Let's start with some ancient history. Our flagship WordPress theme, Largo, descends from work that NPR did in the early 2010s under the name The Argo Network. The network's work included best-practices recommendations for working with WordPress in news, published at the Argo Project, and an open-source WordPress theme called Argo, which INN forked in 2012.
Fast-forward a few years. INN was working on a big refresh of WisconsinWatch.org for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, and was bringing in new features in Largo to support that refresh. The 0.4 release of Largo included a disclaimer widget that could be used to provide site-wide or per-article disclaimers and disclosures.
Today, we're happy to announce that that functionality is available to all WordPress users, with the launch of the Disclaimers plugin. 🎉
The plugin's site-wide settings page, showing an example setting.The widget settings page, showing the Disclaimers widget added to the "Article Bottom" widget area. The active theme is Largo.The Disclaimers widget, displaying a sitewide disclaimer, set at the bottom of an article using the Largo theme.With the Twenty Seventeen theme active, this site has chosen to put the Disclaimer widget at the top of the sidebar.Here's what the per-post settings look like on a site using the Gutenberg editor plugin. The same subset of HTML is supported in this box as your site supports in the post body.A screenshot of a post in Twenty Seventeen displaying a more-complex disclaimer with HTML bold, strong, emphasized, italic, and link tags in use.
Largo sites running any current version of Largo don't need to install this plugin now, but we will be removing the corresponding disclaimers functionality from Largo in the next release. The migration process will be as painless as we can make it, with all your existing disclaimers carried forward.
Stay tuned for more plugin announcements in the coming months! You can subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on Twitter at @innnerds to receive updates. Or, just watch our blog here. We even have an RSS feed!
On May 25, we had the privilege of hosting Steve Grunwell's reprise of his WordCamp Dayton talk, "Code Review: For Me & You". Here's the description:
On the surface, the idea of code review is a no-brainer: why wouldn’t we want a second set of eyes on our code, especially before deploying to production?
As we peel back the layers, however, we find that the topic of code review is much more nuanced. How detailed should the review be? Who is qualified to perform the review (hint: it’s not just senior developers)? Can we afford to take another developer away from their project to review this one? What steps can we take to ensure reviews are constructive, rather than demoralizing?
Attendees will gain deeper insight into some of the arguments for and against systemic, peer code review, as well as pick up some useful tools to make code review a natural part of their teams’ workflow.
Check out the recording of Steve's presentation here and follow along with the slides at this link. (Hit s to read the speaker notes — it's a Reveal.js presentation.)
Have something you'd like to present to the INN Labs team and our INN members? Get in touch!
This post started as a conversation with an INN member about how to turn a database into something searchable for readers. We talked about Datasette Publish, and custom solutions, but the conversation turned into a discussion of how they could build their own simple things, and from there how they could find people and resources to learn more.
And then we thought that other people would have similar questions, so here's what we've come up with on how to get started building news apps and building your own apps team.
C'mon let's go and play
Every snowman starts with a snowball. Do something small to learn the tools, and work your way up from there.
Start by reading the 2013 Source article on building apps on a shoestring. Pay attention not to the specific tools, but to the philosophies in them: static sites that don't depend on servers, replicatable pipelines for turning your data into HTML, and building configurability into your code so you can use the same tool for a different data set next time.
Realize that other teams are lot farther along than you are, and that's okay. They started small, too.
An interactives team isn't a movie. It's a movie studio, and the thing about movies is that anyone with a camera can make them. If all you have is a camera and a script, that's enough to make a simple film. If all you have is a website and some data, that's enough to make a simple chart.
On the left we have a static image. On the right, we have the final film's animation. They still tell the same story, right?
Your first project doesn't have to be Snowfall. It's okay to just have static charts. Start small and work your way up.
How would you do this?
If you have feedback or advice or links on this blog post, let us know, and we'll do a roundup or recap of responses next week. Send an email at labs@inn.org or tweet us @innnerds.
Are you still there?
Maybe we should get a bunch of people who started interactives teams together for a panel about how they built the interactive teams and the tools. If you've started such a team, and are interested in participating, send me an email ben@inn.org and we'll put together a pitch for SRCCON or NICAR 2019.
