Under the bonnet of the Posts
How hard is it to produce our websites and newsletters? A look behind the scenes or if you prefer: under the bonnet.
“Will you write something for the 8 January special about how the Posts are made?” the editors asked me just before Christmas. “A bit technical is allowed, but not too much”. Dangerous to ask me that. Do you have anywhere to go today?
When I first logged into the Zeepost administrator account, I knew broadly what I would find, but it was still quite an exciting moment, in late November 2023. I had only met Wouter van Dusseldorp a few times. In the years that I was responsible for the LVBHB site, we did have frequent e-mail and telephone contact about news items. I had also exchanged views with him about the technical side not long before his death. I knew he wanted to change certain parts, especially the newsletter.
Changes
What to change and what not to change was also the theme of the brainstorming sessions in the following weeks. The workflow would change anyway. The production of the Zee- Scheeps- en Zeilpost changed from a one-man company with all knowledge in one head to a collective in which everyone contributes his part.
To avoid burdening our readers with major changes and also because time was short, we left the websites on ‘the front end’ largely unchanged.
We did make major changes to the weekly e-mail newsletters. Wouter used a service that was technically completely separate from the website. That meant copying and reformatting all the articles. Despite some auxiliary software, a labour-intensive process every week.
Moreover, the old mail service was quite expensive. I knew that Wouter was considering switching to the more common form nowadays: per message only a teaser and then a Read more… button that takes you to the article on the website. That strengthened our decision to technically set that up in the lee of December 2023.
Website
Wouter was using WordPress since 2018: the most well-known system for this kind of website we continued using that. However, after 5 years of WordPress itself and many additional modules, it was about time of a major update.
WordPress is a content management system (CMS). Our average reader has lived through the early years of the Internet and sometimes still thinks in terms of ‘pages’ as a kind of static document created on a PC and then uploaded to a server. That’s not how it works today. When you enter our websites via a link, the ‘page’ you see is completely regenerated every time. The text is in a database and is formatted depending on the device you are using to view the site: a PC or laptop with large or small screen, a smartphone, an iPad…In the sidebar (or at the bottom on a phone), you will see banners of the sponsors that are currently ‘on’. We have 20 to 25 sponsors, you will see a different selection each time through a rotation system(AdRotate).
The editors create the articles directly on the website, by logging into the WordPress Dashboard, say the ‘artist’s entrance’. Inserting photos properly is the biggest challenge. They need to come across sharp, in the right place, but not bombard your smartphone with unnecessary Megabytes.
WordPress is the basis for something of a kit. In practice, you always add all kinds of plug-ins (extension modules) and a theme (design package).
Newsletter
Unlike Wouter, we send the newsletter directly from the website using the WordPress plug-in Newsletter. Once the editor has published the news items, newsletter production is almost entirely automatic. The only variable is the number of new posts since last week. Then I click send. This involves a lot more than an ordinary 1-to-1 e-mail, by the way.
Before every e-mail address these days there is a strict spam filter, otherwise you have no life. These spam filters consider every incoming e-mail as ‘spam until proven otherwise’. If you send an e-mail with the same subject to thousands of addresses in a short space of time, you will only get through if you meet all the technical requirements to come across as a reliable sender.
So the newsletter does not go from the website directly to the recipient, but via a special bulk e-mail service from SMTP2GO. A company in New Zealand, but the server for us is located in Amsterdam. The sending speed is metered, about 500 addresses per hour. Hence, you might get the newsletter an hour earlier or later than the skipper you are moored alongside.
So-called bounces (‘undeliverable’ error messages when an e-mail address no longer exists) are handled automatically. To avoid antagonising spam filters, we need to avoid continuing to send mails to addresses that no longer work.
The Scheepspost Calendar
The software that Wouter used for the familiar Scheepspost events calendar turned out not to be available anymore. The company behind it had stopped offering it a few years ago. We found another product that allowed organisers to submit their event themselves as a concept via a form. That turned out to be a success: more than half of the exactly 100 events in 2024 were filled in directly by the organiser. Nevertheless, we are still looking for another product to make it easier to share the calendar with other websites.
Web hosting
Zeilpost, the new site Wouter had started in early 2023, turned out to be running on a trial subscription with a luxury foreign provider. By early 2024, this subscription would become unjustifiably expensive. We therefore moved Zeilpost to the no-nonsense budget provider Cloud86 in Drachten. And at the end of 2024, the provider where Zee- en Scheepspost was running raised its prices by 31%. We have now moved those sites too to Cloud86.
Privacy and even more technology
No more cookies: you may not have noticed at all, but we no longer have a pop-up asking you to agree to cookies. We make a sport of not using software that sets cookies, at least not the kind that allow you to be tracked and require consent. There is no tracking in the newsletter either. We do not track whether you open the mail or which articles you read.
Statistics: so we don’t use Google Analytics either because of cookies and other tracking techniques. We do have Independent Analytics which only counts totals per news item. It also looks at the visitor’s device type and browser, but this is also only used for totals. It is not linked to IP address or other personal data.
Zeilpost will soon go international under the name Windassist. For this, a new bilingual site has been created using Polylang Pro, DeepL API and Loco Translate.
For donations, we are working on software to be able to pay these directly via iDeal and also receive an invoice. A kind of webshop with one product.
Large display of photos: we now have a so-called Lightbox on all three sites. If we receive photos worth seeing, you can click/tap them and view them in a modal window as large as your screen allows.
Willem Bast, webmaster@zeepost.info
Windassist sponsor