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Newsletters

A PDF archive. Upload your back issues; SocietyPress generates cover thumbnails and shows them in a grid. Members browse, click, read.

What you can do

  • Upload past newsletters as PDFs.
  • Auto-generate cover thumbnails from the first page of each PDF.
  • Organize by year, by series ("Quarterly Journal," "Monthly Newsletter," "Annual Report").
  • Restrict to members-only or make public.
  • Bulk upload — drag a folder of PDFs once instead of one at a time.

How to add your first newsletter

SocietyPress → Newsletters → Add New. Title (e.g., "March 2026 Quarterly"), date, optional description, upload the PDF. Save.

The cover thumbnail generates automatically — the first page of the PDF, rendered as a small image. If you want to override it (e.g., the first page is a plain table-of-contents and you'd prefer to use the second page), upload a custom cover image on the same edit page.

How to bulk upload back issues

Got fifty back issues sitting in a folder? SocietyPress → Newsletters → Bulk Upload. Drag the folder into the dropzone. SocietyPress queues each file, generates titles from the filenames (e.g., 2025-Q1-Newsletter.pdf becomes "2025 Q1 Newsletter"), and processes them.

Editable batch — review the auto-generated titles before final import. Set the publication date series-wide if it's not in the filenames.

How to put the archive on a page

Page builder: drop the "Newsletter Archive" widget. Configure: per-page count, login-required toggle.

Shortcode: [sp_newsletter_archive].

The archive shows the cover thumbnails in a grid, sorted newest-first, with the title below each. Click a thumbnail to open the PDF.

How to control access

SocietyPress → Settings → Newsletters → Members-only download (toggle).

When on, non-members can see the grid and the cover thumbnails (so they know what they'd get if they joined) but clicking a thumbnail prompts a login. Members get the PDF directly.

Per-newsletter override is available — open any newsletter, set "Visibility" to public to make that single issue available to everyone (useful for sample issues used in marketing).

If something looks wrong

Cover thumbnail didn't generate. PDF parsing depends on the host's available libraries. SocietyPress → Newsletters lists each newsletter; click "Regenerate cover" on the row. If it fails repeatedly, your host may not have the required PDF library — upload a custom cover image as a fallback.

Bulk upload stalled. Refresh and try again. Bulk upload processes files one at a time; if your PHP timeout is short (under 30 seconds), large batches can hit it. Either upload in smaller batches or ask your host to bump max_execution_time.

Members can't download. Verify they're logged in. The "Members-only download" setting requires a logged-in session. If a logged-in member still can't download, check their member status — lapsed members fail the access check.

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