Sections

A section is a heading in your issue with links underneath it. The interface calls them categories in a few places, and it is the same thing: a name, an order, and whichever links you have dragged into it.

Sections belong to the newsletter rather than to one issue, so the set you settle on is the set every issue starts with. That is what makes a roundup recognisable week to week, and it is the shape the composer is built around.

The four you start with

Every new newsletter is created with four sections: News, Tools, Articles and Sponsored, in that order. They are a starting point rather than a structure you have to keep.

Most curators rename at least two of them within the first issue, which is expected. A section name can be up to 60 characters, and the Category button above the links adds a new one at the end of the list.

Renaming and reordering

Rename from the section’s own heading: press Rename, type, press Save name. The new name appears everywhere that section appears.

Reorder by the drag handle beside the heading. The order you leave them in is the order they appear in the email, on your website and in the plain text part of the message, so the running order of your issue is decided here rather than in three places.

One thing worth knowing before you rename something you have used for a year: the pages of issues you have already sent are rendered when a reader opens them, so a rename shows up on those pages too. The emails that have already gone out keep the old heading, because nothing can change an email that has been delivered.

Moving links between sections

Drag a link by its handle to move it inside a section or into another one. The composer sends the whole arrangement after each drop rather than a sequence of moves, so what you see is what is stored.

An empty section is a valid drop target, which is what lets you build next week’s issue by making the section first and filling it afterwards. The handles work from the keyboard as well: focus one and use the arrow keys. Adding links in the first place is covered on adding a link.

Why an empty section does not appear

An empty section renders nothing at all. No heading, no rule, no gap, in the email, on the website or in the plain text part.

The composer says so on the section itself, so you are never guessing. This is what makes an occasional section practical: a Jobs section that has something in it once a month can sit in your list all year and appear only in the issues where you used it, and you do not have to remember to delete it and rebuild it.

Deleting a section

Deleting a section removes the heading, not the links. Every link that was in it becomes uncategorised, and Issue Mint says so when it happens.

Uncategorised links still go out. They render after every named section, without a heading of their own, and the composer shows them in a group called Uncategorised that only appears when something is in it. If you deleted a section by mistake, recreate it and drag the links back.

Where an inserted sponsor lands

A sponsorship booking inserted from the sponsors panel arrives uncategorised rather than in the Sponsored section, because a sponsored item is placed by what was sold rather than filed under your reading categories. Drag it into Sponsored, or up to the top, or wherever you have decided sponsored items go in your issue. Sponsored items covers the rest of that, including what a banner does differently. Marking an ordinary link as sponsored does not move it: it stays in whichever section you put it in.