Create

How to Create A Substack Newsletter in WordPress

June 2, 2021 by Chris Wilson Leave a Comment

In the last year and a bit a few friends have started sending newsletter using either Substack or Ghost. Both offer a similar service with the option to restrict some or no content and provide the rest for free.
Yesterday I realised that the same effect could be created using WordPress and at a very affordable rate. So here’s how you can make a Substack newsletter in WordPress.

Table of Contents

The Tech stack

an installation of WordPress with a hosting company
any basic WordPress theme. I haven’t found anything that looks exactly like substack but the default theme is very minimal.
either
- a dedicated solution like newsletter glue
  - with an email service (Mailchimp is in the free plan free)
- or a combination of
  - a restrict content plugin like Restrict content (You can use the free or pro version)
  - an email sending service like Mailpoet (or Mailgun for WordPress, Mailchimp, Sendfox or ConvertKit.

Newsletter glue vs a custom set up

My initial inspiration for this article was to use the newsletters and plugins that I was familiar with to restrict content. During my research, I discovered the plugin “newsletter glue” an all in one plugin that integrates your WordPress site with a one of the most common newsletter providers.

The free version of Newsletter glue is sufficient if you want to use mailchimp and lock certain content. If you want to use a different newsletter service like mailerlite or campaign monitor, or you want some of the advanced custom block, the pro version is for you.

Newsletter glue does have a very easy set up and after filling in your API, you’re good to go. A custom set up would let you use a different email service but I suspect newsletter glue is the best choice for most people.

Either way, you’ll need content

The next section focuses on the content you should create and how to set up your homepage and applies to using newsletter glue or a different service. After that there are instruction to create a custom set up using restrcit content pro.

The content we are going to copy

When you land on Substack, you are greeted with a sign up form or you can click “let me read it first.” Substack also creates default about pages and subscription pages. So let’s duplicated these.

Making the homepage

Substacks homepages are simple and limited. They have

an icon,
a headline
a description
an email signup form
and a button to let me read first.

To replicated it, all we need to do is…

Create a page (If you can disable the text on the page, call it whatever you like e.g. home. if it will show up, set this as you headline)
Add an image, set it as a thumbnail size and centre it.
Add a headline (H1 if you can disable the page title as a heading text, h2 if you can’t)
Add a paragraph block with a description
Add your email sign up form
Add a button with the text “let me read first” give it the link to whatever your articles page will be called (blog/newsletters/articles/etc I like “articles” personally)

If you have newsletter glue pro, you can use the subscribe form block. If you only have the free version, you can use other solutions to get a form to embed such as genesis blocks, mailchimp for WordPress or just getting the HTML code from Mailchimp.

Make the past issues page

Create a new page and give it a title like newsletter / articles or blog. Set this as the URL. You don’t need to do anything else to this page, it should be blank.

In settings, reading, set the page you just created as the “Posts” page. At the same time, make the homepage you created the homepage.

Making the about page

About pages are often in the top two most visited pages on your website. The biggest mistake is to make it about you and not the customer. This is on of the core lesson from Marketing Made Simple.
The substack default content has a simple template you might want to use including

Headline (What your newsletter is about)
- A short description (what sort of content you provide )
Why subscribe
- Some subheadlines including “stay up-to-date and “join the crew”.

Here are a few tips for a more effective about page

Speak about what you can do for the reader, not state what it is

Most about pages describe a thing rather than focus on the benefit for the user. That’s like Pepsi saying their a sugar water drink or a Mercedes being a luxury car from Germany. Focus on how it will help the reader.

Set expectation

Tell them how often you send your email, when and what they will get.
Aim to be as specific as possible but you can give your self wiggle room while you develop the habit.

For example, “I send a newsletter every Monday morning with tips, tricks and tutorials on video production.” is clear “I send emails approximately weekly on a range of subjects that catch my attention including…” is not as clear but still better than “sometimes I send a newsletter.”

Include a quote if you have one

Ask any current subscribers what they like about the newsletter and add that to the about page, that can help guide you to what people like in your newsletter and help convince people to subscribe.

Writing your first post

Once you have the rest of your content set up, the only thing to do is write your first post and start promoting your newsletter. You can do this using regular posts and gating some of the content, or you could create a custom post type called something like newsletter and use that for your posts.

