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Little bit more on Newspack from their FAQ https://newspack.blog/newspack-faq/ PluginNewspack will be a plugin that selects, streamlines and simplifies the use of other plugins best suited to newsroom needs. It’s the maestro that will arrange and conduct an orchestra of plugins. And it eliminates most of publishers’ technology headaches and overhead. Out of the box, Newspack should provide the following:
Included with Newspack are plugins for -
ThemeThe Newspack theme will be based on the latest Gutenberg-era WordPress thinking, in line with the vision laid out here: one theme, many styles, blocks and templates. Newspack will not be about offering an unnecessary variety of themes. It will zero in on the precise visual needs of a newsroom, but still let publishers customize their site with a distinct look and layout. As a new product in the post-Gutenberg-launch era, Newspack has the luxury to be a textbook application of Gutenberg concepts without significant backwards compatibility concerns. We hope to implement a modern hierarchy of blocks/themes/styles/templates, leveraging some of the most exciting work in the WordPress community, which will only grow more refined and powerful over time. Could Newspack be a base for our MVP?The plugin options for publishers are as follows -
Most online publishers incorporate media (photo galleries, videos, audio, etc.) so I'm assuming Newspack would include. Radio station plugin https://github.com/OpenProducer/openproducer/issues/2#issuecomment-544139885 may be able to provide the additional features public or community radio stations need. Offered during setup or a vetted and approved options. I believe there's an opportunity to work with project owners and funders to include Radio station plugin and collaborate as a partner. https://github.com/OpenProducer/openproducer/issues/11 Thoughts? |
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I wanted to point out that our goal with any plugin we include is for Newspack to review, approve, and list on the spreadsheet they maintain. See https://newspack.com/support/plugins/#recommended-plugins
While we can use this form to submit a plugin for review, we'll ideally be able to form a relationship with them beforehand where they could potentially sponsor and/or contribute to development. In addition to reaching out, we can also contribute |
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Newspack ships with a Reader Revenue feature that allows you to easily accept donations. The problem is it's dependent on the following premium plugins: Considering the $400 yearly cost might be too pricy for several users, we'd like to include some other options. One of these has always been Open Collective, as they already provide an embeddable widget that we could 'somehow' include. Problem with that is the widget 'occasionally' will include a default platform tip that many supporters will not understand. opencollective/opencollective#6252 (comment) While hopefully, we'll work with the Open Collective team to give admins more control over their settings (along with overall improvements to the widget) it would be ideal to provide a more seamless option like integrating Open Collective via a new plugin or adding Open Collective as a provider to an existing one like Newspack. While neither is something OpenProducer would own or maintain, we could help scope, develop and fund if we included in our MVP. Obviously we'd need to discuss the technical and financial details beforehand. If @tonyzeoli is interested/able to take the lead, I'm confident we'd be able to secure whatever resources we need to make it happen! Thoughts? |
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@gusaus I clicked through to the Reader Revenue page you linked, and it looks like the "Newspack" option relies on those premium plugins, whereas the "News Revenue Hub" doesn't, though that's a third-party service it does have a free plan for startups. So that at least makes for one viable option for free donations. I'd say Patreon or similar services are also viable alternatives depending on the site's donation focus. I'm sure it'd be possible to do some things with the Open Source donation embed too. A simple WordPress shortcode/widget to control the embed parameters would be one example. That could be added to Open Producer and/or to Open Collective for use by all collectives. I'd be happy to donate my time to this as a side project, it would be a fairly easy thing. Hopefully the available query parameters for the donation embed will be expanded rather than restricted in the future, though I understand those kind of decisions can take time. I see there are restrictions on the embed which keeps it to a particular user interface, and the advantage to Open Collective in keeping it consistent in this way for the majority of users. I wonder if there would be a middle ground along the lines of opencollective/opencollective#6207, where the user could have their own form interface (eg. via above-mentioned widget/shortcode or even a popup later), then upon submit, would redirect the user to the non-embedded URL to complete their contribution? This would mean the non-embedded page would need to support being passed the donation tip as a querystring parameter for the platform tip from the custom form widget... but that such a custom widget could not merely do that on thing, but also be able to proactively improve the user interface to reflect the desired user experience, via an optimized form input interface and providing extra information (as in your example of GiveButter in opencollective/opencollective#6252.) |
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@majick777 Thanks for chiming in and showing interest. As mentioned in Slack, I was just trying to surface some of the discussions I was having with @tonyzeoli about this unexpected, new need. Hadn't really fleshed out options and solutions (until you commented!). So here are some further thoughts on yours.
