You produce some great journalism, and you’re generous enough to want others to publish it, too, especially if you’re a nonprofit newsroom. And you definitely want to track who used it and how many readers it had there, especially for those grant reports.

Enter the Republication Tracker. Once it’s turned on in a widget position, it will appear globally on your site, though you can use tags to hide or show on a per-story basis.

Getting Set Up

For now, it doesn’t come with the Newspack build, so you’ll need to go to Plugins > Add new and search for “republication.” You’re looking to install and then activate this:

After activation, head to Settings > Reading to set the verbiage that will appear just before someone copies your content. A lot of space is available for this text, and you should be clear as to whether and how someone picking up your story can use graphics, images or other goodies you have with your perfect prose.

Most importantly, you need to add your Google Analytics ID. You can find that by going to Site Kit > Settings > Analytics. After you paste it in the Republication Tracker tool, don’t forget to save before you leave the screen.

Setting Up the Widgets

Now that you’ve got it set up, you need to decide what widget space you’ll use.

As a refresher, you have widget spots:

  • In the sidebar, when posts are using the default template.
  • In the article above content, though this varies depending on which photo arrangement you’re using for your featured image.
  • In the article below the content.
  • In the footer
  • Above the copyright
  • In Inserted Ad Positions, if you’ve activated the Super Cool Ad Inserter

You can find all of these under Appearance > Customize > Widgets. Choose the area you want, click to add a widget and search for Republication Tracker Tool. (To see all of the widget areas that are available to you, be sure to click on a post in the main window of the Customizer; they won’t all show when looking at the homepage.)

With each placement, you can change the modest amount of copy that appears with the republication logo:

It’s now set up and appearing with each appropriate story.

What It Looks Like to Users

When anyone clicks on the “Republish This Story” button, they’ll be presented with this:

Your instructions on sharing, which you added on the settings screen, appear above the big headline. You should be sure to tell prospective story swipers that they only need to copy what’s in the box. The big headline, byline and date above the box are there to let them know they have the right story. It’s up to them to copy and then paste onto their site. When they do, this gets tacked onto the end (they can delete the logo if they want):

What It Looks Like in the Editor

After it’s released into the wild, your story will send back information, which will be at the end of each story in the editor, down by the Yoast settings:

Here’s a demo video of the tool in action.