Release notes

A summary of most important changes to the Newspack suite. For detailed changelogs, see the releases pages of respective GitHub projects. For changes after July 6, 2021, please view these posts.

July 6, 2021

• Newspack Plugin
  • Prevent accidental deletion of essential pages (homepage, blog posts page, privacy policy, WooCommerce pages). If you want to delete one of these pages, you must first assign an alternative for the essential role.
  • Fixed a bug that caused certain Newspack-branded plugins to appear as “unsupported plugins” in the Health Check.
• Theme
  • Fixed a bug that caused errors when rendering mobile-only ad units.
  • Fixed a bug that affected the placement of some captions when rendered in Safari.
• Newsletters
  • Added a feature to bulk-edit the public or non-public page status of multiple newsletters.
  • Added “Quick Edit” functionality for updating the public or non-public page status of a newsletter.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented non-admin users from having full access to newsletter ads and being able to send newsletters.
• Ads
  • Removed the unused “Search Results” and “Archive” global ad unit placements, since these are not rendered anywhere by the Newspack theme.
  • Fixed a bug that occurred when adding a new empty Newspack Ad Unit widget to a widget area.
• Listings – v2.0.0 contains many new features and bugfixes. The most important new features are listed below.
  • v2.0.0 of Newspack Listings contains breaking changes. If you’ve been using a v1.X.X version of Newspack Listings in production, please review your lists and listings to ensure they’re appearing as expected.
  • New global settings: There are several new global options under Listings > Settings, including the ability to change the URL slugs for listings and each listing type, and the ability to hide author names and publish dates for all listings by default. Author names and publish dates can be shown or hidden for individual listings as well.
  • Block usage: Listings can now appear in Homepage Posts and Post Carousel blocks. Look for listing types in the “Post Types” sidebar panel for those blocks.
  • Categories and Tags: Listings now use the same categories and tags as regular posts. Any listing-specific categories or tags you’ve created in v1 must be migrated to regular post categories and tags, so please get in touch with your TAM if you had previously published listings using v1. This will make it easier to show listings using category or tag filters in the Homepage Posts or Post Carousel blocks, and should also enable ad targeting for listings using the same categories and tags as posts (using key-value targeting in GAM).
  • Sponsored listings: Listings can now be sponsored like regular posts or pages. Sponsored listings will appear with native sponsor styles in Curated List, Homepage Posts, and Post Carousel blocks, as well as with native and underwriter sponsor styles on their single listing view.
  • Listing templates: You can now select a post template for each listing. Listings still default to the “one column wide” template, but this can be overridden using the “Post Attributes” sidebar option shown in each listing’s editor sidebar.
  • Featured image styles: You can now choose a featured image style for listings, just like with regular posts and pages. Useful if you want to hide the featured image on the singular view but show the listing with an image in a Curated List block, for example.
  • Listing roles: Certain listing types now have better-defined roles. Places are intended to be used for business profiles, and Marketplace Listings are intended to be used for ads such as classifieds, obituaries, real estate listings, etc. Accordingly, we no longer offer Business Listing block patterns for Marketplace Listings.
  • Price block: There is a new “Price” block available in Marketplace Listings only. This will render a price-formatted number in the currency you select under block settings. It will also save the value to the listing’s metadata for future search and filter capabilities (planned for v3+ of Listings). Useful for classified ads or any listing advertising something for sale.
  • CSV imports: There is now an importer script that can be used to import data from a CSV file as listings. This requires configuration, so please reach out to your TAM if you’re interested in this feature.
  • Related content: Listings can now be associated with each other, or with posts and pages. Look for the “Related Content” sidebar when editing listings. This is an experimental feature that won’t show anything on the front-end just yet, but a future release will enable automated front-end display of related content.

June 30, 2021

• Newspack Plugin
  • Fixed a bug that caused 301 redirects when sharing a post on Facebook
• Campaigns
  • Improved the prompt duplication UI
• Theme
  • Styling fixes for Newspack Sacha theme
  • Fixed mobile menu display when only widgets are assigned

June 22, 2021

• Newspack Plugin
  • Added Distributor as a whitelisted plugin, enabling one-click installs for Newspack customers
• Listings
  • Fixed several bugs that prevented Curated List block options from appearing correctly in the editor preview.

