Is it possible to customize the order that posts appear in the Micro.blog newsletter? I’d like uncategorized posts to appear first, and then posts from a specific category (the category name is Mitchellaneous).
Also, is it possible to preview changes to the newsletter design and CSS, so that I’m not blasting my subscribers with a janky design?
Thanks!
It’s a template, so you can do anything just about you can do in a template.but previewing email is a very complicated thing because every provider displays it differently. I think it’d be very hard to iterate successfully on that, especially with anything complex
True, but the only thing I’m trying to accomplish here is changing the order in which items are presented in the newsletter. That should be previewable.
The order now is, of course, chronological, oldest-to-newest.
I’d like to change it so they’re ordered first by category, then chronologically within categories.
And at the moment, I’m only interested in one particular category and ensuring that category appears last in the newsletter.
I’m happy to try to work out the code myself (with the help of Claude or Gemini), but I’d like some way to preview changes, and not just wait for the next newsletter to come out the next day.
I made a change to the CSS for my home page yesterday and it took me a dozen tries, previewing the change each time until I got it right.
You can do that by editing the template in your theme under newsletter, and send yourself previews when it collects. I’d recommend making a page since all you’re doing is filtering and ordering and once you have page that looks right, use the same filters/loops in your newsletter template with confidence.
Thanks, @jsonbecker When you say I should “send [myself] previews,” do you mean I should email the previews to myself? If so, how would I do that?
Or do you mean I should just create a page with the newsletter CSS in that page, and then view the page on the site?
None of this is CSS/visual. All of this is template code found in layouts/newsletter.html. And I believe on the newsletter page you can say “collect” and then click “send preview”. I don’t have the version of MB that supports newsletters anymore, so I’m not sure what the exact button says.
Thanks, @jsonbecker . When you say “the newsletter page,” do you mean layouts/newsletter.html? Or do you mean the Settings page for the newsletter page in the Micro.blog sidebar? I don’t see a “collect” and “send preview” button in either place?
@manton @sod Would you weigh in here, please? To reiterate: I want to modify the CSS for my newsletter, and I want to (1) Test those modifications before the newsletter goes out to subscribers and (2) View the output several times as I make changes, because I’m sure I won’t get it right the first time. Thanks!
Yes, you can preview your changes via Newsletter → Show All → [Subject Line of Issue] → Preview…
Thanks @sod . I just tested it out — I see a listing for past newsletters up to yesterday’s newsletter, but I do not see a current newsletter.
If I make changes to the newsletter CSS, will those changes show up in the preview for a past newsletter?
I think so, yes.
I had to put this little project aside for a bit, but I returned to it this afternoon. I made a code change for my HTML template for my newsletter and clicked the “Preview” button on the most recent edition of the newsletter to test the design and see if it works in my email client.
And I did not receive an email.
Also, the changes do not appear on the preview of the most recent edition of my newsletter.
Is there any way I can preview changes to the newsletter template, as an alternative to just making the changes and seeing what it looks like after it goes out to all my subscribers?
Thanks!
I’m guessing there’s one or more errors in your newsletter template, which is why sending the newsletter is failing. Check your logs carefully, and fix any issues in your template.
Thanks. I decided to take this in another direction and implement your suggestion from August to launch a separate blog for the newsletter.