The choice is yours.

Set up a custom configuration

While newsletter glue is a great service offering an easy and affordable system, you might want to do something more custom

Set up your email service

You can use any email service you want for this but if you want something deeply integrated with WordPress, pick mailpoet.
Some alternatives I like include

Sendfox (my personal recommendation. Start free, one time fee over at Appsumo unless you have big needs.)
ConvertKit (great email service, now has a free plan but limited features.)
Set up the service you pick according to the settings.

Restrict some of your content

You could keep your newsletter open to the world with no restrictions. This would help encourage more people to share and aids discoverability in search.

But if you to convince people to sign up so that you can contact them or you want to make offer a subscription, you’ll need a way to restrict that content.

I’ve used restrict content pro for a few years after I got it for an online course. It can work for newsletters too. The free version let’s you restrict content so only subscribers can access it, the pro version let’s you charge people for access.

The free version requires no set up, just pick a post to restrict or use the restrict shortcode to lockaway certain content.

The pro version has plugins to connect with a newsletter and automatically add subscribers as well as offering a payment gateway.
An alternative is memberful which let’s you collect payments (minus their 10% cut ) but to offer free memberships, you need to pay a monthly fee.

Getting Subscribers

Once you’ve got your technical stack set up, the real challenge is getting subscribers. This could be a post in itself but here’s a couple of quick thoughts.

Go to where your potential subscribers already are.
Create great content
Invite people who would be interested in your topic
Share sneak peeks and invite people to subscribe.

Ready to make a Substack newsletter in WordPress?

Substack and Ghost are certainly easier to set up for a restricted newsletter, but if you are interested in a free to start newsletter and want to use WordPress, then it’s perfectly possible to create a Substack like experience.

How to Make A Linktree replacement in WordPress

May 28, 2021 by Chris Wilson 2 Comments

Disclaimer: This is not a full like for like replacement for linktree in WordPress, but it can satisfy many people’s needs.

The first “Link in bio” like service I came across was Linktree, a tool to help you get around Instagram’s single link limit and instead direct people to multiple sites. At the time, I remember wondering why people didn’t just get a personal site or set up their landing page but I could also see some benefits.

After all, Linktree was easy to use and could easily be updated without needing to go to the website team. That’s a big plus for the social media manager who has no interaction with the web team or for the small-time creator who doesn’t want to create a full website.

Recently, I saw a tweet from Brian Gardner announcing that he was making a WordPress theme that emulated these sorts of Link in bio landing pages. I instantly realized that thanks to Gutenberg blocks I could easily do the same using my existing theme and so could you too.

Table of Contents

Why WordPress over something like Linktree?

If you can make quick and easy edits to your WordPress site (without requiring formal requests to a development team) then there’s a compelling case for making your landing page over using something like Linktree.

Price (you’re already paying for WordPress, you can get “pro” linktree features for free)
Custom Domain (a pro feature in Linktree, built into your site)
Users stay on one site, ignoring the middle step.
You can easily duplicate and make unique pages for different services.

Why use something like Linktree

The only aspect you can’t get from something like Linktree (as far as I know) is time-based links (i.e. expire after X time or appear after a certain point). Perhaps this is possible in WordPress but I don’t know off the top of my head.
The other reasons are

If you don’t have a WordPress site and don’t want to create one
If you want to have a payment gateway/donation button like a service like Kofi
If you can’t easily adapt your site (i.e. you are a social media manager, not a website developer)

In these cases, it might be best to use a linktree-like tool.

Picking the right theme

One of the main things you need is a theme that suits a link in bio page. Some core requirements will almost certainly be taken care of nowadays (like being mobile responsive) but there are others you need to watch out for.

For example, you may want to have a theme that provides a landing page system without a top menu bar or header image. Alternatively, some themes provide options to turn off certain elements on a page or are specifically created to use blocks for the full width.

The new twenty twenty one theme doesn’t let you turn off the header text (which is why mine shows the headline “links”. An alternative would be something like revolution pro from Studiopress where you can change to a “landing page” page layout.

