New Parse.ly Report: “Your Year in Content” Report

We’re excited to introduce Your Year in Content, a year-end report that provides a high-level view of your site’s content performance over the past calendar year.

What’s included

This report compiles key metrics at the site level, helping you assess your content strategy and impact:

  • Total performance metrics – Yearly page views and visitor counts tallied in one place.
  • Top content analysis – Your top 5 posts, most engaging sections, and highest-impact authors.
  • Key content insights – Additional data to give you a full picture of your year’s performance, such as your top-tweeted post or top search-driven post.

Why it matters

  • Inform strategy – Use past performance to guide future content decisions.
  • Team recognition – Highlight top-performing content and contributors.
  • Annual planning – Leverage insights to set data-driven goals for the year ahead.

How to access your report

Your Year in Content report is available now! To view it, replace {{SITEID}} with your site’s ID, such as wpvip.com in the below URL.

http://dash.parsely.com/{{SITEID}}/year-in-content 

Note: This report is available only at the individual site level and will not appear in the reporting section of the Parse.ly dashboard.

Parse.ly Plugin 3.17: New Release and Default Version

We are happy to announce that version 3.17 of the Parse.ly plugin will become available in VIP staging environments on Tuesday, November 12, 2024. Before using it in production, we recommend testing the new release in staging.

This release will become the default in production on Tuesday, November 19, 2024, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. These changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

What’s new

In terms of features, the Excerpt Suggestions tool is now accessible through the Content Helper Sidebar in the Post Editor, and it’s now possible to customize the tone and persona of the suggested excerpts.

As we’re preparing to introduce more features into the Content Helper, this is mainly a maintenance release geared towards making our codebase more flexible and easily maintainable. We’ve done this by:

  • Refactoring our WP REST API endpoints.
  • Adding more tests, making our integration tests run against PHP 8.4, and migrating our E2E tests to Playwright.
  • Using Composer autoloader and creating a new plugin release workflow.
  • Making a handful of smaller adjustments and fixing a couple of issues.

Breaking Changes

With the rework of our internal REST API, the old API in the wp-parsely/v1 namespace has been deprecated and replaced with the new wp-parsely/v2 namespace. While this update does not impact the standard use of the Parse.ly plugin, it will affect any custom implementations that rely on the previous API. If you are using a custom implementation to fetch data from the plugin, please update your implementation to ensure compatibility.

Parse.ly Plugin 3.16: New Release and Default Version

We are happy to announce that version 3.16 of the Parse.ly plugin will become available in VIP staging environments on Tuesday, July 9, 2024. Before using it in production, we recommend testing the new release in staging.

This release will become the default in production on Tuesday, July 16, 2024, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. These changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

Release highlights

This release focuses on enhancements to Smart Linking, as well as a providing a GUI for controlling access to the Content Helper’s AI features. It is also complemented by numerous bug fixes and smaller enhancements.

Smart Linking enhancements

  • Users can now review Smart Links before adding them to posts. This is done through a dialog that allows users to preview and approve or reject every Smart Link suggestion individually.
  • Using the same dialog, users can manage the post’s Smart Links at any time, as well as inspect inbound and outbound links.
  • We’ve included a handful of bug fixes related to Smart Linking in this release, including a fix to prevent duplicate Smart Links.

Content Helper AI feature permissions

  • It’s now possible to control access to the Content Helper’s AI features per User Role. For example, administrators can choose to limit access to Smart Linking to Editors only, and disable Title Suggestions for everyone.
  • Permission settings are currently available for Smart Linking, Title Suggestions, and Excerpt Suggestions. Permissions can be configured quickly and easily, using the Content Helper tab in the plugin’s Settings page. Custom User Roles are supported.
  • If needed, all the Content Helper features using AI can be disabled with a single click.

Parse.ly Plugin 3.15: New Release and Default Version

We are delighted to announce that the Parse.ly plugin version 3.15 will become available in VIP staging and production environments on Tuesday, May 14, 2024. Before using it in production, we recommend testing the new release in staging.

This release will become the default in production on Tuesday, May 21, 2024, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. These changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

What’s new

  • Smart Linking will retry to get results up to 3 times when certain errors occur. This process is reflected in the UI and can be cancelled at any time.
  • Improved API content and request handling.
  • Numerous bugfixes and code quality improvements, which were the main focus for this release.

Parse.ly Plugin: End of AI features support in versions below 3.14

Summary

If you are using Content Helper AI features and running a wp-parsely version below 3.14, AI features will stop working on June 3 2024. To remediate this, an upgrade to Parse.ly plugin version 3.14 or newer will be needed. All the non-AI features of the plugin will keep working as expected.

Who is affected by this change

Customers who have enrolled to use Content Helper AI features (such as Title Suggestions, Smart Linking, Excerpt Generator) and are running a version of wp-parsely lower than 3.14, whether as part of vip-go-mu-plugins or as a self-managed installation.

