It's hard to do truly custom interactives work within WordPress. INN Labs' Pym.js Embeds plugin is built to make it easier for your newsroom to embed your latest data project, with help from NPR's Pym.js library.
Other solutions often involve pasting JavaScript into the post editor, disabling or bypassing parts of WordPress' security filters, or using interactive-builder plugins that limit your creative freedom.
All that Pym.js Embeds requires is a place to host your interactive as a standalone HTML page, and that you use NPR's Pym.js library in your interactive to make it resizable. Our plugin provides the seamless WordPress integration. Take the URL of your interactive and embed it in posts using the Block Editor or shortcodes. We handle the rest!
For the first time, thanks to the efforts of Claudiu Lodromanean and Weston Ruter, the Pym.js Embeds plugin supports the official WordPress AMP ⚡️ plugin. With both plugins installed, your Pym.js-based iframes will now be displayed as <amp-iframe> tags when your site is viewed through AMP.
Since amp-iframe now includes Pym.js's messages as a supported protocol, your embedded content is now more likely to work in AMP sites than it was before. As Google drives more content to your AMP pages, your readers will continue to have the same first-class experience they'd have if the reader viewed your full site.
This release also fixes some minor documentation issues, and we've improved this plugin's contribution guidelines on GitHub for external contributors.
If you're using this plugin, let us know how you're using it! Send us links to cool things you've done with it; we'd love to include them in our weekly newsletter.
If you'd like to learn more about INN Labs' open-source WordPress plugins and tools for publishers or how we can work together on your next project, send us an email or join us at one of our weekly Office Hours.
This week's release of updates to the Largo WordPress theme is all about improvements for images, pull quotes, and media. It also brings improved compatibility and editorial functions for the WordPress Block Editor.
This release includes:
An example of the new pull quote block styles.
Improved pull quote display. The Pull Quote block gains full styling, so that block quotes and pull quotes no longer appear the same.
The ability to insert media credits from the Media Gallery in the block editor.
More thumbnail display options for the Series Post widget.
Compatibility with WP 5.2's wp_body_open hook, which will be increasingly important for plugin compatibility.
This release also contains a number of fixes and minor updates. Particular thanks go to outside contributor @megabulk.
What's new in 0.6.4?
For the full details on what we've updated in version 0.6.4, including improvements for developers, please see the Largo 0.6.4 official release notes.
You may also want to read the release notes for version 0.6.3 and 0.6.2.
Before updating, please see the upgrade notices outlined here.
What's next?
When Largo was first released, it contained functionality for things that did not yet exist in WordPress core, like term metadata. Our next release will continue the work already underway to streamline the theme and seamlessly switch to using WordPress' now-built-in functionality.
This is in addition to an overall focus to improve Largo's frontend for mobile-first speed and easy editorial customizations.
Plugins
Another part of the work we’ve done recently with Largo has been to spin out important functionality for publishers into standalone plugins. This makes these features widely available for any WordPress site to use while further streamlining the Largo theme and improving overall performance. We published the Disclaimers plugin last year. The 0.7 release of Largo will complete the transition of the Disclaimers Widget as a standalone plugin by removing the widget from Largo. We're doing the same with our Staff plugin.
New INN Labs publishing tools:
We recently launched the Republication Tracker Tool plugin which allows publishers to easily share their stories with other websites and then track engagement of those shared stories in Google Analytics.
Link Roundups received important updates in the version 1.0 release. This WordPress plugin helps editors aggregate links from around the web and save them as “Saved Links”. You can publish these curated links in widgets and posts in your site, or push Link Roundups directly to subscribers via MailChimp.
Send us Your Feedback
We want to know what you think will make Largo better. Send us an email with your ideas!
Ben Keith and Lucia Walinchus with Eye on Ohio's first-place award for magazine website.
The award plaque.
We're happy to relay the news that INN Member Eye on Ohio won First Place Magazine Website in the Press Club of Cleveland's annual All-Ohio Excellence in Journalism Awards. We thank the Club and the judges for their consideration and congratulate Eye on Ohio for their success.
Eye on Ohio is built using INN Labs' Largo WordPress theme, which is the fruit of many years' work by contributors at INN, at NPR, and from the greater WordPress community. Eye on Ohio executive director listed Labs' lead developer, Ben Keith, as the second contact on the awards for his contributions as an INN Labs employee in Ohio.
Beyond Ben, contributors to Largo include past and present INN staff, folks at NPR's former Project Argo, and community contributors from across the web. We've got a full list in Largo's README over on GitHub.
INN Labs is pleased to announce an important update to the Link Roundups plugin!
If you run a daily or weekly newsletter collecting headlines from around the state, region, or within a particular industry, the Link Roundups plugin will make it easier to build and feed your aggregation posts into MailChimp.
The Link Roundups plugin helps editors aggregate links from around the web and save them in WordPress as “Saved Links”. You can publish these curated links in a Link Roundup (more below), display Saved Links and Link Roundups in widgets and posts in your WordPress site, or push Link Roundups directly to subscribers via MailChimp. It's designed to replace scattered link-gathering workflows that may span email, Slack, Google Docs and spreadsheets and streamlines collaborations between different staffers.
