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9:32 pm
July 20, 2009 |
William P. Davis
| | Veazie, Maine | | | Admin | posts 65 |
| | I am looking into developing my own plugin to better serve newspapers' mailing list needs. The only WP plugin I have been able to find so far has been MailPress, which seems ill-suited for newspapers, especially non-daily newspapers like the one I work at. Of all the things I didn't like about College Publisher, their e-mail edition system worked pretty well, so the plugin I've been thinking of building will probably be based on that idea. There will be much more customization, however. Below are the ideas I've had so far for the plugin. What would you like to see? - Send out daily or per-issue e-mails manually
- Send out breaking news automatically and immediately (already exists in MP), or manually, depending on user preference
- Integrate photos
- Must be able to ignore articles
- Text and HTML editions
- Lead articles
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3:21 pm
July 21, 2009 |
Chris Ullyott
| | Fullerton, CA | | | Member | posts 66 |
| | Here's my crazy ideas: "Must be able to ignore articles," as in, must be able to choose certain posts to send? Maybe it can also summarize what's happening on the website: - 5 "Most popular/ Most commented"
- Snippets from any writer's blog RSS feeds (one story from each blog or something)
- If you have a multimedia section: "Most popular photo"
Users could be able to customize the number of updates they would receive by selecting between like •Breaking News Only •Full Edition… etc. | |
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4:00 pm
July 21, 2009 |
BradArendt
| | | | | Member | posts 7 |
| | It has to support the evil advertising spots. I know not that popular but our email edition is and has been sold out for three years. We are adding another spot this fall now that we are off CP and already have demand for it. We are likely to limit it to two spots but a good one should also have some ad options in it like CP where it is easy to upload the ad automagically into the template. I also like to see more from the delivery end. Something like a list management feature set where you can create multiple lists for your site like sports or ent scene lists. It would also be nice to see some report on the email like how many bounces did you get, unsubscribes or other analytic type of info (does google do this?). This paragraph is ideal system. |
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11:12 pm
July 21, 2009 |
William P. Davis
| | Veazie, Maine | | | Admin | posts 65 |
| | @Chris The most popular stories, photos etc. idea is good, but there would have to be some sort of consensus about the best program for counting story views. I personally use Top 10 by Mark Ghosh. Ideally, you could add widgets to the template. Able to ignore articles does indeed mean be able to ignore certain posts. @Brad I was imagining something where you could modify the template yourself, so you could integrate your advertising system, such as OpenX. That would be the best way to ensure your e-mails are branded like your Web site. Is this a good idea? Also, I like your idea about better analytics — I was thinking about that earlier today, actually. CP's e-mails contained links that potentially could lead to analytics but never had any way to see the stats. I would like to see most clicked articles, and bounces, unsubscribes etc. is good. Multiple list support is a good idea, and some might like newsletter options, as well. | |
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4:56 am
July 22, 2009 |
tpillow
| | Gainesville, FL (UF) | | | Member | posts 4 |
| | What about giving readers an option to customize the topics they want e-mailed to them, as well as the frequency of updates (ie daily, weekly, etc.)? |
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9:19 am
July 22, 2009 |
jerryzurek
| | | | | Member | posts 5 |
| | I think the email edition is hugely important. Although all the features have advantages, I feel the simpler the better, just to reduce the learning curve as each new staff comes on board. |
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12:54 pm
July 22, 2009 |
William P. Davis
| | Veazie, Maine | | | Admin | posts 65 |
| | For the text e-mail edition, I think shortened URLs would be nice, but the question is, what service do you guys prefer? I use ow.ly. … | |
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1:12 pm
July 22, 2009 |
jerryzurek
| | | | | Member | posts 5 |
| | The URL shortener tr.im allows you to track how many times the link you shortened was accessed via your tr.im. |
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10:21 am
July 23, 2009 |
Andrew Spittle
| | Walla Walla, WA | | | Moderator | posts 49 |
| | I think that subscription options are a key feature. Right now the Pioneer is just using Feedburner for a basic email edition (partly because I'm worried about passing anything too complex off to future staff). If you were to develop a full-featured plugin though I think that would prove to be immensely helpful if it had a powerful interface within WP. The ideas of subscribing to certain sections, samplings of blog posts, and summaries of popular content are all good ones in my mind. @Will and @Jerry If you're going to be using url shorteners on that regular of a basis I would highly suggest setting something up that runs from your domain. I know the analytics that bit.ly and the like provide are great, but I would be fearful of outsourcing something as crucial as the links to your posts. That's just my desire to control as much info as possible on our domain though.  | Andrew – andrew@copress.org – CoPress Hosting Director – http://www.andrewspittle.net |
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5:31 pm
January 18, 2010 |
avera813
| | | | | Member | posts 7 |
| | I'm having trouble with the Courier plug-in. It's not letting me send an e-mail out. Not even to myself. When I click send, it takes me to a page that says, "Results" or whatever, but that's it. Nothing shows in my e-mail. I like the upgrades done, I just wish I could use it. Also, wish it had a widget to put on the site that lets people sign up for both that and wordpress. -Alex |
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5:53 pm
January 18, 2010 |
Daniel Bachhuber
| | | | | Admin | posts 102 |
| | Few questions, Alex. Did you upgrade to the most recent version? Also, did you check your spam filter for the email you sent? Lastly, any chance you could do a short screencast of the steps you take to send an email and the result you get? | |
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11:03 pm
January 19, 2010 |
William P. Davis
| | Veazie, Maine | | | Admin | posts 65 |
| | Alex- It looks like you're using a pretty old version of the plugin. There should be an update available through the plugin dashboard. Let me know if you're still having problems with it after you update. | |
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