Create your link in bio page on WordPress

Thanks to Gutenberg blocks, you can take a very flexible approach to how you want yours to look. Before you start filling yours in, plan what content you want to include. You should think about the most important links you want to share as well as any email forms, videos or other content to show off. Here are some suggested items you might want to gather.

a profile image or logo
a short description focused on your customer. (Check out the one-liner in my marketing made simple summary for ideas)
A collection of social links to your top accounts
An email form for a newsletter or lead magnet
A premium offering (apparel /whatever )

Design and tech tips

You can use a circle image outline for your profile to match social media image trends.
You can either use the button block or change the background color of your blocks to help them stand out. (Buttons have the advantage of not changing link color once pressed.)
You can use the social icons block to include your social media accounts.

What I did for mine

First I created a page called Links to act as the foundation. I copied much of my content from my linktree page and started with a very basic setup.

At first, I changed the background color of my blocks and used links but then I realized buttons would be a better option and I could set their width as 100% to ensure they filled the whole page.

I included some subheadings to break things up and social icons at the top to link to other pages.

This matches my minimal theme and looked much the same as my linktree page however it does have the unnatural heading and top nav menu that I’d like to remove.

It has made me consider changing WordPress themes again but I’ve had some issues with the last theme I was using and want to make sure I can avoid that with any theme I’d change to.

You could use Notion

Notion, while not intended to replace a website, can share pages to the internet. Like WordPress, it also has a block based editor and can have links and embeds. The options are perhaps not as easily customizable and you have to do some hacks to get a custom domain, but it can work.

See an notion example

Examples

Conclusion

This really isn’t rocket science and Gutenberg (for all its faults) is largely responsible for the ease of duplicating a service like Link-in-bio with just WordPress. If you are a WordPress user, I’d seriously suggest you consider this approach over a linking service.

Designing an ideal week calendar

May 11, 2021 by Chris Wilson Leave a Comment

I’ve heard many people discuss the benefit of creating an “ideal week” template to help guide your planning. While many of us can’t direct our schedules to achieve our ideal week calendars, it provides a useful reference that we can turn to and guide our planning. In the past, I’ve used a google spreadsheet, but this week I created a new ideal week calendar using iCal.

Table of Contents

What is an ideal week calendar?

An ideal week calendar maps how you wish your week was. If you were in complete control and could set the time you wanted/need for each task, then your calendar would look like the ideal week calendar.
I’ve created an ideal week schedule (a static doc) before but I’ve only had a calendar for the last couple of weeks and found it helps em feel on track.

Now when you say ideal…

You could either approach this in one of two ways.

What you would choose without any external influence. (Ideal = utopia)
How you would allocate your time if everything went according to plan (Ideal = intended).

While the first is a useful exercise as it helps to highlight the activities we enjoy and dread, providing a guide to help increase and decrease activities accordingly; the second is more practical for day to day planning.

Why an ideal week calendar helps

You should review different aspects of your work, life and preferences as you plan your ideal week (prompts below). This review process is valuable on its own. You’ll no doubt notice some tensions between activities you dislike but are valuable or appointments when you do your best work. You might also noticed how well (or not) your current time consumption matches your desires.

The real value of the ideal week calendar is that it provides a guide for what activities you should and shouldn’t do now. This is a framework to guide what activities you should do now.
If you are in complete control of your schedule, you can aim to stick to it rigidly; but if your manager has a magic lamp to sum you to any zoom call, you can use ideal week calendar as a guideline to adjust.

Why you should make an ideal week calendar not a doc

I first came across the ideal week concept from Michael Hyatt where he advocated using a google spreadsheet to create a doc for your ideal week. That’s a perfectly acceptable option and it’s better for some people to make a doc than a calendar.

those who time block and plan every day
those who find notifications distracting.
For creating your true “ideal” week that you can’t possibly stick to (at least yet).

But I was taken by the idea of making a calendar I could reference as…

I could access this anytime, anywhere
I have to adapt on the fly to my manager and co-workers activities but I want a guideline for activities for each day.
There are certain infrequent, important but never urgent tasks that can easily get neglected, using this method sets a time each week and provides a prompt to do them.

How to create your own ideal week calendar

Below is the five step process I used to create my ideal week calendar. While you don’t have to follow these steps and can probably work it out for yourself, you can use my process for yourself.
(The review prompts in step on and the final, sixth step are certainly worth considering).

