Plugin recommendations and Staff issue

[Owen Rasmussen]

Hi Bill,

First off, the staff issue. I just updated to wordpress 4.6. There used to be some space between the staff members but now they are squished together. you can check out the link to see more.

Second, I figured I would ask for some recommendations for good plug-ins here. The things I’d like to be able to do are…
1. have someone enter their email address and get an email with our new posts.

2. Make it easier for people to comment, maybe with either an email address and facebook.

3. know if there is anything else you find particularly useful. I haven’t set up google analytics yet, but that might be one. Anything else I should consider as I finalize this and get it live?

Thanks!
Owen

[Bill Robbins]

Hi Owen,

If you’ll update your theme, that should take care of the spacing in your staff section.

You can offer subscriptions for new posts. It’s not something I’ve done very much of, but when I did that for a client, I used a service that MailChimp has called an RSS Feed campaign. It pulls your posts that have been published since the last newsletter and then sends them out to your subscribers automatically. The advantage of using a service like MailChimp is you actually build a list with a legitimate email service that you can use to send out other email campaigns if you need to. Some of the plugin options that offer post subscriptions don’t build your list in a way that you can really use outside of the post updates.

There are quite a few plugins out there to allow users to login with various services to comment. By default WordPress has a very low barrier to comment, requiring only the users name and an email address. Both of those don’t have to be real (they aren’t verified in any way). I would imagine there are plugins that could make either of those optional.

I would definitely have some analytics in place before going live so you can measure things. Before you add GA, you’ll want to take some measures to keep out spam (yes GA has spam visits). There is an article at https://moz.com/blog/stop-ghost-spam-in-google-analytics-with-one-filter that can show you how.

Personally I would go with MailChimp. There are plugins out there that can add a sign up box to help you build your list. They offer RSS feed campaigns so you can send updates that way. Plus it’s free for lists up to 2000 addresses and 12,000 emails sent per month.

Take care,
Bill

[Owen Rasmussen]

Thanks for the advice Bill. The theme update fixed the staff spacing. I’ll look into mail chimp and then I’ll try to find a good comment plug-in from other reviews if there isn’t a particular one that you’ve had success with.

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