June 15, 2021

• Newspack Plugin
  • Added ability to set custom fonts in the Design dashboard page.
• Blocks
  • Added the ability to set a right or left alignment to author avatars in the Author Profile block.
  • Fixed a style bug with the Homepage Posts block that caused images to not fill the available space when used with the “Behind” style option.
• Newsletters
  • Fixed a bug that caused newsletter drafts to be unsaveable when Gravity Forms is active on the same site.
• Campaigns
  • Added an option to duplicate existing prompts.
  • Added the ability to use shortcodes inside prompt content.
  • Fixed a bug that caused prompts to be injected into account-related pages such as the password reset page.
• Ads
  • Added an experimental integration with Google Ad Manager that allows ad units to be managed from within the Newspack dashboard (note: requires an environment flag to be set for use).
  • Added experimental support for rendering ad units on AMP pages using regular GPT JavaScript instead of AMP ads (note: requires an environment flag to be set for use).
• Sponsors
  • Fixed a bug that caused duplicate sponsors to appear in the Sponsors selector when editing posts after a sponsor is renamed.

June 8, 2021

• Blocks
  • Added a new Author Profile block, which displays biographical info for both regular WP users and Co-Authors Plus guest authors
• Newsletters
  • Fixed a bug that prevented Post Inserter blocks from being editable inside reusable blocks.
• Listings
  • Fixed a bug that caused some block option updates to not be displayed in the editor or on the front-end.

May 25, 2021

• Newspack Plugin
  • Fixed a bug in the Advertising dashboard that caused internal links to open in a new tab or window.
  • Added more font options in the Site Design wizard.
• Theme
  • Added a new Customizer option to set a background color for ad containers.
• Campaigns
  • Added a new Single Prompt block, which lets you manually place a single prompt in post or page content. This block is intended to be a more user-friendly replacement for placing prompts via shortcode.
  • Also added a new “Manual Only” placement option, which prevents prompts from being inserted programmatically anywhere. Prompts with this placement will only be shown if they’re placed using the new Single Prompt block, or via a shortcode.

May 18, 2021

• Newspack Plugin
  • Added Reusable Blocks Extended as a supported plugin.
• Theme
  • Added the ability to use text-formatting HTML tags in post subtitles. The following tags are now allowed in subtitles and will be rendered on the post front-end:
    • <b> – Bold text
    • <strong> – Important text
    • <i> – Italic text
    • <em> – Emphasized text
    • <mark> – Marked text
    • <small> – Smaller text
    • <del> – Deleted text
    • <ins> – Inserted text
    • <sub> – Subscript text
    • <sup> – Superscript text
    • <u> – Underlined text
• Republication Tracker Tool
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the tracking pixel from being loaded in republished content if the attribution statement was turned off.

May 13, 2021

• Newspack Plugin
  • Added a link to the admin menu to manage Reusable Blocks.
• Blocks
  • Added more features to the Post Carousel block:
    • Better behavior and display styles on AMP pages
    • Select the aspect ratio for your carousel’s slides
    • Optionally display multiple slides at a time (up to 6 at large viewports, 2 at mobile viewports)
• Republication Tracker Tool
  • Added an option in Reading settings to make the attribution statement and site logo that appear alongside republished content optional.

May 4, 2021

• Newspack Plugin
  • Integrated the Newspack Scheduled Post Checker plugin, so it’s no longer required as a separate installation for sites using the Newspack plugin.
  • Introduced batched analytics reporting, to avoid a bug with Google Analytics that sometimes caused events with large data payloads to not be reported.
• Blocks
  • Introduced a feature to select different post types to display in the Post Carousel block.
• Newsletters
  • Added the ability to add custom CSS to any newsletter. The custom CSS is appended to the MJML template for emails sent through the ESP.
• Campaigns
  • Fixed a bug which prevented more than 10 prompts from being displayed on any one post or page.

April 27, 2021

• Campaigns
  • Redesigned and improved the UI for editing segments.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented above-header prompts from being dismissible on non-AMP pages.
  • Fixed a bug that affected segments that were assigned deleted or non-existent categories.
  • Fixed a bug that caused overlay prompts to pick up the wrong delay attribute.
• Ads
  • Sticky ad units will now be displayed on small (mobile) viewports only.

