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MailChimp has a solid API but a lack of WP plugins utilizing it. This plugin fetches your campaign archives and either creates them as posts in your WP database, or just displays them live by fetching them from MailChimp upon request.
[...] Mark Parolisi has created a WordPress plugin for MailChimp that “fetches your campaign archives and either creates them as posts in your WP database, or [...]
I am just missing it? Is there a link to get it somewhere? Pretty stoked to try it out.
oops. Link to the repository added.
Very cool! Little feedback:
1) The posts don’t save with an author it looks like until it’s been edited once.
2) We use our work MailChimp account with several clients. It would be nice to be able to set the plugin to only pull campaigns that were sent to a specific list.
3) The CSS from the newsletter is added to the post weird see: http://img.skitch.com/20100222-c9rjtiwyjchmdggkc9sn261sti.jpg
4) Would be nice to control what the category name is that the posts get applied to
5) Would be nice to have the posts save as “drafts” instead of automatically publishing
6) Would be nice to have them be able to be saved as pages instead of posts
Cheers!
1. That’s correct. I’ll have to default it to the admin.
, but a request none-the-less.
2. I’ll try to work that into the next big release
3. First time I’ve seen it do that exactly. Since everyone writes their HTML newsletters a little differently, I’m trying to make them all output the same and its been a chore.
4. Fair Enough. Will add to the next release
5. A little nit-picky IMO
6. Ok, I guess I’ll add that option, but to me, this is definitely more of a ‘post’ post type.
You should try the live fetch. it doesn’t have any of the problems you encountered. The post saving was just release the other day, so forgive the bugs.
Don’t take any of it negatively =) It’s a sweet plugin! Just trying to help out make it even better with feedback about my particular scenario.
I think the drafts thing is the most important thing. It’s nice to be able to fine tune things before going out. This might be a weird situation, but for example, people might subscribe to the blog via email, but not the newsletter. So with auto publishing they might get an email with all the weird CSS in it before I had a chance to jump in and fix it. It’s also important for me in the short-term, since I’ll need to catch newsletters that go out to different clients. Would be weird to have a newsletter auto-published on one clients blog that went to a different client.
The live fetch would be perfect, except I can’t narrow it down by list. And actually, I’m having some trouble getting it to actually return the newsletter:
http://img.skitch.com/20100222-tg6pun33sb6ahej8pnue6ndryr.jpg
Not taking it negatively. I really appreciate it and will get on these updates. I see why the live fetch isn’t working for you, and I’ll fix that also. Look for an update soon. My stupid oversight on Permalinks.
Check the repository for an updated version. Many of the small problems are fixed.
Still on the agenda:
-Ability to select which list(s) to import
-Correct formatting for some mail messages (maybe I’ll just put that into a frame instead of trying to work it into the existing DOM)
I’ve barely started working with the plugin, but am very excited for its capabilities, Mark. I have to echo Chris’s comments about enabling draft status though.
Almost every newsletter I do involves some sort of call to action back to the client’s website (as an example). Often this is overtly stated in the text in ways that make it redundant, or worse confusing, if it’s actually appearing ON the website in question. I currently post newsletters back to the original website by hand and ALWAYS have to tweak the content a little to make it”make sense” in it’s new context.
Long way of saying – +1 for save as draft.
Specifying which list to pull from and which category to post to would be huge benefits as well. The category control would allow me to build a special page of the site specifically for newsletters, restrict it to displaying only the newsletter category, and thereby fully automate this process for clients. (assuming they could live without the text edits mentioned above.)
Terrific job. Looking for the tipjar : )
Paul
KILLER updates, thanks!
When I try to install the plugin I get this error: Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.” I’m on WP 2.9.2.
Any idea why? thanks!
You’re the second person to have that problem. There may be a conflict with another plugin, your server/PHP settings, or something else. Is there any other info you can provide about your setup?
Thank you for the wonderful plugin! I did get the fatal error when I tried to activate it as well….it seems to not want to play nice with the MailChimp List Subscribe Form…but I deactivated the form and wa la worked!
Yes, you’re right. I discovered this bug this afternoon after geekspecialties told me he was also running that plugin. Stupid of me to neglect the fact that most ppl will be running both.
Ver 2.1 has been release and fixes the problem.
Please Mark what does this plugin do? How is it different from the one that MailChimp created for WordPress?
Thanks in advance
The one MailChimp created is just a sign-up form. The other one is called MailChimp framework, which requires a knowledge of PHP and is as it states, a framework, with no applicable results out of the box. Please review the plugin descriptions, FAQ, and installation instructions to find out more.
Great plugin! Works really well and is easy to integrate.
