Author: David F. Carr

Here are examples of designs created using techniques laid out in the blog post Styling Your Confirmation Messages and Broadcast Emails. RSVPMaker now provides the flexibility to style confirmation messages for different events differently.

White on Black

Here’s the black background confirmation message for a pirate party. This design allows me to specify styling on the RSVP button (Update RSVP in the case of a confirmation message) differently from the one used elsewhere on my website.

White on Black Email Template

Using Gutenberg Columns in the Template

One technique for creating an template layout is to rough out the design in the WordPress editor, then copy the resulting HTML and elements such as shortcodes and dynamic Gutenberg blocks into the body of an email template.

Here, I have created a 2-column layout in the editor and a centered image to appear beneath the columns. The left column contains the [rsvpmaker_email_content] shortcode for dynamically generated content such as confirmation messages. The right column contains a heading block, followed by the latest-posts block to display the latest blog posts (where the idea is to encourage the person who has registered for an event to explore other website content).

Note: I had to use several hacks to make the two columns display acceptably on a mobile email client:

.wp-block-column {max-width: 50%}
.rightmain {padding: 10px;background-color:  #191D6C; color: #EEEEEE; height: 95%; }
.rightmain a {color:#FFFFFF; font-weight: bold; display: block; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: -30px;}

See the explanation of columns and CSS inlining.

Adapted from a MailChimp Sample

You can use a sample template provided by MailChimp, or created using MailChimp’s design tools, as the basis for a template you can use within the RSVPMaker mailer tool — including messages RSVPMaker handles itself, such as confirmation messages, as well as messages to be submitted to MailChimp via their API.

For this example, I started with a MailChimp sample design for a fictional gallery promoting a featured exhibit. I then turned it into an RSVPMaker confirmation email template suitable for being used in conjunction with a gallery talk event.

MailChimp uses nested tables for its basic layouts, then adds CSS on top tagged to different table cells.

The process of adapting the MailChimp template to work with RSVPMaker follows this pattern:

• Use the Export as HTML option in MailChimp to get the code for one of the templates in your account that you want to use.
• Place the [rsvpmaker_email_content] shortcode in the table cell where dynamically generated content such as your confirmation message should appear.
• Add CSS as necessary to make your content look good in the template.
• Alter MailChimp’s CSS as necessary to allow you to achieve the effects you want. I had to remove some of the default MailChimp code for link styling to get the RSVP button to display properly.

Gallery Event Template

Here is the original MailChimp sample design I started with:

The latest update to RSVPMaker focuses on more design freedom and better consistency for confirmation messages, reminder messages, and email broadcasts.

This push was inspired in part by a recent post on the SendGrid blog, How to Send On-Brand Confirmation Emails (+ Examples). Having noticed some shortcomings in the formatting of RSVPMaker email messages (which were annoying me as much as anyone), this project had been on my todo list anyway. The examples in SendGrid’s article nudged me to put it at the top of the list.

Here’s an example of a confirmation message for a wedding, created using these new capabilities, with the correct formatting for a section laid out using the Gutenberg columns block and a centered image below the spot where the registration details are included:

Continue reading “Styling Your Confirmation Messages and Broadcast Emails”

More than a year after releasing the first version of RSVPMaker with support for Gutenberg (the WordPress “block editor” introduced with 5.0), I now have an editor sidebar implementation I’m pretty happy with.

In the process, I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the WordPress Data API for JavaScript — and frankly more than I needed to know for the relatively simple thing I wanted to accomplish. I just wanted to update my old PHP-based UI for getting and setting post metadata to work in Gutenberg. The problem is not just insufficient documentation, but overwhelming documentation that can lead you in a wrong direction.

What you see below is a composite image of 2 screenshots.

What you see on the left are the most basic RSVPMaker settings (when does the event start and end? and are we collecting RSVPs?) as they’ve been added to the Document tab of the standard Gutenberg sidebar. I do that to make these basic elements of editing an event date as accessible as possible.

The insert on the right shows an additional sidebar, specific to RSVPMaker, that I can get to by clicking the calendar icon at the top of the screen. This additional sidebar provides access to a longer list of RSVPMaker settings: not just date and time, but also the email address to send registration notifications to, whether there is a maximum number of registrations to be accepted, and so on.

There are still a few more complex settings, such as those for event pricing online payments, where I direct users to a separate RSVP / Event Options screen. But I want them to be able to accomplish most tasks without delivering the editor.

The designers and developers behind the Gutenberg UI recommend providing a “distraction free” editing environment that minimizes the use of the old “metaboxes” at the bottom of the content editing window, which used to be a standard for WordPress plugin design. I also found that the JavaScript functions in my old metabox code seemed to clash with Gutenberg, so I got rid of metaboxes some time ago. But making those same capabilities available in a Gutenberg sidebar, rather than a metabox has proven challenging.

Gutenberg represents a steep learning curve for those developers who learned plugin programming in PHP and are now asked to master at least the basics of the React JavaScript framework and the Gutenberg component library. I hope that we will eventually be provided with some easier ways of handling common needs like setting the metadata of a post from within the Gutenberg UI.

Meanwhile, here are my tips on how to cope with the current state of things.

Continue reading “How I Learned to Create a Gutenberg Sidebar for Editing Post Metadata (Tips for WordPress Plugin Developers)”