Moylgrove Events Mailshot - WordPress plugin

Creates a summary on MailChimp of events published on your website.

Built for https://moylgrove.wales

Website prerequisites

Assumptions about your WordPress site:

• There is an event category which contains the posts to be included in the mails
• The site's repertoire of image sizes includes medium
• Each event is a post that has a title and a featured image
• ACF is installed, and the following fields are used:
  • expires - Date after which the event is no longer displayed
  • dtstart - DateTime on which the event occurs
  • subtitle - string, may be empty
  • price - string, may be empty

Assumptions about your MailChimp account:

• You've set up a separate folder for the emails generated by this plugin

Keys

Requires a file 'MailChimpKeys.php' (not on GitHub) that contains MailChimp keys:

<?php
class MailChimpKeys {
    protected const MailChimpKey = "XXXXX"; // API key provided by MailChimp
    protected const MailChimpAuthorization = "Basic YYYYY"; //Authorization: base64 rendition of x:{MailChimpKey}
    protected const MailChimpUrl = "https://ZZZZ.api.mailchimp.com/3.0/";
    protected const FolderID = "MMMMM"; // MailChimp campaign folder for these generated emails
}

Easiest way of getting MailChimpAuthorization is to use curl:

curl --headers https://ZZZZ.api.mailchimp.com/3.0/ping --user x:XXXXX

where 'x' can be anything, including just 'x', and XXXXX is the MailChimpKey.

Look at the request header that curl sends, and copy the Authorization header.

Usage

Set up a page that won't be visible to the public - e.g. a post with "Uncategorized" category or Draft status.

Include in it a shortcode:

[ moylgrove_mailshot ]

View the page and you'll see a version of the email that will be generated.

Refresh the page with a query appended to the URL:

• ?test=1 - Will send a test email
• ?send=1 - Sends to the default audience of the MailChimp account. Also deletes all previous mails in the folder.
• ?ping=1 - Tests the connection to MailChimp