As part of INN's support for the 2017 News Match campaign, we've released two WordPress plugins to help sites convert readers. News Match Donation Shortcode provides a donation form for your site to ease donations through the News Revenue Hub as part of the News Match campaign.
On your WordPress site, click on "Plugins" in the Dashboard menu. If you see an "Add New" button at the top of the page, click that.
If you don't see the "Add New" button or the "Plugins" menu, your user might not have permission to manage plugins on the site; you should contact your technical support and ask them to install News Match Donation Shortcode for you. Your site might require downloading the plugin ZIPs and uploading them via FTP instead of using WordPress' built-in plugin installation tools.
Configuring the plugin
The plugin's settings are at Settings > News Match Shortcode in the WordPress admin.
When you first enable the plugin, you'll want to configure it with your organization's name, your News Revenue Hub ID, the default donation amount, and the live and staging URLs of your News Revenue Hub form.
The settings is where you configure the donation levels to match your organization's membership levels. While the plugin comes with 4 default donation levels, you can easily define your own labels and donation levels. The defaults are: $0-$5 Friend, $5-$50 Ally, $50-$500 Champion, and $500+ Ambassador. If you want fewer donation levels, set the third level's upper donation amount to a very high amount, such as your org's dream budget, and make sure that the fourth level is more than that.
Here's an example of non-default configuration of the first donation level out of four.
If you use Salesforce to track campaigns, you can set a default Salesforce campaign ID for the plugin in the plugin's settings. This can be overridden on a per-form basis by setting the sf_campaign_id attribute of the shortcode, like so: [newsmatch_donation_form sf_campaign_id="foo" amount="25"]
This is the Salesforce campaign ID setting in the plugin admin.
The shortcode in use
The default form of the shortcode uses buttons to select the donation level:
[newsmatch_donation_form]By adding type="select" to the shortcode, it appears like this:
[newsmatch_donation_form type="select"]A full list of shortcode arguments and examples can be found in the plugin's WordPress.org entry, but they're basically one-off overrides for your Salesforce campaign ID, your default donation amount, and the type of form.
The above screenshots use the plugin's default styles with non-default configuration. You can style the donation form using your site's theme's CSS, Jetpack’s Custom CSS Editor, or any other tool that allows you to define custom styles on your site. Guidance for these custom styles can be found in the FAQ section of the plugin's WordPress.org entry.
Need support?
If you have questions about this plugin and integrating it with your WordPress site, contact support@inn.org.
If you have questions about the News Revenue Hub, visit their contact page.
If you have questions about the News Match program, visit their website for donor, nonprofit and funding partner information.
As part of INN's support for the 2017 News Match campaign, we've released two WordPress plugins to help sites convert readers. News Match Popup Basics provides a little guidance and some useful tools for using popups in your campaigns.
Creates a new popup with our recommended default settings, using the free Popup Maker plugin
Provides a way to disable popups on your donation pages
Provides a way to disable popups when readers click a link in your Mailchimp-powered newsletter
Let's walk you through installing the plugin and getting it set up.
Installing the plugin
News Match Popup Basics requires the Popup Maker plugin, so first we need to install that.
On your WordPress site, click on "Plugins" in the Dashboard menu. If you see an "Add New" button at the top of the page, click that.
If you don't see the "Add New" button or the "Plugins" menu, your user might not have permission to manage plugins on the site; you should contact your technical support and ask them to install News Match Popup Basics for you. Your site might require downloading the plugin ZIPs and uploading them via FTP instead of using WordPress' built-in plugin installation tools.
After clicking "Add New" you should be on the "Add Plugins" page. In the "Search plugins..." box, enter "popup maker" — you should see an entry named "Popup Maker™ – Best Rated" appear, by "WP Popup Maker." Click "Install Now" to install the plugin, and then click "Activate". You'll be sent to a page asking you to allow sending certain information to a third party. You can press the "Skip" button without any negative effects. Whether you choose to skip or accept, you'll be taken to the list of Popup Maker popups: none yet exist, and that's okay.
Go back to the "Plugins" page, and inn the "Search plugins..." box, enter "news match popup basics innlabs" and choose the presented popup named "News Match Popup Basics" by "innlabs" — that's our plugin. Install and activate it.
