Arts District News: The Big Picture

We use MailPoet to design and publish the NE-AD newsletter. MailPoet is a little different than  Constant Contact and MailChimp because it is a WordPress plugin that is designed to integrate well with WordPress websites.

The main difference is the content is created separately in WordPress then assemble in MailPoet. This has three big advantages over it’s competition:

    • A variety of content types can be automatically imported into your newsletter,
    • The content is automatically archived,
    • And it costs less.

This page gives you an overview of the process and explains how we are integrating newsletter publishing and the website’s home page.

Understanding Content Types

We will be using three types of WordPress content in our newsletter:

  1. Posts – News stories
  2. Events – 
    1. ART365 events
    2. District-sponsored events
    3. Community events
  3. Pages – Sponsor ads

Each of these content types have their own creation module, and their own way of displaying on the website and in the newsletter.

Note: There are other content types that we could use in the future. For example, eventually we will be listing Art Classes and Workshops. These too can be featured in our newsletter.

Looking ahead, we consider another content type in the form of Job Listings and Opportunities. A partnership with Springboard for the Arts would be a mutually beneficial idea worth pursuing.

Who Does What?

One of the advantages of the new system is the workload gets distributed among the District volunteers.

Josh Blanc is the primary editor and is responsible for assigning and writing News Stories, and setting the overall look and feel of Arts District News. He is assisted by Margo Ashmore and Karen Wilcox.

Margo Ashmore and assistant Ginny Sutton are responsible for ART365 Events both on the home page and the newsletter.

Remo Campopiano and assistant Alyse Emanuel are responsible for Calendar Events both on the home page and the newsletter.

Josh, Margo & Karen will need to become proficient in using the Post system of WordPress.

Margo, Ginny and Alyse will need to become proficient in using the Calendar system in WordPress.

Remo will be doing the training and setting up tutorials like this one.

Preparing news stories (Posts)

The News Stories are the main reason we publish a Arts District News, to keep the Northeast arts community informed.

News stories are created in the WordPress blog system. They are called Posts. (They are not Pages.)

Posts are displays one on top of the next, the older posts gets pushed down the page. They are like a news feed.

As of January 1, 2020 the top news stories are in a horizontal row and led off the home page. They are followed by a second row of featured ART365 events. The next row displays 3 featured events. This design may change as we refine the system.

Note: The difference between Post and Pages is pages are static, they don’t expire. The news (blog) page changes every time there is a new news item published.

IMPORTANT: Once the newsletter is up and running, preparing news stories will be the bulk of the work when publishing the newsletter.

Here is Step-by-step Tutorial on posting a News Story.

Preparing event content (Calendar)

We use the Events Calendar system to create three types of content:

  • ART365 Events – a special program run by the District.
  • Other District-sponsored Events like Pecha-Kucha, Forums, NE Influential, Award Ceremonies, etc.
  • Non-district sponsored  Events – gallery show, poetry reading, theater presentations, etc.

We use Categories and Tags to tell the system where to put these events on the website and in the newsletter.

NOTE: the info in the left column is how we set up the January 2020 newsletter and home page. This will evolve and be updated as we proceed.

CATEGORIES

  • art365 – puts the event on the Visit > ART365 webpage.
  • art365open – puts the event on the Programs > ART365 > How to Register webpage…it identifies the page as available to be claimed.

TAGS

  • fp-event-2020-01 – puts the event on the home page in the community events row for that month.
  • fp-art365-2020-01 – puts the art365 event on the home page in the art365 events row for that month.
  • fp-district-2020-01 – puts the district event on the home page in the district events row for that month.