you can do that now.
First, you have to create the new list in Mailchimp, but we’ve made that possible without leaving Newspack. In the back end, go to Newspack > Engagement > Newsletters. Scroll down, and you’ll find the “Add new” button near the Subscription Lists header.
Give it a name and an optional description, and choose the parent Audience this will live under. Then hit the “Publish” button. You’ll get a confirmation, which lets you know that anyone subscribing to this list will also get emails sent to the parent Audience.
Then navigate back to Newspack > Engagement > Newsletters and toggle on that list. Be sure to hit save afterward.
For readers to subscribe to this new list, you should use our Newsletter Subscription Form block, which works with all email-service providers we support. (As with all blocks created by our team, it will appear in blue in the block lists).
Even though you enabled the list in the overall Subscription List settings, you need to enable it again in the settings column when you place your subscription block. You can decide whether you want to display the description of the newsletter as well.
That produces this for the reader:
You’ll likely want to add a heading block and maybe a paragraph block before this.
Sending to your new list is fairly straightforward, as long as you have one subscriber. After starting a newsletter, you’ll find a “Send To” panel. First, choose the parent Audience, then a second dropdown will appear, where you can find your new list.
Our hope is that our Newsletter plugin helps speed the process so much that you’re able to create new newsletters for your readers using this method.
The best way to get urgent help is through a Slack notice
We had a quickly resolved but critical problem this week that affected many sites, and this is a good time to remind folks that the best way to get immediate attention is through a specific request in Slack.
When you go to #newspack-help, there’s a plus sign with a blue lighting bolt at the bottom of the space where you type in a message.
You should ALWAYS use this if you’re making any request in the help channel, rather than just writing a note. In urgent cases, though, it’s essential. That’s because when you use “Site Down or Urgent” and then give us your site’s URL or name on the next screen, everyone on the Newspack team gets an immediate notification.
After that initial send, you’ll be prompted to describe the problem a bit more, but sending the first part ensures our attention.
Because this is like pulling the fire alarm on the wall, we ask that you reserve it for truly urgent needs that affect the overall health and operation of your site.
The other workflow shown here, “Submit Help Request” is for all other needs that can be addressed in the channel, and there are four levels of priority within that request.
Asking for urgent help any other way will be slower than this. That includes a note in your private channel, a note in the help channel or a direct message to anyone.
A reminder: We’re turning off AMP and adding a performance plugin
By the end of April, we expect turn off AMP on every site, opting instead for Permatters, a performance framework plugin.
The new non-AMP world will require some adjustments, with responsibility shared between the Newspack team and you as publishers. The good news for you is that after an initial detailed audit of your site, you don’t have to do anything.
This change won’t happen to your site without notice. In the coming weeks, we’ll give you a heads-up in Slack when we’re turning off AMP for your site, then we’ll install Perfmatters. We’ll configure it and let you know when we’re done. You don’t have to do anything with Perfmatters, and you won’t have access to its controls.
Before that, though, you can do some cleaning to ensure the best performance of your site.
- Review your plugins using the Health Check feature in the Newspack menu.
- Make sure your posts are as light as possible. That includes looking at image sizes, number of tags used, and the number of add-ons in a post. Much more on that is here in our support documentation.
- Make sure your homepage is free of unnecessary groupings or nested blocks, as well as avoiding scripts for tracking or scripts that only serve to add visual effects.
A recent publishers call looked at the process more closely, and you can see that video here. We’ve also launched our new help site: help.newspack.com, where you can find a section on performance and security.
Questions? Please drop them in the #newspack-help channel on Slack.
Get our regularly scheduled meetings on your calendar with a couple of clicks
We have a meeting every other Tuesday at 11 a.m. Eastern Time. This is for publishers and developers to get together, but it is by no means mandatory. Most of the meeting is turned over to guest speakers for professional development, or to one of our team members to highlight a major change to the Newspack platform. We use this meeting to update you on business and product developments, as well.
The next meeting is March 21.
And here’s a handy way to get them all on your calendar:
Add event to calendar
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We also hold a 30-minute How To session each Friday at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. We offer a quick look at one topic, block, feature or other useful maneuver. You can see how these work by going here for or small-but-growing library of videos. The password is ilovenews
Add event to calendar