I’m super excited to launch Newsletter Glue v.2.
This is something we’ve worked on for the past 3-4 months and are really proud of.
We’re currently rolling this out in stages. So if you haven’t already seen an option to update the plugin, you should see it in the next couple of weeks.
In this post, I’ll give you a tour around our new features and share some of the behind-the-scenes decisions we made and obstacles we faced.
What’s inside v.2?
Newsletter Glue v.2.0 consists of a brand new admin settings user interface. It’s built as a React app using Gutenberg components and heavily inspired by WordPress.com, Jetpack and WooCommerce interfaces.
We built it to lay a faster, easier to navigate foundation for all the new features we have planned.
New plugin settings UI
You’ll now find our settings interface has been completely refreshed and is now both clearer and more consistent across each settings. Let’s take a tour…
Connections
We’ve merged the Connect page and the Email defaults page to a tab that’s now called Connections. This big change now conceptualises connections more like profiles and gives us a stronger foundation for the exciting new features and integrations we have planned for you this year. Unfortunately, I can’t share more details with you just yet. 😉
Newsletter blocks
In this page, you can check out all our custom built newsletter blocks. Learn what’s available and what you can do with them. This page gets a design refresh but keeps all the same functionality. We plan on building new newsletter blocks for you this year, and once they’re launched, you’ll be able to find them on this page. The top priority for now is the social sharing block which many of you have asked for.
Custom CSS
In this page, you can add custom CSS to your newsletter that will only show up in emails, and doesn’t affect your blog theme. This page also gets a little design refresh but keeps the same functionality. We don’t have plans to add to this page any time soon.
Additional
Here’s where you can manage all the other settings and defaults. You can even restart the onboarding wizard from this page. Like the others, this page got a nice new design refresh. Most importantly, this new system makes it much easier for us to quickly design new settings for you in the future.
Pro license
Finally, the pro license tab is where you can go to add your license key. This is important because one of the big changes we introduced in version 2 is locking the admin settings without a valid license key. More on that later…
Updated Templates & Styles
The Templates & Styles page also got a tiny refresh. We added the header and navigational bar at the top, and moved the Newsletter Theme Designer here.
Theme designer
The Newsletter Theme Designer now sits under the page Templates & Styles. This was a long time coming. We’ve wanted to move the Newsletter Theme Designer into Templates & Styles since the day we launched patterns. This made more sense as it would have meant that all design-related features were now found in the same place.
Well, we finally did it.
We used the same general header and navigation bar system that we used in our Settings, but with some slight differences:
- It’s full width not a fixed container. The reason we went with this was so that both the patterns list and Newsletter Theme Designer would have sufficient space and not feel cramped.
- It’s not a React app. We originally planned to do this for v.2.0 but it was eventually too much for our small team to handle, so we downscoped and removed it from the release. We might revisit this at a later date, but don’t have plans to do so right now.
Patterns
There’s no change to the patterns page except it now has a navigation bar to the top.
Locking admin settings based on license key
This was one of the big changes we made for version 2. Without a valid license key, you will no longer be able to access Newsletter Glue Settings, with the exception of the Pro license tab for you to add your license key.
To be clear, you’ll still be able to build newsletters and patterns, and publish them. You’ll also have access to the theme designer. You just won’t be able to change any of your existing settings.
Why lock admin settings
We’ll be updating our pricing packages soon. And part of this update will be offering different features for different price points.
Having a system for locking features allows us to better segment our customers and provide the value they want at the right price points.
What’s next?
Now that we’ve finally launched Newsletter Glue v.2, The team is already hard at work planning and building our next new features and integrations. I can’t reveal too much at this stage, but here are some general themes we are focusing on this year:
- More integrations (ESPs and plugins)
- More newsletter blocks
- A***ma*** newsletters 🤫