Unfortunately, I can’t use it right now because the one feature I need is missing
It’s been mentioned above already, I think, but right now, my clients move their sent campaigns into an Archive folder in Mailchimp, and that’s the code I use to display on their website. It would be nice to be able to choose the folder of newsletters to display, rather than just showing all the drafts/unsent campaigns in the main folder.
Looking forward to future releases of this plugin, you’ve done a great job. Thanks!
Thanks for the comments, Sharon. I’ll definitely put that on my list for the next release.
First, this makes my life sooooooo easy, I can eat bananas all day long.
Second, I need to do some tweaking or something, there are many foreign languages posting in the article on the newsletter archive page that contains the excerpt when you go over here: —> http://www.thenewdepotplayers.com/?cat=19
And lastly, the menu bar is hovering over the content of the newsletter email from the archive here: —> http://www.thenewdepotplayers.com/?p=255
Two minor things, just wondering what I did wrong so I can fix it and have some banana pudding.
Tom Johnson
Tom, I’m not seeing anything on that first link and the second link has a hovering menu because its CSS position property is set to ‘fixed’. Where is that menu coming from? An email archive?
This is the teaser in the webmail archive article post that concerns me: News from The New Depot Players Posted by admin on Mar 6, 2010 in Newsletter Archives | 1 comment
View past issues | RSS subscribe to list translate Englishالعربيةбългарскиcatalà中文（简体）中文（繁體）HrvatskiČeskyDanskNederlandsSuomiFrançaisDeutschΕλληνική…
It’s coming straight from the folder on my MailChimp Newsletter Archive folder. If you go to this link you can see it at the top of the page here: http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=9a9ec1a03f7e3b888fde65544&id=2dd4b90433
Mark
All I did was tell the widget where the mailchimp account was located (API) and it pulled everything into the website as a post just like I specified. The floating header is the header from the mailchimp campaign archive. Sorry – the last post had extra terminology that wasn’t very clear.
Seems the header floating around could be a mailchimp issue? I would be fine to do without it completely.
Excited for the possibilities of this plugin but with the first test it messed up all of the formatting: http://blog.thestartupdigest.com/
Any thoughts to why its doing this?
wrap that CSS at the top of the document in a style type=”text/css” tag and it should be fine.
[...] site on a CMS (yes, I just called WP a CMS), this project afforded me the opportunity to create the MailChimp Archives [...]
Sweet dream of a plugin, Mark.
Thanks for all your efforts.
I just test-imported a couple of campaigns from MC*. They appeared as pages, just like I wanted, but the pictures seem to be having some trouble; some displayed while others didn’t.
It’s all white magic to me, but I’m curious to know if you intend for images to come through with the rest of the content and formatting, or if it’s something that I should expect to add and edit by hand once the campaign has made its way across.
Thanks again for your work, Mark. This plugin is already delivering on some mighty big potential.
(*My attempt: http://pivotalwriting.com/portfolio/newsletter-3-perus-sacred-valley/)
I tried your link, but it 404′d
It’s hard to speak to your issues with the images. They may be bad links, or the file permissions may be off. But the plugin doesn’t touch the actual email message, it just pushes it into the database. Send me a new link and I’ll take a look.
Thanks for taking a peak, Mark.
Shocking design aside, you’ll see that some of the photos load and others don’t. Your suggestions?.
http://bit.ly/8XWgnI
Thanks again.
-Mike
I see 3 404′d images in that mail message. All three have been linked as stock photos from MailChimp. They may have deleted/moved the files or are preventing your site from hotlinking to them.
Hey there – I’m very excited to maybe use this plugin for my organization’s upcoming newsletter project. Wondering if you have any additional samples that I can show the decision makers?
I tried your plugin and all seemed to work fine at first. Then I started to get an error log on the server that eventually timed out the entire site. I am running 3.0. Any suggestions? The error message just keeps looping and filling up the error log. Here is part of the message.
[08-Jul-2010 09:05:21] WordPress database error Got a packet bigger than ‘max_allowed_packet’ bytes for query UPDATE `wp_options` SET `option_value` = ‘a:5439:{i:1277848406;a:2:{s:18:\”mca_savedata_event\”;a:1:{s:32:\”40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a\”;a:3:{s:8:\”schedule\”;s:5:\”daily\”;s:4:\”args\”;a:0:{}s:8:\”interval\”;i:86400;}}s:18:\”mca_savepost_event\”;a:1:{s:32:\”40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a\”;a:3:{s:8:\”schedule\”;s:10:\”twicedaily\”;s:4:\”args\”;a:0:{}s:8:\”interval\”;i:43200;}}}i:1277848407;a:1:{s:18:\”mca_savedata_event\”;a:1:{s:32:\”40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a\”;a:3:{s:8:\”schedule\”;s:5:\”daily\”;s:4:\”args\”;a:0:{}s:8:\”interval\”;i:86400;}}}i:1277848408;a:1:{s:18:\”mca_savepost_event\”;a:1:{s:32:\”40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a\”;a:3:{s:8:\”schedule\”;s:10:\”twicedaily\”;s:4:\”args\”;a:0:{}s:8:\”interval\”;i:43200;}}}i:1277848409;a:1:{s:18:\”mca_savedata_event\”;a:1:{s:32:\”40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a\”;a:3:{s:8:\”schedule\”;s:5:\”daily\”;s:4:\”args\”;a:0:{}s:8:\”interval\”;i:86400;}}}i:1277848410;a:1:{s:18:\”mca_savepost_event\”;a:1:{s:32:\”40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a\”;a:3:{s:8:\”schedule\”;s:10:\”twicedaily\”;s:4:\”args\”;a:0:
Hey Mark – are you working on an update to this for WordPress 3.0? Just curious.
