Our Hometown Blog

The Newsletter Plugin included with Our-Hometown’s WordPress Publishing Platform is a powerful tool for e-mail marketing, customer outreach, and simply sharing your newest and most interesting articles with your readers. But did you know that you can include more than just Articles in your stylish newsletters?

The Extended Composer Blocks update that was released last year includes a useful “block” named the Custom Post Type (CPT) Block. This block let’s you select any of the custom post types in use on your website and include them in your newsletter, with the same familiar settings you would see when including standard Articles. You can make your e-mail marketing more effective with dynamic content that goes beyond just your latest articles!

Create a list of upcoming events using the “Events” custom post type!

So, what is a Custom Post Type?

A Custom Post Type is the technical term used to refer to the different types of information saved in your website’s back end. Articles are the default, standard “Post Type” that you’re already familiar with, but other post types include Places (entries in your Business Directory), Events (entries in your Events calendar), MaxGalleria Galleries (photo galleries created within MaxGalleria), Real Estate (Real Estate listings, if your site uses them), and more!

The popular GeoDirectory plugin that is included with our Reader Resources is used for the majority of these Custom Post Types. If you’re using GeoDirectory to manage a catalog of information, that information will be saved as a Custom Post Type and can be included in your newsletter.

Let’s look at the settings!

If you’re including Articles in your custom newsletters already, you’ve probably used the CPT Block to achieve this. However, if you click the Post Type drop-down, you’ll see many more options available in addition to Articles.

The other settings are largely the same: you can choose whether you want to include photos, excerpts & authors, and choose how many of this post type should be listed. Some formatting options exist that allow you change the size of the title text and body text, as well as customize the “Read More” button. Most importantly, you’ll need to choose which “Category” to include posts from. These categories will change based on which post type is selected.

Once you’ve configured your CPT Block‘s settings, simply click apply and watch the changes go into effect.

Keep in mind that not all post types make sense to include in a Newsletter. For example, “Memberships”, “Groups” and “EditionAction” are post types used internally by the system for subscription management purposes. These post types would serve little purpose in a newsletter. We recommend sticking to things like Articles, Events, Places, and other GeoDirectory Custom Post Tyes.

If you find that you don’t have the Custom Post Type Block enabled on your Newsletter, please reach out to us at ops@our-hometown.com and we’ll enable it for you right away!

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