April 13, 2021

• Newsletters
  • Fixed a bug with the Posts Inserter block where it wouldn’t display authors even if the “Display Author” option was enabled
• Campaigns
  • Added a new option to hide the border that appears around inline prompts
  • Added support for inserting inline prompts inside Classic Content blocks
  • Fixed a bug that prevented draft prompts from appearing in previews
  • Fixed a bug that sometimes chose the wrong above-header prompt to be displayed to readers

April 6, 2021

• Newspack Plugin
  • Potentially Breaking Change: Collection of News Tagging Guide analytics data is now opt-in, for performance reasons. If you want to track News Tagging Guide data, please visit Newspack > Analytics > Custom Events and toggle ON the option as described in the support docs.
  • Whitelisted Google Web Stories as a supported plugin. This plugin can now be installed with a single click from the plugins dashboard.
• Blocks
  • Posts Carousel blocks will now render without duplicating posts if there are other Posts Carousel blocks or Homepage Posts blocks on the same page.
  • Added new block patterns for Homepage Posts.
  • Fixed a bug which prevented posts without a featured image from being rendered in the Posts Carousel block.
• Campaigns
  • Fixed a bug which broke tag filtering: assigning tags to a prompt will now correctly cause those prompts to be displayed only on posts and pages with at least one matching tag.
  • Traffic originating from common crawlers and bots (such as search engines) will no longer be tracked in Campaigns analytics data.
  • Various performance enhancements.

March 30, 2021

• Campaigns
  • Fixed a bug that caused Campaign analytics recorded since March 24 to not be displayed in the Campaigns dashboard.
• Newsletters
  • Added support for custom excerpts, which will be shown for public newsletters in all archive pages and Homepage Posts blocks.

March 24, 2021

• Theme
  • Added a new Customizer option to select a footer logo image size
  • Added support for Web Stories
• Blocks
  • Moved all Newspack block patterns to the standard block inserter UI (no longer in a custom sidebar)
  • Added many new block patterns for the Homepage Posts block
• Newsletters
  • Added support for featured images to Newsletters (especially useful for Newsletters that are published as a public page)
• Campaigns
  • Introduced a new Custom Placements system for placing prompts manually in post and page content
  • Fixed a bug where newly published prompts would automatically get assigned a default category
  • Several improvements for performance and stability

March 16, 2021

• Newsletters
  • Added support for revisions when editing newsletters.
  • Fixed a bug that caused some sent newsletters not marked publicly visible to be shown on archive pages.

March 2, 2021

Important note: This week’s releases include several potentially breaking changes for the Newspack Campaigns plugin. Please review the detailed summary of breaking changes here and verify that your campaigns and segments are functioning as expected after the update.

• Newspack Plugin
  • Introduced a new option to disable News Tagging Guide analytics reporting. If you don’t need to track NTG events, you can now turn them off by visiting Newspack > Analytics > Custom Events in the WP admin dashboard.
• Campaigns
  • Added the ability to assign multiple segments to a single prompt.
  • Changed the logic that dictates which prompts are displayed to readers who match multiple audience segments. This change is significant and may break functionality for existing prompts. Read more about the change here.
  • Improved the behavior of preview sessions so that prompts now behave more like they do to real readers. Specifically, frequency settings and prompt dismissals now behave as expected in previews.
• Newsletters
  • Fixed a bug that sometimes caused draft newsletter ads to be inserted into newsletter content.

February 25, 2021

• Newspack Plugin
  • Some minor design updates throughout the Newspack dashboard and onboarding experience.
• Campaigns
  • Fixed several sorting-related bugs in the Segments tab. It’s no longer possible to re-sort the list while a sort operation is already in progress, or if the segments list has previously changed in another browser instance.
• Ads
  • Improved the rendering of non-responsive, multi-size ad units. Now, if multiple sizes exist for a non-responsive unit, any size can potentially be rendered, not just the largest size.

February 16, 2021

• Homepage Posts block
  • Fixed a bug that caused incorrect rendering of excerpts in the editor for posts that included certain blocks with fallback content.
• Campaigns
  • Added handling for the “Uncategorized” category: previously, this category was hidden from Campaigns UI because a prompt with only this category was assumed to be the same as a prompt with no categories, but this assumption was found to cause issues with rendering these prompts. “Uncategorized” can now be managed and behaves like any other category when configuring category filtering for prompts.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented certain prompts from ever being displayed if there are more than ten prompts of the same placement type active on the site.