What is causing this change

Parse.ly plugin versions below 3.14 use a legacy version of the Parse.ly AI infrastructure that was deployed during the initial testing phases of our AI tooling. The legacy infrastructure is incompatible with the new infrastructure (which is receiving regular updates and improvements) used in wp-parsely version 3.14 and newer. The old infrastructure is being decommissioned on June 3 2024. As such, any implementations that are based on it will become inoperable.

How to fix this

If you are affected, the Parse.ly plugin will need to be updated to version 3.14 or newer to make AI features work again. We always recommend using the latest wp-parsely version provided by vip-go-mu-plugins.

Parse.ly Plugin 3.14: New Release and Default Version

We are delighted to announce that the Parse.ly plugin version 3.14 will become available in VIP staging and production environments on Tuesday, March 12, 2024. Before using it in production, we recommend testing the new release in staging.

This release will become the default in production on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. These changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

What’s new

  • The new smart linking feature can automatically embed related links within a block or an entire post. It uses Parse.ly AI to identify the most relevant and high-performing content on your site, and automatically embeds them as links in the post. Not only does this save you time otherwise spent finding related content, but embedded links improve recirculation and increase traffic and engagement across your site. This feature is entirely opt-in, as are all our other AI features.
  • The new option to use full metadata for non-posts helps Parse.ly customers see metadata for non-posts in their Parse.ly dashboard. For questions or support on this new capability, please contact [email protected].
  • New and improved look for the Content Helper! In the last few months we’ve introduced several pre-publishing tools that are powered by AI, and with this release we are making it easier for you to publish faster in one view, and see how your work is performing in another view. Our goal is to simplify and streamline your experience in the WordPress block editor so you can work more efficiently, and we hope this updated user interface will help with that!
  • To complement all this work, we made internal changes to enable our use of the latest version of the Parse.ly AI API, which should improve the quality of suggestions and also allow for additional features in the future.

Parse.ly Plugin 3.13: New Release and Default Version

We are delighted to announce that the Parse.ly plugin version 3.13 will become available in VIP staging and production environments on Tuesday, January 23, 2023. Before using it in production, we recommend testing the new release in staging.

This release will become the default in production on Tuesday, January 30, 2023, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. These changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

What’s new

  • The Content Helper now remembers your settings. No need to select the same filters over and over again!
  • As part of the Content Helper, we’ve added a new Excerpt Generator feature which quickly and easily generates an SEO-optimized excerpt of your post or page.
  • The Content Helper Title Suggestions feature (available only in certain installations) now allows you to specify the tone and persona of the titles to be generated. If none of the predefined tones and personas are a good fit for what you’re working on, it is possible to set custom ones.
  • To complement all this work, some bug fixes and numerous other smaller improvements have been added to this release.

New Release and Default Version: wp-parsely 3.12

wp-parsely 3.12 will become available in VIP staging and production environments on Tuesday, December 5, 2023. Before using it in production, we recommend testing the new release in staging.

wp-parsely 3.12 will become the default version in production on Tuesday, December 12, 2023, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. These changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

This is mainly a maintenance release, which adds an experimental feature that will be enabled in certain installations.

New Release and Default Version: wp-parsely 3.11

wp-parsely 3.11 will become available in VIP staging and production environments on Tuesday, November 14, 2023. Before using it in production, we recommend testing the new release in staging.

wp-parsely 3.11 will become the default version in production on Tuesday, November 21, 2023, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. These changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

What’s new

In this release, the Parse.ly Content Helper has received some major improvements. Notably:

  • The Dashboard Widget now displays 5 results by default and supports pagination for viewing even more results.
  • The Content Helper Sidebar was enhanced with the same filters that are present in the Dashboard Widget. This now permits viewing performance data and related top posts for a wider range of periods, as well as viewing related top posts by Avg. Time in addition to Page Views.
  • The Related Top Posts panel now allows for fine-grained filtering. You have the option to select filtering by Tag, Section or Author, and the ability to specify the value to filter by (Page Views and Avg. Time). This new feature gives granular control in filtering results like never before.
  • The Dashboard Widget and Sidebar now offer more time period selections for filters. The new additions are last 10 minutes and last 1, 2, and 4 hours.

Other notable changes include:

  • Improved credentials validation in the plugin settings page.
  • As it didn’t influence results, the “boost” field was removed from the Recommendations Block and Recommendations Widget.
  • Added support for 9 Post Types that were supported by Parse.ly but missing from the plugin.

New Release and Default Version: wp-parsely 3.10

wp-parsely 3.10 will become available in VIP staging and production environments on Tuesday, September 26 2023. Before using it in production, we recommend testing the new release in staging.

wp-parsely 3.10 will become the default version in production on Tuesday, October 3, 2023, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. These changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

What’s new

  • In the Content Helper’s Dashboard Widget, you can now change time periods to show last 24 hours, last 7 days, and last 30 days. You can also view performance for Page Views or Avg. Engaged Time.
  • The codebase was upgraded to React 18 and all dependency debt issues were resolved.
  • The code’s adherence to WordPress and VIP Coding Standards was improved by upgrading to WPCS and VIPCS 3.
  • Some bugs were fixed.