Newsletter

Email Administration

Prior to newsletter publishing, all emails from the signup sheets at the front desk should be input online.

1. Create a list of emails from signup sheets - one per line, no extra information or punctuation
2. Go to Newsletter email admin page (if you don't have the password, find someone who does to accomplish this): http://lists.freegeek.org/admin/e-newsletter/general
3. Click on "Membership Management" after logging in to the above webpage
4. Then click on "Mass Subscription."
5. Paste the list of emails into the box below the text "Enter one address per line below..."
6. Click the Submit Your Changes button at the bottom of the page.

Emails including the following should be sent to the e-newsletter list and paidworkers preferably on a Tuesday or Thursday afternoon before 4:00:

• Summary of included articles
• Link to the updated newsletter
• Link to corresponding plaintext wiki page (see end of publishing directions, below)

Updating the Newsletter/Adding Articles

We upload five articles to the newsletter every news cycle (two feature articles and three side articles).

1. Sign in at http://www.freegeek.org/newsletter/wp-admin
2. Click on "Add New" under "Posts" in the sidebar.
3. Add title to post.
4. In the right-hand column:
   1. Click "edit" next to "Publish immediately" under "Publish" on the right-hand side of the page
      1. Change to the date of publication for the Newsletter (preferably a Thursday). All articles should have the same date.
         • Times should be set to the following (this is essential as it dictates the article order/location on the website):
           • First feature-7:05
           • Second feature-7:03
           • First sub-article (Other/hardware grants spotlight)-7:11
           • Second sub-article (Volunteer spotlight) - 7:09
           • Third sub-article (Staff spotlight) - 7:07
   2. Choose only one category under the Categories option that correlates with the article type.
   3. If this is a featured article, include "featured" under Post Tags.
   4. Set the "Featured Image" for the article by clicking "Set featured image."
      • Featured posts should have a unique image that relates to the article. This may also be included in the article.
      • Sub-articles should use the correlating title image, found under the "Media Library" option.
      • After uploading or choosing your image, click the "Use as featured image" link near the bottom of the dialogue box then click the "Save all changes" button.
5. Insert (or type) the content of your article under "Upload/Insert"
6. If you'd like to control the front page preview copy the first part of your text (or whatever you want to show as the "teaser" on the front page) into the Excerpt box. This excerpt should be no longer than 210 characters. You can use an online character counter to check how many characters are in your excerpt
7. Click the blue publish button to publish your article at a future date or review your article by clicking the grey preview button
8. Include a plaintext copy of your article (with necessary hyperlinks included in parenthesis) one the corresponding page of the Wiki.
   • There should only be one page per newsletter; you may need to create this
   • Articles should be presented in the same order they are found on the website
   • The page should be titled YEAR_MONTH_Newsletter (e.g. 2012 February Newsletter)
   • The page should be tagged with the "Newsletter" category

Newsletter Archive

• 2012 February Newsletter
• 2012 May Newsletter
• 2012 September Newsletter
• 2012 December Newsletter