Why might you want to use this plugin? Here are a few reasons:
It creates a single destination for collecting links and metadata
On sites that publish infrequently, it provides recently published (curated) content for your readers
Weekly roundup newsletters or posts are a great way to recap your own site's coverage and build and diversify your audience, which can increase donations
Saved Links
The central function of the Link Roundups plugin is the Saved Link. It's a way of storing links in your WordPress database, alongside metadata such as the link's title, source site, and your description of the link's contents.
A screenshot of the Saved Links interface, showing many saved links and their respective metadata: authors, links, descriptions, and tags.
Save to Site Bookmarklet
When WordPress 4.9 removed the "Press This" functionality, this plugin's bookmarklet broke. This release's updates to the Saved Links functionality include a renewal of the "Save to Site" bookmarklet, based off of the canonical Press This plugin's functions. If your site has the WordPress-maintained Press This plugin active, your site users will be able to generate new bookmarklets. We include instructions on how to use the bookmarklet in the latest release.
Once you've accumulated a few Saved Links, you can display them on your site using the Saved Links Widget or start to create Link Roundups (see next).
Saved Links Widget
Common uses of this widget include "coverage from around the state" or "recommended reads" or "from our partners" links.
It's a good way to point your to expert coverage from newsrooms you partner with. With the ability to sort Saved Links by tag, you can easily filter a widget to only show a selection of all the links saved on your site. Here's how Energy News Network uses the widget:
Link Roundups
Link Roundups are one of the best ways to present Saved Links to your readers. Collect links with Saved Links, then create a Link Roundup post with the week's curated links. The person who assembles the Link Roundup doesn't have to deal with messy cut-and-paste formatting or composing blurbs — when your users create Saved Links, they're already adding headlines, blurbs, and sources.
Add some opening and closing text, and you're most of the way to having composed a morning or weekly news roundup.
Link Roundups are a custom post type with all the Classic Editor tools and an easy interface for creating lists of Saved Links. As a separate post type, they can be integrated into your site's standard lists of posts or kept separate in their own taxonomies. You don't have to integrate the roundups with your standard posts flow; it's why we provide a Link Roundups widget to fulfill your widget area needs.
MailChimp Integration
Link Roundups don't have to stay on your site. If you configure your site to connect to the MailChimp API and create a newsletter template with editable content areas, you can send a Link Roundup directly to MailChimp from WordPress.
From the Link Roundup editor, you can choose a mailing list, and create MailChimp campaign drafts, send test emails, and send drafted campaigns directly. If you'd rather open a draft campaign in MailChimp to finalize the copy, there's a handy link to your draft campaign.
Here's the MailChimp settings for the Link Roundups campaign editor: Many of the controls that you'd want to use to create and send a draft campaign.
If you already have the Link Roundups plugin installed, keep an eye out for an update notice in your WordPress dashboard. If you'd like to install it, download it from the WordPress.org plugin repository or through your site dashboard's plugin page.
This update was funded in part by Energy News Network and Fresh Energy, with additional funding thanks to the generous support of the Democracy Fund, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Fund, Open Society Foundation, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Kay: Are you giving your readers more than 4 options for a membership, as donation levels or for other important conversion points? If so, you might want to re-think it! Learn more about how people make decisions.
If you're looking for general jobs in nonprofit news, check out the main INN newsletter and sign up here to get it in your inbox every Tuesday. Two INN newsletters are better than one!
Kay:Dimensions.Guide is a really beautiful and free reference database of drawings which document the standard measurements and sizes of the objects and spaces that make up our world. Super handy for infographics!
Tyler: I recently found out about this Chrome extension that lets you toggle support for CSS grid, flexbox and other modern CSS layout techniques in DevTools — a useful addition to the browser compatibility testing toolkit.
For the other races in Chicago's Feb. 26 municipal elections, check out Chi.vote, a ballot and voting info site produced by a collective including the Better Government Association, Block Club Chicago, The Chicago Reporter, The Daily Line and The Triibe.
If you're looking for general jobs in nonprofit news, check out the main INN newsletter and sign up here to get it in your inbox every Tuesday. Two INN newsletters are better than one!
WordPress 5.0 and the Gutenberg editor present a perfect opportunity to incorporate new best practices from the WordPress industry in our work. With a more streamlined end-user experience, individual organizations will be empowered to truly make their Largo sites their own. But we're also invested in making the developer experience easier.
The new post editor included in WordPress 5.0 called "Gutenberg" provides a more-visual interface that is "block-based." Everything now becomes a block, including "Custom HTML" blocks and shortcodes. Your old content will remain unchanged, but newly-written posts have many new options for customization to drive engagement and increase readers' time on your site.
The INN Labs team is issuing a major, Gutenberg-friendly update to the Pym.js Embeds WordPress plugin, formerly known as the Pym Shortcode plugin, which improves presentations of data journalism.
The Pym.js Embeds plugin creates a better experience for the reader with responsive embeds that scale to fit the story, reduces workflows for data journalists, and removes the need for tricky embed workarounds.
