Hoorarr! Today I finished my Mailing List plugin for wordpress. It was quite a task, but I got there in the end. I made this plugin, quite simply, because I couldn’t find any plug-ins out there that had the functionality I wanted.
Mail List – A wordpress plugin for managing and messaging a mailing list and your blog’s registered members. Read more for features, info, and download link.
IMPORTANT!
Development for this version has now stopped, this beta does contain bugs so use at your own risk. I do not know when the next version will be out so please do not ask, I am also no longer providing support for this version.
Features
- Users can sign-up to the mailing list by filling out a form
- Users can un-subscribe from the mailing list by clicking a link in the emails.
- Admin interface for managing users and options.
- ‘Write email’ interface for composing emails to the users.
- Ability to email the mailing list, only the registered members, or a selection of members you choose in the interface.
- Ability to add recent posts to the footer of the email, any amount, and from any category/categories.
Requirements
Same as wordpress 2.0 + (Only tested in 2.0.4)
Version history
Version beta 0.91 – 13th sep 2006
- Re-subscribe bug fixed
- Layout improved
- Now shows content extract if not execrpt present.
Version beta 0.9 – 12th sep 2006
- Bugs fixed
- Un-subscription fixed
Version 0.8 – 10th sep 2006
- Basic functionality added. Not released.
Download
Download Mail List v 0.91
Installation
- Upload ‘mail_un-subscribe.php’ to the root of your wordpress install (same folder as wp_login, wp_register etc).
- Upload ‘maillist.php’ and ‘maillist.css’ to your plugins directory.
- Goto the wordpress admin control panel > plugins, and activate ‘maillist’.
- Goto Manage > mail list, the plugin will set up its tables and be ready to use. Mail list automatically indexes the users of your blog.
Usage
Including the sign up form in a page/post
Create a page/post where you want the sign up form to appear and add the code:
<!--mail_sign_up-->*remember to retype the code, or it may not work!
Mailing List Admin page
This page allows you to modify options, manage the list, and send emails to selected users.
Options
- Sender – What you want the recipient to see as the sender.
- Reply address – What you want the recipient to see as the sender’s address.
- Title – Title for the recent posts section of the email.
- Number of posts to show – How many recent posts to display.
- Post categories – List (separated with commas) of the categories to pull the recent posts from.
- Text to display in footer – Footer message in email.
Subscribed Users
This section shows all the users on the mailing list.
Check the boxes next to a name, then choose an option from the drop-down and click ‘GO’. Doing this you can:
- Re-subscribe users who are un-subscribed.
- Un-subscibe users.
- Delete users.
- Send mail to the selected users.
Also by clicking ‘add user’ you can add a new user manually.
Mailing List Write email page
This page can be found in Write > write email.
It allows you to compose an email to the users of your choice.
Sending an email
- Choose a group to send to from the drop-down menu. (note this will be disabled if you have selected the members to email from the Mail list admin screen).
- Enter a subject for the email in the ‘subject’ field.
- Enter your email in the message body. HTML is allowed, but try to stick with basic tags like BR, b, i, hr, to keep mail client support as good as possible.
- Select your options, you can choose to send the mail to yourself (if not on the list), and to include the recent posts in the article footer.
- Click ‘preview’.
- A preview of the message will be shows. You can choose to ‘edit’ the message again, or ‘send’.
Message body
You can include the following extra tags in the message to display those variables.
- %NAME% – User’s full name
- %URL% – Blog url
Bug-reporting & Feedback
Please help me improve this plug-in! Submit any bugs, suggestions and comments by either adding a comment, or emailing me directly (contact page).
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
Credits
Thanks to Anthony Brewitt (http://www.designbit.co.uk) for making the javascript validation, and emotional support. Also thanks for receiving countless spam mails when I was testing the plug-in.
The Mail() function headers in this plug-in were based on the ‘mass mailer’ plug-in by Brance Gillihan (http://www.clearblueproductions.com).