Category: Uncategorized

NewsMatch Pop Up Best Practices

Posted on by Miranda Krapf

There have been some changes since our last blog post around Pop Up best practices for NewsMatch and other special campaigns, so we're releasing an updated guide.

Here are some general recommendations and best practices for using popups as part of NewsMatch, year-round campaigns, or special campaigns on your site. 

Installing the plugin

We recommend using Popup Maker plugin for setting up donation and newsletter signup popups on your site. 

Instructions for installing the plugin and creating a popup.

Recommended Pop Up Settings

Your popup should:

  • Be size “Large” or smaller from Popup Maker’s settings
  • Appear at the center of the bottom of the reader’s screen
  • Appear by sliding up from the bottom of the screen, over 350 milliseconds
  • Have an obvious “Close” button
  • Allow readers to interact with the rest of the page (do not use a full-page overlay)
  • Automatically open after 25 seconds (or more) on the page, because immediate popup appearances can be jarring. It can also be set to open after scrolling down a percentage of the page.
  • Be configured to not appear again for 2 weeks or more once dismissed by a reader
  • Be configured to not show on your donation page

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?

NewsMatch will provide calls to action, images, and gifs to be used leading up to and during the campaign. 

Here are some examples: https://www.newsmatch.org/info/downloads

Non-NewsMatch popups should have an engaging, short call to action along with an eye-catching button.

Need help?

There is a ton of additional information on the WP Popup Maker support pages: https://wppopupmaker.com/support/

If you have questions, sign up for one of INN Labs’ NewsMatch technical support sessions or email the INN Labs team at support@inn.org.

Announcing Largo 0.6.4

Posted on by Ben Keith

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.

Upgrading to the Latest Version of Largo

Want to update to the latest version of Largo? Follow these instructions, or send us an email!

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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!

Hurricane Irma remote contribution opportunities

Posted on by Ben Keith

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.

This post originally appeared in the Friday, September 8 edition of the Nerd Alert newsletter.

Week 2: Immersion Continues

Posted on by Kay Lima

Last Friday marked the end of my second week at INN. To be honest, though, it feels like I've been here for much longer - something I take as a sign of great culture fit. Everything that was so new in the first week is becoming more familiar and the continued support of the INN team is making it exciting to ramp up quickly.

The beginning of week two was a continuation of the first few days; squaring things away with my computer setup, reading more team documentation, and getting to know the rest of the team that I hadn't connected with in week one. By Wednesday, things started to "kick into high gear" as I dove into looking at our help desk and support workflows. I also paired up with teammates and felt empowered by learning the nuances of what we do and how we do them, which can otherwise be difficult to document. Sometimes there's no substitute for meeting "in person" (and in our case through video) and talking through an idea, approach, or problem.

I also began to learn more about our incredible members, the powerful stories they produce and the challenges they face. I look forward to continuing to learn about our members, our services, and the nonprofit news industry this week!

The Art of Immersion: Reflections on Week 1

Posted on by Kay Lima

Today marks the end of my first (half) week at INN, since being brought on as the new Support and Community Lead last Wednesday. While the past 3 days flew by I began to immerse myself in our team documentation, the various roles on the team, and our remote culture. I’ve read (and tried my best to digest) a lot of information about who we are, what we do, and (most importantly) why we do it.

This all has led me to:

  • Gaining a true appreciation of our members and their work. This is an appreciation and understanding which I look forward to strengthening next week as I familiarize myself with our members’ sites and more of their work.
  • Getting to know the team and learning a ton of interesting facts about them. They are all equally fascinating and also great at what they do.
  • Orienting myself to how we collaborate and get things done at a large scale with a small, but effective team. And, of course, all from the comfort of our various home offices.

So far only one thing has caught me off guard in my first week. Learning so much new information, meeting lots of new people and being on a new (notice a theme here?) schedule is tougher than I predicted. Luckily, the team at INN has been incredibly welcoming, understanding and insightful. I’m looking forward to recharging over the weekend and then diving into all that week 2 has in store!