1. Reflect

To start, we need to work out what we want to do and when is best to do it. You might want to consider the questions below to help clarify your thoughts.

When you are the most and least productive?
What activities can you only (or are easiest to) complete at certain times or locations? (i.e. the Gym is half way between work and home so it’s easiest to go before or after work)
What activities are the most crucial for you (both for work and personal life.)
How much time do you ideally want to dedicate to each area or core task?
How little time do you want to set aside for distracting activities (i.e. only 1hr of twitter a week)
When should you do your most valuable tasks? (guided by previous points)
When should you do your least valuable tasks?
What non-moveable appointments do you have?

2. Create a calendar

The first step is to create a calendar that you will fill.
As a Mac and Apple user, I went for an iCal calendar with my iCloud account. If you use Google calendar or a different tool then go for that.
Using a separate calendar allows you to turn it on and off rather than having “conflicts” with events.

3. Add the “big rocks”

With the calendar in place, add the most important task and the non-moveable items. Match your most productive times with your most valuable tasks.
These should be recurring events not one time events, i.e. a weekly meeting with friends or taking your child to their after-school club, not “taking my kid to camp”. One time events go in your regular calendar.

4. Fill in the gaps

With the key tasks in place, you should have some gaps left. These will probably be at times when you aren’t productive or have no clear purpose. The tasks will be part of two groups: those you forget and distractions. For distractions, make sure you set clear limits. For neglected tasks, be careful when you place them.
If a task is one you often neglect them, there’s a chance that you need more willpower to complete them (but you don’t have it when you normally turn to them).

5. Review

At this point, it’s good to review everything. You may have lost the big picture in the details, causing you to not give enough time to certain tasks, or create a schedule that won’t really work.
Look at the zoomed out view and make some adjustments.

6. Have the calendar at hand

The final step is to keep your calendar accessible so you can use it to guide you.
I have it appear on my Apple Watch in the central complication, showing whatever I want to be doing right now.
I also keep it in the calendar app on my Mac so I can look at that during the day.

Have you created an ideal week calendar?

Do you use an ideal week template or calendar? How has it helped you?

Creating a personal status board in Trello

April 9, 2021 by Chris Wilson Leave a Comment

I was taken by David Spark’s idea of a personal status board to keep track of projects across different themes. As a communications manager, I use Trello to help our team keep track of our projects and assets as well as ease communications. So I decided to use Trello for my own status board (although I’m curious about other options).

A view of my personal status board in Trello.

Table of Contents

What is a personal status board and why is it useful?

A personal status board provides a view of the major projects you have going on at a time. With it, you can see a high-level overview of what you have on your plate and the interesting potential projects you’d like to take on.
If you have lots of small projects on the go at once, coming back to your personal status board can help ground you, remind you of a project you’ve forgotten about and reassure you that everything is under control.

Why use Trello for a status board

Trello is a cloud based board project management app designed for group. These same features make it great for personal use.
The kanban approach is great for tracking what is coming up, what is in progress and what you need to be promoting. With labels, you can mark projects depending on the area of life they apply to. And because it’s a cloud app, it works on any OS and even has great mobile apps.

Are there other options?

Yes, you could use something like Todoist as it too offers boards. In theory, this might be superior as you could have all your task and projects in one view. At the same time, a task is not a project and so you might need to enter your projects as a task on a separate list. At this point, using another app like Trello is no different.
Notion is another great candidate with its all in one view including boards and timelines. While Notion has not worked for me, if you like Notion I believe it would be the best choice for you.

How to create your own personal status board

Identify your stages

a man reflecting on the stages of a project - hand drawn

While not every project follows a set flow, there are some common stages that you’ll notice across all your projects. These are useful to track the stage of everything you are working on.
These may be different for you depending on your work and life but try to include stages that include both work and home.
Here are mine for your inspiration

idea, (just an idea, no commitment)
upcoming, (something that I want/am planning to start soon)
creating, (something I’m actively working on)
waiting, (something I’m waiting till I can continue)
promoting. (Creation has finished, it’s time to share)
These will become “lists” in Trello.