In the Dashboard menu, choose the "Popup Maker" item. This will take you back to the "Popups" page you saw earlier, but there should now be a draft popup named "News Match Default Popup." Click on it.
You'll see an editor page that looks rather like the default WordPress post editor, but with a number of exciting new boxes. You can read more about those boxes at the Popup Maker plugin documentation, which is thorough and well-illustrated.
Our default settings for the popup are these:
is not published by default, but requires you to publish it before it becomes active on your site
is the size “Large” from Popup Maker’s settings
appears at the center of the bottom of the reader’s screen
appears by sliding up from the bottom of the screen, over 350 milliseconds
has a “Close” button
does not prevent readers from interacting with the page by means of an overlay
does not have a title
automatically opens after 25 seconds on the page, because immediate popup appearances can be jarring
once dismissed by a reader, does not appear again for a year or until the reader clears their browser’s cookies, whichever comes first
appears on the front page of your site
uses Popup Maker’s default theme
You'll need to configure which pages the popup appears on, using the built-in conditionals feature. For disabling the popup on certain pages or in certain cases, read on in this blog post, or check out Popup Maker's paid extensions.
You'll also probably want to review the Popup Maker themes available and modify them to suit your own site's appearances. Once you've modified or created a theme, edit your popup to make it use your theme.
In addition to using Popup Maker themes, you can style popups using your site's WordPress theme's CSS, Jetpack’s Custom CSS Editor, or any other tool that allows you to define custom styles on your site.
What goes in a popup?
We recommend donation forms or newsletter signup forms. For a simple donation form that integrates with the News Match campaign, check out News Match Donation Shortcode.
Finding the News Match Popup Basics settings
From the WordPress Dashboard menu, under Popup Maker, choose "News Match Popup Basics." This is where you configure whether the plugin disables certain popups.
Disabling popups on certain pages
Donation pages should help people give you money, and should have as few obstacles to that goal as possible. Likewise, newsletter signup pages. Strip out ads, remove unnecessary headers, maybe even clean up your footer on these pages. Donation and signup pages should do one thing and do that well.
Popup Maker's free version includes a simple yet powerful Boolean conditionals system that determines on what pages popups appear, but that system only works on a per-popup basis. Preventing popups from appearing on a particular page requires checking every single popup on your site, and modifying their conditions. We've endeavored to make the process simpler.
In the News Match Popup Basics settings, check the box to enable donation page popup prevention, and add some URLs to the box. Each URL must be on its own line. You should remove the protocol from the start of the URL, so that https://example.org/ is entered as example.org/.
Example settings for the URL-based popup prevention feature of News Match Popup Basics.
When a visitor goes to a page the URL of which matches one of the entered URLs, News Match Popup Basics will prevent Popup Maker from displaying any popups on that page. You can include URL fragments as well, so if you want to prevent popups on pages that have a common URL name, like every page that has donate in its URL.
Be careful with how general your URL fragments are. By "match" we mean that if the entire text on the line in the box can be found in the URL, it will match:
example.org/meow/ will only match example.org/meow/ and example.org/meow/woof/
/meow/ will only match example.org/meow/, example.org/meow/woof/ and example.org/2014/03/25/meow/
meow will match example.org/meow/, example.org/meow/woof/, example.org/2014/03/25/meow/, example.org/2017/10/25/adopt-chairman-meow-adorable/ and example.org/category/homeownership/
We named this feature "donation page popup prevention," but in reality it can be used to exclude popups on all sorts of pages.
If you'd like the ability to programmatically exclude popups on arbitrary pages, let us know on this feature proposal on GitHub.
Disabling popups from Mailchimp visitors
In the WordPress Dashboard, under the “Popup Maker” menu item, on the “News Match Popup Basics” page, there is a checkbox that enables MailChimp suppression. There is also a text box to set the utm_source parameter. MailChimp automatically appends this URL parameter to outbound links in your emails if you have click tracking set up.
From one of the emails you have sent, find a link that contains a utm_source= parameter and copy the following argument text, up until any & character, into the text box. For example, a Nerd Alert newsletter sent by INN Labs contained a link that looked like this: https://example.org/?utm_source=Nerd+Alert&utm_campaign=4d4ecd9f68-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_10_06&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1476113985-4d4ecd9f68-421742753. From that URL, you would copy Nerd+Alert into the text box.
