You produce some great journalism, and you’re generous enough to want others to publish it, too, especially if you’re a nonprofit newsroom. And you definitely want to track who used it and how many readers it had there, especially for those grant reports.
Enter the Republication Tracker. Once it’s turned on in a widget position, it will appear globally on your site, though you can use tags to hide or show on a per-story basis.
Getting Set Up
For now, it doesn’t come with the Newspack build, so you’ll need to go to Plugins > Add new and search for “republication.” You’re looking to install and then activate this:
After activation, head to Settings > Reading to set the verbiage that will appear just before someone copies your content. A lot of space is available for this text, and you should be clear as to whether and how someone picking up your story can use graphics, images or other story assets.
Most importantly, you need to add your Google Analytics 4 ID, and your Google Analytics 4 API Secret. Both fields have a link explaining how to get that information. Don’t forget to save before you leave the screen.
Setting Up the Widgets
Now you need to decide what widget space you’ll use.
As a refresher, you have widget spaces:
- In the sidebar, when posts are using the default template that creates the right rail.
- In the article above content, though this varies depending on which photo arrangement you’re using for your featured image.
- In the article below the content.
- In the footer
- Above the copyright
You can find all of these under Appearance > Customize > Widgets. Choose the area you want, click to add a widget and search for Republication Tracker Tool. (To see all of the widget areas that are available to you, be sure to click on a post in the main window of the Customizer; they won’t all show when looking at the homepage.)
With each placement, you can change the modest amount of copy that appears with the republication logo:
It’s now set up and appearing with each appropriate story.
What It Looks Like to Users
When anyone clicks on the “Republish This Story” button, they’ll be presented with this:
Your instructions on sharing, which you added on the settings screen, appear above the big headline. You should be sure to tell prospective story swipers that they only need to copy what’s in the box. The big headline, byline and date above the box are there to let them know they have the right story. It’s up to them to copy and then paste onto their site. When they do, this gets tacked onto the end (they can delete the logo if they want):
Seeing the results of tracking
For individual stories, a count is kept at the bottom of the post when it’s opened in the editor.
A tracking pixel is included inside the content offered for republication, which sends data to Google Analytics 4. Views are tracked as pageview events in, with the shared URL listed as referrer.
Here’s a demo video of the tool in action.