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How I write and curate the cron.weekly newsletter (2020)

81 points| NicoJuicy | 4 years ago |ma.ttias.be | reply

12 comments

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[+] tagawa|4 years ago|reply
Very kind of Mattias to share his process in such detail. I'm doing similar experiments at the moment with a wristwatch-focused newsletter, which is still tiny but requires minimal effort from me - usually just running a command once a week. My flow is:

1. A python script checks the RSS feeds of a handful of relevant blogs and pulls in any new posts.

2. The script checks a couple of relevant subreddits and pulls in the top discussions.

3. The script combines the posts/discussions and sends them to a handlebars template.

4. The result is then sent to the SendGrid API to send out to subscribers (although I send a test version to myself first, just in case).

There's no commentary in the newsletter which would be nice to have, but my priority is on establishing a quick and simple process that works – fancy stuff can be added later if I feel like it. SendGrid allows me to disable link-click tracking within the newsletter, and also handles subscribing/unsubscribing through an embedded iframe[0] so that's another thing I don't have to worry about.

[0] https://mizeni.com/newsletter

[+] nyxf|4 years ago|reply
Hi, the newsletter looks great. I have a similar thing, just that I use a pip package - markdown to create the html There is also [Dominate](https://pypi.org/project/dominate/) incase you want to edit the finer details. I quite enjoyed using it since it deals with the tags by using a context manager which makes code look clean especially when you need to generate lists with li tags (which is what most of the newsletter is)

I actually have a different question for you: Once, you're all set and done with the tech and it works flawlessly, How exactly do you go about marketing and making your newsletter known? Currently I have my friends and family on it but that's about it. I have posted it on twitter once but that got me only about 3 new subscribers.

This is where I am stuck at the moment. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

[+] teitoklien|4 years ago|reply
;-; why seiko only

Your newsletter has a seiko monopoly

;-;

This made me wonder tho, if there is a newsletter for watch movements.

[+] malinens|4 years ago|reply
Too bad Mattias has paused his newsletter. It had great content- like short weekly summary of hacker news with most important stuff. Are there any similar newsletters around?
[+] carlchenet|4 years ago|reply
Great newsletter, interesting to know how you curate it.
[+] manceraio|4 years ago|reply
Site crashing on Android Chrome.
[+] NicoJuicy|4 years ago|reply
I don't think it's that combo. I didn't have 1 site crashing ever on chrome Android.

S20 currently.