An example configuration of the utm_source setting.
Once you have provided a utm_source parameter, checked the checkbox, and saved the settings, any popup that contains an HTML element with an id attribute equal to mc_embed_signup, or a CSS selector equal to #mc_embed_signup, will be suppressed. Suppression works client-side using JavaScript that runs in the visitor’s browser.
If you have multiple MailChimp signup forms on your site, suppression based on the HTML ID of the form will not work for you. You should add a class to all MailChimp forms in popups, and use that as the selector. For more details about this process, see the FAQ entry "Why does MailChimp popup suppression use #mc_embed_signup" at the plugin's WordPress.org entry.
Kay: How are you treating your most committed users? You have potential to expand your loyal members/followers/supporters and you can start with talking to them like they matter.
News Match is back, and our team is working to help participating organizations take advantage of this unique and impactful opportunity. Read more about how we can help, and check back here every week for updates. We’ll be posting plugin release announcements, how-tos for configuring donation forms, best practices for user experience design, and advice on maximizing Google Analytics for donation campaigns. You won’t want to miss it.
When FEMA removed drinking water and power statistics from its page covering Puerto Rico's recovery, The Washington Post started graphing those stats. And FEMA started posting those stats again.
The Financial Times has created an eye-opening game based on real reporting, including interviews with dozens of Uber drivers, that shines a light on the realities of working in the gig economy. You're an Uber driver. Can you make your mortgage payment?
Do you develop or maintain database-reliant interactive websites? How will they be preserved for the future? Katherine Boss at New York University Libraries, and Meredith Broussard at the New York University Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute are conducting a survey of news apps, to help figure out what the best ways to archive such projects are.
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!
DISCOVER
Gather ye rosebuds
READ: Wordways, an open-access journal dedicated to "recreational logology."
This is a roundup of all Irma-related things that people can contribute to remotely: mapping projects, newsroom projects, and so on. Suggest changes to this Google Doc and we'll update this post.
The Humanitarian Open Street Maps Team is coordinating a number of map improvement projects centered on Hurricane Irma and the flooding in Bangladesh and Nepal.
Irmaresponse.org is mapping shelters, volunteer opportunities and needs, and evacuations.
Kay: Designing, developing, and testing for multiple screen sizes has its challenges - including not being able to work with multiple devices at the same time. That’s why I was excited to read about XRespond, a tool made to simplify that process and give you an all-in-one overview.
The Humanitarian Open Street Maps Team is coordinating a number of map improvement projects centered on Hurricane Irma and the flooding in Bangladesh and Nepal.
Irmaresponse.org is mapping shelters, volunteer opportunities and needs, and evacuations.
The Washington Post is now using Talk, the Coral Project’s commenting platform. It'll help them engage with commenters, instead of the too-common approach of turning comments off.
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!
We'll update this section with transcripts and video as they become available.
Julia's Designing for Customization session provided an overview of the WordPress Customizer, information on how we're building the next version of Largo for Customizer-powered homepages, and ended with a brainstorming session about ways to solve a number of problems through improving customizability. Read her slides and speaker notes, and the prompt from the brainstorming session.
RC led INN's Contributor Day presence, which focused on building the next edition of Largo.
Ben's lightning talk was about all of INN's plugins, starting with the popular ones and wrapping up with the ones we've built for other people.
Kay and Ben were WordCamp for Publishers organizers as well as INN representatives. Kay was part of the Denver team that handled events and logistics, and Ben was part of the publicity team that handled the website, social media updates, and photography.
You're invited to join us remotely for Contributor Day! The event kicks off tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. MT, and RC will be leading collaboration on Largo. Take a look at the issues on GitHub and jump in wherever you can!
HOT LINKS
RC: If you haven’t checked out the WP GraphQL project yet, here’s a great presentation on how and why you’d want to get started using it.
Kay: Tech platforms have long stood by strict neutrality and freedom of expression. That may now be changing.
The plugin's settings are at Settings > News Match Shortcode in the WordPress admin.
RC: If you haven’t checked out the WP GraphQL project yet, 
Kay: Tech platforms have long stood by strict neutrality and freedom of expression. 
Julia: Some Internet history for your 
Ben: The processes described in this blog post sound incredibly inadvisable – 
Inndy: 