I've seen the News Revenue Hub but have never looked into it (until today) when I created an account just to test (see opencollective/opencollective#6252 (comment)) and get more info. Also visited a sampling of Newspack sites on https://newspack.com/community-map/ and realized several are using News Revenue Hub. One thing to note is they don't integrate with Newspack (yet), so the donate buttons are just linking to the corresponding donate page: https://mlk50.com/ So we could defintatly recommend as an option to orgs that would qualify (I'll need to get more info about the types of orgs that can use). We can also recommend other platforms/services easy for users to manage.
Assuming you mean the Open Collective embed, it's an iframe that can be easily copied into Newspack. The problem is many/most end users won't know how to change the paramaters (nor should they) and Open Collective has just made the embed unsable for most of the orgs that would use this platform (see opencollective/opencollective#6252 (comment)). We can delve into integration seperately (especially since it's a much larger project), but before making it easier to embed via a shortcode or something, we need to work the Open Collective team to 1) point out these problems and 2) get paid to work on user friendly soluitons. It's not all WordPress/Newspack related, but there's certainly a need and opportunity. |
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@majick777 With regards to all your other good points about the Open Collective embed... after reading opencollective/opencollective#6252 (comment) it looks like more collectives will need to weigh in and advocate for setting/hiding the default tip on the collective admin level. While I'm holding off commenting further in that issue (until they clarify the purpose of opencollective/opencollective#6377, I did leave the following in a related Slack discussion.
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Just to reiterate, any contributions to the Open Collective platform (beyond just voicing our needs and concerns as customers) would be separate from this and funded by Open Collective (and other stakeholders). Similar thing with integration via a WordPress plugin or an existing one. Development is not dependent on us - but we might want to contribute if there's a budget. In the meantime, there are several options platform users can use already. |
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...here are a few updates exactly one month since my last comment. Open Collective platform tip While we were (and still are) evaluating external platforms like Givebutter and News Revenue Hub, both would require a bit of work to 'include' them as blocks (for instance). Donate Block with Stripe The Donate block is included in https://github.com/Automattic/newspack-blocks. While it is dependent on https://github.com/Automattic/newspack-plugin, it seems to work with AMP disabled (even though the instructions say something else)
Proof are the two sites running of this codebase that are either using or testing:
Based on this, we should consider #12 the MVP and explore working with the Newspack team to integrate Open Collective as a payment gateway/Reader Revenue option down the line. @majick777 @tonyzeoli Curious to get your thoughts and followup questions on what I'm describing. |
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Couple more things after a bit more testing of the Donate Block.
Considering the donate block is part of Newspack Blocks (which we forked) and there are instructions on how to build new blocks, we should follow the guidelines and consider everything we do (revolving around Newspack) a contribution to Newspack. If we can find some people (PM, dev, docs, etc.) interested in making this a focus (on our end) we can try to pool resources with Automattic and Newspack. |
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The purpose of this task is to determine a base set of features and functionality we should include in the 'radio' branch of Newspack we develop and maintain for small broadcasters, podcasters, internet stations, arts orgs, and other types of groups.
We're also working out a base set of features in this doc https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UYP6OfxlTn6WqcxycZ2RqGBHMcngBayDVe-ksAGxd5g/edit?usp=sharing
Features
We'll update this summary as the feature list evolves...
Plugins
Newspack plugins
The following plugins ship with Newspack - as Newspack is a dependency of this platform, all of these plugins are supported by the Newspack team.
Required plugins
The following plugins ship with Newspack - as Newspack is a dependency of this platform, all of these plugins are supported by the Newspack team.
Recommended plugins
Newspack has a list of recommended plugins that have been thoroughly reviewed for features, quality, and code. We will include or recommend any of these as we get a better sense of requirements.
Unsupported plugins
The following plugins are not yet supported or recommended by Newspack. We should work with plugin developers to ensure each is compatible and then see if Newspack can recommend.
Development priorities
The following are not requirements for a MVP. We will support based on needs and available resources.
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