Urban Age conferences

Signup forms

Since 2012, we have used various workflows to manage signup/expression of interest forms for Urban Age conferences.

Earlier workflows relied on custom Mailchimp forms, fields and subscriber groups; in 2014 we streamlined the workflow using the WordPress plugin Contact Form 7, set up to collect data through its sibling WordPress plugin Flamingo.

Form submission data is then exported from the Flamingo section of the WordPress dashboard when needed (for periodic reviews of expressions of interest, etc.) while the conference is being planned. Colleagues who need to browse and exports lists of submissions to these forms should be given a WordPress account, whose role needs to be “Urban Age conference applications editor”. In practice, however, due to the way in which the Contact Form 7 plugin deals with capabilities, it may be necessary to set their role to “Editor”, in case they cannot access the Flamingo section of the WordPress dashboard.

Besides collecting detailed signup information via Contact Form 7, through the current workflow we have also been automatically subscribing all the visitors who submit these forms to a conference-specific Mailchimp list (a new one is created each year): the signup form needs to include a notice advising that by submitting the form visitors will be added to a mailing list solely for the purpose of being kept up to date with conference information.

In the past, we had been managing these forms by embedding directly a MailChimp form (i.e. without using Contact Form 7), adding conference-specific fields to the main LSE Cities campaigns list, using groups to selectively send emails to the whole list or to the subgroup of users who indicated that they wished to only receive conference-specific updates. However, this was tricky to set up, it was prone to accidental mistakes (e.g. general campaigns being sent to conference-only subscribers), and caused confusion when visitors who were already subscribed to the mail LSE Cities campaigns list would try to submit the expression of interest form, as these would be advised that they would need to update their list membership preferences. This workflow was therefore discontinued as unsuitable.

In order to sign up users who submit the Contact Form 7 form on lsecities.net to the conference-specific MailChimp list, we use the PHP MailChimp library, plugging it into the wpcf7_before_send_mail WordPress action hook. This is currently done rather crudely (hardcoded WP post IDs, etc.), and should be refactored to use a sensible configuration data structure rather than repeating boilerplate code, although the Contact Form 7 workflow will likely be discontinued from 2017 on (see below), so this may not be worth doing and the whole CF7 setup and action hook could be removed altogether from the LSE Cities WordPress theme.

Once the year’s conference is over, the conference-specific MailChimp list should be deleted, if appropriate after sending one last campaign inviting users who are not subscribed to the main LSE Cities mailing list to subscribe to that, and inviting users to follow LSE Cities on social media.

As the Urban Age website becomes the main home for Urban Age conferences from 2016 onwards, use of Contact Form 7 will not be possible anymore if the signup form needs to be hosted on the Urban Age CMS. A MailChimp-only signup process using a conference-specific list and custom fields could likely be the simplest workflow for these future conferences.

Conference microsites

In 2010 and between 2012 and 2014, we developed conference microsites using a conference-specific visual theme. These microsites presented a short introduction to the conference, programme and list of speakers, conference newspaper, press and other information.

All these microsites have been merged back into the main LSE Cities website under its Urban Age section in 2015, with redirects in place.

The legacy microsite addresses were:

• globalmetrosummit.net
• ec2012.lsecities.net
• rio2013.lsecities.net
• delhi2014.lsecities.net

Once Urban Age conferences and related content are fully moved to the new Urban Age website, redirects from microsite URIs need to be updated, and all the conference materials under lsecities.net/ua/conferences will need to reference the new Urban Age website too (either through HTTP redirects or via a simple holding page on lsecities.net inviting to browse the full content on urbanage.lsecities.net.

For reference, the setup used for past microsites involved:

• theme setup:
  • frontend cache/proxy setup: add conference-specific HTTP header for requests coming to the microsite’s domain (x-microsite-id header); this was then used by the LSE Cities WordPress theme to add microsite-specific stylesheets
  • update theme: when x-microsite-id header is detected, add suitable class to <body> tag
  • SCSS updates as needed
• add conference-specific category in WordPress (to be used for tagging of background images in random rotation, news, etc.)