Wendy, not sure what I could do with it differently in 3.0. I could possibly make a custom post type or taxonomy for the data, however I don’t know if people are willing to have plugins start doing this automatically. Maybe I could work it into the options. Any thoughts?
Mark,
Thanks for the plugin!
Two questions:
1. RE: “wrap that CSS at the top of the document in a style type=”text/css” tag and it should be fine.”. I’m having the same issue (lots of visible css in the post). Where do you “wrap that CSS”? I’m composing the messages in the Mail Chimp editor….
2. RE: option 2 “daily scheduled event” – when does it run? I looked through the php (I’m not a pro), and I don’t see where a timer or trigger gets set up…
Thanks!
Rich
Again, thanks for doing the plugin. I see my post from yesterday is still waiting for moderation – I have some updated information. I’ve been playing around with it a bit and I think I answered both my questions:
1. I see how the wp_schedule_event() call in mailchimp_archives.php sets up the scheduler that fetches the campaign and creates the posts.
2. I set up an archive folder and some archive code in mailchimp that wraps the archive in the text/css code… That works for the [mc_archives] shortcode method, It did NOT work on the fetch-to-post method (mca_insert_function called from the cron job). I see you are using the mailchimp API to fetch the archived version of the campaign, so I’m not sure why the text/css stuff is not coming through. Do you have any insights into this?
One other question came to mind – I’m not sure if you did the plugin before mailchimp added their “archive code” feature. I don’t see much of a difference between the [mc_archives] shortcode function in your plugin, and the mailchimp solution of just adding their archive code to a page on the site… Am I missing something?
I do really find the publish-campaign-to-post feature very useful. Once on the site, the content becomes searchable, and you can add categories and tags to it. I hope I can get it to work!
Thanks again,
Rich
Ran the admin page on this plugin, updated campaigns, it loaded all of them into posts as I wanted, assigned to one category, then it proceeded to past a series of styles in the post, without wrapping them and all posts (29 pages of them) are corrupted and unusable. Ideas? I can pass you the location and access credentials privately if you connect.
I am loving this plugin! It is exactly what I was looking for the archives of some of my MailChimp campaigns. My emails pulled through just fine but they all have this gosh-awful coding for about 25 lines before the post/email begins. They are all html email campaigns. I am running WPMU 2.9.2 with a WooTheme. Do you have any idea how I can prevent this so I don’t have the edit every single email that posts?
Thanks for the awesomeness!
Blessings,
Wendy
Mark,
1. I’ve been having a similar problem that others have flagged – namely the lines of code before the actual mailchimp campaign is displayed.
http://staging.uqes.org.au/whats-on-week-1/
Would you mind elaborating a little on on your previous post on how to fix this? Is this in Mailchimp, or somewhere on my site?
2. Is there a way of disabling the floating bar at the top of the email campaign?
Keep up the good work!
Having the same CSS troubles as were mentioned previously. Displaying CSS code on the pages before the newsletter itself.
I’ve been using this plugin to pull in minutes for my local networking group as posts. Worked great until I tried it in the last few days. Now, for some reason, nothing seems to happen when I try to Update Campaigns. Update Settings at least shows a message, but does not seem to actually save settings changes. Running on 3.0.1. Any help would be appreciated on this.
Hi Mark,
Awesome plugin! One question, though… I’m using the LiveFetch. I think the code is pulling back the campaign name to display on the page?
mca_livefetch.php prints $c['subject']
Wondering if it’s possible to fetch other data (such as message subject or name) instead? My client has the same campaign name across many newsletters and it makes picking a specific one out of the list confusing. :/
See http://www.abtstranetwork.com/wp/newsletter-archives/ for example and note that in MailChimp each of these newsletters have a unique name.
Thanks!
Carrie
Anyone successfully use this plugin? I’d love to see an example site in action.
Thanks,
Price