Figure out mailchimp preview text

[dellsystem]

No description provided.

[jessesquires]

I just realized that 3cfa0dd didn't update this in every spot. I'll fix

[jessesquires]

nevermind lol. i just saw 986b40b

[anaulin]

In #37, @jessesquires said:

Did we vote on not just using the excerpt text for this?
EDIT: I'm fine either way, but I think the excerpt method is a bit simpler. Less front-matter to worry about.

I don't know if there was a deeper discussion or vote, but I got the impression from @stationaery and @dellsystem 's comments that there was a desire to have the MailChimp "email preview" to be a short pithy sentence, different from the excerpt (which is typically much longer), and also to use that in social card previews (which was done already).

[anaulin]

Right now the preview text is not set to anything in MailChimp:

[stationaery]

Speaking for myself, I’m a sucker for clever preview text

…

On Sat, May 2, 2020 at 7:06 PM Ana Ulin ***@***.***> wrote: Right now the preview text is not set to anything in MailChimp: [image: Screen Shot 2020-05-02 at 7 06 03 PM] <https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6729309/80896893-07b63f00-8ca8-11ea-867f-a96fab9bed9e.png> — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#34 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACES7PPHQU7AJ7QNTYHB2O3RPTGTVANCNFSM4MXNR7JQ> .

[jessesquires]

@anaulin Ahh I see. I think I can fix this.

@stationaery No problem! Let's stick with the preview text.

[jessesquires]

Figured this out. According to these docs:

Use this merge tag to generate preview text in a custom-coded campaign. Insert *|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|* just after the opening < body > tag in your HTML. To ensure the preview text isn’t visible in the body of your campaign, wrap the merge tag in a hidden < span > element.

Locate or add < style type= "text / css" > < /style> to your HTML, and add this code to the "style type" value:

.mcnPreviewText{display: none !important;}

After the opening < body > tag, add:

<!--*|IF:MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*--> 
<!--[if !gte mso 9]><!----><span class="mcnPreviewText" style="display:none; font-size:0px; line-height:0px; max-height:0px; max-width:0px; opacity:0; overflow:hidden; visibility:hidden; mso-hide:all;">*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*</span><!--<![endif]--> 
<!--*|END:IF|*-->

---

Seems pretty gross. But 🤷

[jessesquires]

My original thought was to use the RSS summary for the preview. We might still be able to do that if there is a merge tag for that, but I couldn't find one in the docs. (But there are different options when editing the template.)

Currently we have:

<summary type="html">{{ post.excerpt | escape }}</summary>

in feed.xml

[anaulin]

Nice. (And, I mean, HTML email is pretty gross, as is MailChimp HTML, so, I feel like we're committed to the grossness here...)

[jessesquires]

Ah, here's what I had seen before: https://mailchimp.com/help/rss-merge-tags/

However, I'm not sure if we can use *|RSSITEM:CONTENT|* for the email preview?

[anaulin]

I couldn't find any good documentation about RSS merge tags in the "preview" field. We might need to just test it.