Define areas of life

a person reflecting on the areas of life

With your stages in order, you may want to define some areas of life so that you can see if one part of your life is occupying more of your time than another (or if someone this missing). Some examples might be

Work
[Side project name] – i.e. blog / Sketchnote classroom
Home
Writing / Video (or other creative action)
[Company name] – especially for freelancers

Using Trello labels means you can apply multiple links.

Create your board

With your stages and areas prepared, it’s time to create your status board on Trello.
Head over to Trello (sign up if you haven’t already) and create a new board.
Add your stages as lists, and turn your areas into labels (you may want to match colours to them).

Add projects

With your board prepared, the only thing left is to start adding projects to your board.
Make a card, give it a name and attach a label. If you keep your board private, you can add items like links to your task manager or documents that you are working on. This can help you quickly switch content.
You may want to add a suitable image to help identify the project from a glance. Alliteratively, keeping the card simple helps view more at once.

View my personal status board.

Head over to Trello to see my current personal status board and the projects I’m working on.

See the status board

If you’ve made your own, I’d love to see it in the comments.

How to Start Sketchnoting today

December 14, 2020 by Chris Wilson Leave a Comment

I struggled to start sketchnoting. Although I caught the idea immediately but putting pen to paper felt overwhelming. I don’t want you to suffer the same issue, so here is a simple guide to start sketchnoting today.

This could be a useful classroom activity to introduce sketchnotes to students.

Want a video guide?

Get your video guide

Table of Contents

What are sketchnotes?

Sketchnotes are a form of visual notetaking that includes both text and graphical elements such as icons, banners, dividers, multiple colors and layouts. They don’t tend to follow strict left to right, top to bottom organization but instead are more flexible in their layouts.

You can learn more about what Sketchnotes are and why you should use them in this post.

Why should I bother with Sketchnotes?

Visual note-taking, such as sketchnotes, helps engage with conference talks, lectures and lessons and remember more information. It’s no wonder students, teachers and average Joes have started using this note taking method in the classroom, at conferences and at home for study and personal reflection.

Read this post if you’d like to know more about the benefits of sketchnoting.

What should I start sketchnoting?

You can sketchnote anything you want. It can be a conference talk that is occurring live, a lesson in your classroom or notes on a book you’ve just read.

It can be information someone else has given you, or ideas and plans you are thinking through.

For your first sketchnote, I suggest you make a sketchnote selfie including information about yourself. This is a topic that you are bound to be familiar with and will have a unique element of yourself.

I can’t draw, can I still sketchnote?

Yes! you can! There are three reasons for this.

Sketchnotes are about “Ideas not art”, that means getting the idea down is more important than an accurate impression. As long as you can understand your notes, that’s okay. That means simple pictures are usually better than art.
Sketchnotes are personal and reflect the sketchnoter. Some sketchnoters use more text, others use more images. You can choose to use more text in your notes if you like.
Your drawing will improve as you practice more. The only way to improve is to start! So let’s start today.

For more on how to sketchnote even if you can’t draw, join this free short course.

7 steps to create your first sketchnote and start sketchnoting.

Now that we know the basics of Sketchnoting, it’s time to create your first sketchnote. These steps will help guide you through the process of creating your own sketchnote.

This approach is not the approach I would take for a sketchnoting a live event such as a class. It does, however, provide a useful intro to sketchnoting which will help you develop core skills. You can then apply skills these when making a live sketchnote.

You don’t have to follow my recommendations at each point. Their purpose is to give you an easy to implement idea for your first sketchnote.

1. Brainstorm your topic

Before you start creating your sketchnote selfie, think about the things you want to include. Write a plain list of items you can include such as your:

name
age
location
job or studies
hobbies and interests
favorite… (book, food, etc.)

At some point you’ll feel that you’ve got every idea down that you could include, don’t stop. Wait a few minutes longer and see if you can get a few extra ideas. Those extra ideas are often the most interesting items.

to start sketchnoting, think about what ideas you should include

2: Group your ideas together

Now, you have some ideas written down, it’s time to group them together. By identifying information that work well together, you’ll help yourself create an easy-to-understand layout.

You could write your list out again, this time with your information gathered into groups. Alternatively, you could add marks to the side to signify what belongs together.

3. Plan your Sketchnote layout

A good sketchnote layout can help arrange information clearly and tell a good story. Some sketchnoters seem to have a magical ability to group information together.

Most of us aren’t like that.

