RSVPMaker WordPress Plugin

RSVPMaker finally has its first international translation, thanks to some help from Jarosław Żeliński, a consultant who has been working with the plugin. Here is what the editing panel for setting dates and RSVP parameters looks like in Polish:

Note that there are a couple of English language phrases showing through where no translation has yet been supplied. I actually just got received an updated version, which will be included with the next RSVPMaker release.

I’ve been getting interest in translation and occasional offers to help since RSVPMaker was first released, but Mr. Żeliński helped me work through a series of issues ranging from proper encoding of international characters to bugs in the code that was supposed to load the translation files. Now that we’ve got this first one, it would be good to see translations to some other languages.

I’m still new to this whole process, but here’s essentially how it works:

• Obtain a copy of POEdit the utility used to generate translation files in a standard format.
• Use POEdit to open the rsvpmaker.pot file, which is a template for the catalog of translated phrases you will create from English to the target language.
• Save your file as rsvpmaker-locale.po where locale is a standard country code. Example: rsvpmaker-pl_PL.po for Polish. See http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_in_Your_Language 
• Use POEdit to suggest translated phrases to be used in place of my English language ones. For content to be available for translation, it needs to be marked correctly in the plugin source code, so let me know if you see important omissions. I’ve tried to flag most of the labels and instructions for translation.
• When you save your work, POEdit will also generate a .mo file such as rsvpmaker-pl_PL.mo. You can upload this to your own server to test that it works, with the language code set in the WordPress wp-config.php file. If you believe you have created a translation others would find useful, send me the .mo file to include in future distributions of RSVPMaker.
• When I put out a new release, you should be able to use the Update from Sources function in POEdit to detect if there are new words or phrases available for translation. Send me the updated .mo files as appropriate.

For a general tutorial on translating plugins, see http://urbangiraffe.com/articles/translating-wordpress-themes-and-plugins/

If the instructions I’ve supplied aren’t clear, let me know how I can improve them. Thanks.

The latest version of the ChimpBlast plugin for sending email broadcasts through the MailChimp service is available now at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/chimpblast/

ChimpBlast was designed to be used with RSVPMaker, and to make it easy to generate a simple newsletter based on recent blog posts. Based on some feedback from people who have tried it, I’ve further improved the facilities for importing blog content.

Another improvement is that you can now change the mailing list you’re targeting (if you run several) on a per post basis rather than from just the settings screen.

I have also included a sample cron script for sending a weekly email newsletter based on the previous week’s worth of blog posts and any upcoming RSVPMaker events. I use something like this for my son’s cub scout pack and for a political organizing website, where the newsletter serves to keep list members up to date on the latest material from the website. You can use the cron script as-is, or copy it into another directory and modify it to meet your needs (if, for example, you need a daily or monthly newsletter rather than a weekly one).

From the ChimpBlast settings screen, you can now designate the day of the week for your newsletter broadcasts, as well as the template, list, and subject line that will be used. The newsletter will go out using the default Email From address and Email Name display name.

It you run the cron script on any day other than the designated day of the week, it sends a preview version of the broadcast to the Email From address. The way I use this is to configure cron to run on Saturday and Sunday, where Sunday is the actual publication day. By sending myself a preview, I get a reminder to make any updates or corrections prior to publication day.

Cron is the Unix scheduling utility, and many web hosts provide a simplified utility for configuring it through Cpanel (shown below) or an another admin system.

A ChimpBlast Email Newsletter Set to Run Saturday and Sunday

I am hosting a webinar Thursday April, 14 2011 at 7 pm ET on the use of the Facebook Tab Manager WordPress plugin I created, which allows a website operator to include blog posts and other content on a Facebook page for a business, campaign, or other organization. For an example, see the “Clip File” tab on http://www.facebook.com/carrcomm.

Thursday April, 14 2011 at 7 pm ET, details: http://www.anymeeting.com/davidfcarr

I will present a tutorial and answer questions.

I also want to hear from those of you who have done interesting things with Facebook Tab Manager.

Background: Facebook Tab Manager is a WordPress plugin that lets you incorporate blog and website content into a Facebook page for a business or organization. You can create posts specifically for Facebook and designate content that will only be shown to people who Like your page

Just published to WordPress.org: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/chimpblast/

ChimpBlast lets you compose broadcast email messages for use with the MailChimp service from within WordPress. You can compose messages in the WordPress rich text editor, import the content of posts, preview the results on your website, and then submit the resulting message to MailChimp using the API.

ChimpBlast was designed for use in combination with RSVPMaker. You can import your RSVPMaker events into ChimpBlast, add introductory text, and send out your event invitations. The RSVP Now link in the invitation will automatically be coded to include a reference to the recipient’s email address, allowing RSVPMaker to retrieve that person’s profile details so they don’t have to be reentered manually.

You can import a your MailChimp template and add CSS to help your WordPress content display better, such as the markup for WordPress photos and captions, or your own stylings. The MailChimp service automatically inlines the CSS code to work better with email clients, which don’t always respect CSS in the header.

This is what I use for most of my email marketing work. I’m a big fan of the flexibility of the MailChimp service, as well as the high standards it enforces for list quality (even though they sometimes make me jump through hoops to get a list cleaned up). I actually don’t like the visual editor they provide with the service that much and often would rather use the one within WordPress – particularly since the content I send out is often derived from a blog post or RSVPMaker event.

If you downloaded the preliminary version I published on RSVPMaker.com, please download the official release. Note that you may have to redo the email template. This version allows you to have several alternate templates available for use.

I’ve gone back and cleaned up the ChimpBlast plugin, which allows you to create email messages based on blog posts and RSVPMaker events and distribute them through the MailChimp service. My request to add it to the WordPress.org repository is pending. Meanwhile, you can read more and download the code from:

http://www.rsvpmaker.com/chimpblast-plugin-for-mailchimp/

I’ve been doing some experiments with the new Facebook page tabs, which are based on HTML iframes rather than FBML markup. I cooked up a new Facebook Tab Manager plugin for WordPress to make it easier to exploit this feature. I have an example of incorporating the [rsvp_upcoming] shortcode from RSVPMaker, so that event listings can be displayed on Facebook, which you can see on my Facebook business page. You may have to be logged in to Facebook for this to display correctly.