By grouping your information together, you may already have an idea about how you could layout your sketchnote. Alternatively, you could look at the most common sketchnote layouts and find one to use.

A selection of different sketchnote layouts

While you could choose any sketchnote layout, I’d recommend the radial layout for your first sketchnote.

It’s probably more familiar to you as it’s similar to mind maps. This style also works well for a selfie as all the information is about one central item — you.

4: Identify some icons you can include

One last step before we make the sketchnote. Identify some icons that you could draw for points on your sketchnote. For example, if you like photography, you could draw a camera.

Need inspiration for what to draw? Look at the Noun project

While you could just do a Google image search, I recommend using The noun project. This site contains simple icons that represent different ideas. It is a great tool to see an example of a simple drawing that represents and idea. You can use this to get drawing ideas.

5. Start your sketchnote: Add your title

Start by adding your title and an image of you. If you are going with a radial format, place yourself in the center.

Your portrait doesn’t need to be accurate. Focus on the main details like the overall shape of your face and distinct features. If it doesn’t look accurate, never mind, this is just your first time.

6. Mentally divide up your paper

With your layout in mind, imagine some dividing lines on your paper. Think about how much information you need to include in each area and plan space accordingly. Make sure there is a gap between different sections.

If you want, you can pencil in some lines to help plan your space. I recommend using pencil at first as you may get this wrong.

If you are making a digital sketchnote using an app like procreate, you can add a layer with some guidelines.

7. Fill in your information

Now start filling in your information. Use your groupings to direct what you include where. I suggest you start with the main points, and then expanding outward to the smaller points and details.

You can add banners with text to show groupings like “Favorites” for your favorite things, or “bio” for some biographical data.

Leave space between sections so you can see what belongs where.

8. Stand back and appreciate it

You’ve done it! Your first sketchnote! I promise the next will be easier.

What’s next?

Now you’ve defeated the first sketchnote, you can continue to grow and the best way is with regular practice.

If you’d like some more guidance on the fundamentals of sketchnoting, sign up to 7 days to start sketchnoting. This free course will get you exploring the different types of sketchnotes available.

Sketchnote Layouts: The Ultimate Guide

August 26, 2020 by Chris Wilson Leave a Comment

My biggest obstacle to sketchnoting was arranging information. For a long time I stayed making “Sketchnotes lite”where I had text (with occasional colour) broken up by the odd image. Discovering sketchnote layouts changed all that. Suddenly the shackles were off and my notes radically shifted.

This may not be the case for you; there may be a different area that holds you back like drawing. But understanding sketchnote layouts can help you plan and organise the content in your sketchnotes.

Radial/mindmap

Although some people confuse mindmaps with radial sketchnotes, there is a subtle difference. Regardless, this layout has a central element and then spokes coming out from the centre. Radial mindmaps are great if you have a core topic or concepts.

Grid

The grid layout divides the page into squares with each square containing a single aspect. This is great for talks where there are clear division in content and works well when there are four or six items covered.

Columns

Columns group information together from top to bottom. You can use these a bit like a spreadsheet to show the same information for different items. It also works well for panel discussions.

Popcorn

The popcorn style involves random chunks of information across the page. This can be very handy when there isn’t perhaps a clear structure or logical flow (for example, question and answer sessions). It can help you gather your thoughts as well.

Portrait

The portrait layout involves a large, central image that the whole sketchnote is connected to. This works well for biographies of people as well as for food sketchnotes…can you make a portrait of a meal? Well you can with a sketchnote.

Path

The path style shows progressions and time as we move from the start to finish. This can happen in a variety of different ways like a giant U, Zig Zagging, spiraling in to the centre, or out from the centre, or just randomly across the page. This can work well to show how the order of a talks or the chain of events.

Storyboard

A storyboard is used in cinema and TV to represent key parts of a story with image and dialog below. For sketchnotes, this involves equal squares or rectangles with space for text below.

Comic

Comics are very similar to storyboards expect each frame can be a different size depending on the importance or requirements of the frame. This can lead to more dynamic sketchnotes.

More?

There are more variations and unique ideas for layouts that grow all the time. The layouts above provide an overview and framework that you can adapt. And you can invent your own unique layouts too. What is your favourite sketchnote layout?