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Subscribe by Email

INACTIVE NOTICE: This plugin is unsupported by WPMUDEV, we've published it here for those technical types who might want to fork and maintain it for their needs.

Translations

Translation files can be found at https://github.com/wpmudev/translations

Subscribe by Email allows your audience to easily subscribe to personalized, clean, regular HTML digest emails.

Use the color picker for a simple color match.

Use the color picker for a simple color match.

Polished Look and Feel

Tailor your feed to fit your aesthetic with a few styling tweaks. Add a custom logo, pick colors, give it a title, a subject, configure image controls and set footer content. Customize your feed to only send updates for specific categories and post types.

A built-in Follow Box makes it easy to capture new subscribers.

The built-in Follow Box makes it easy to capture new subscribers.

Subscribe and Sign-Up

The built-in Follow Box slide-in and Subscribe widget make it super simple for users to sign-up for your email updates. Manage a ton of users and save a bunch of time with the bulk subscribe importer.

On Your Schedule

Take control of when and how often your emails are sent out. Configure to send immediately or send a daily or weekly digest. Plus, Subscribe by Email includes throttle controls so you don't have to worry about over-working your server or spam blacklisting.

Layout your design, get a live preview and send a test for a polished end-user experience.

Layout your design, get a live preview and send a test for a polished end-user experience.

Double Opt-In

Your subscribers will be comfortable knowing, with double opt-in they can manage and stop their subscriptions at any time. Give your users control with automatically included, clear simple unsubscribe links on every email.

Usage

To Get Started:

Start by reading the Installing Plugins section in our comprehensive WordPress and WordPress Multisite Manual if you are new to WordPress.

Configuring the Settings

Once installed and activated, you will see a new Subscriptions menu item in your site's dashboard. Go ahead and click on the Settings sub-menu now.

subscribe-by-email-2300-menu

Under the General Settings tab, you can enter your basic information, control how emails are sent and for which post types, as well as set a page for user subscription management.

1. Enter your header notification text. 2. Enter the send-from email address. 3. Enter the email subject line. 4. Select how often emails are sent. 5. Enter the number of emails to send every 30 minutes. 6. Select the role to notify of subscription changes. 7. Select the page to use for user subscription management. 8. Toggle a follow button on/off.

1. Enter your header notification text.
2. Enter the send-from email address.
3. Enter the email subject line.
4. Select how often emails are sent.
5. Enter the number of emails to send every 30 minutes.
6. Select the role to notify of subscription changes.
7. Select the page to use for user subscription management.
8. Toggle a follow button on/off.

1. The Notification From Sender is what is displayed to subscribers in their email client before they open your email. Be sure to use only a few words, and that it describes your mailing well so that they don't spam or delete your mail. This also appears in the header of the email template once opened. 2. The Notification From Email is the sent-from address that is displayed in the email client header when your subscribers open your mail. 3. The Mail subject appears in the email subject line of your subscribers email clients, and is displayed at the top of the email content. 4. The Email Frequency setting has 4 options to select from:

  • Immediately when a new post is published will fire off an email to your subscribers every time a selected post type is published on your blog. You may want to select a different option if you have a particularly active blog.
  • Send a weekly digest with all posts from the previous week will do just that. Excerpts from all selected post types published in the previous week will be included in the digest email. Selecting this option will open a new setting where you can select the day of the week to send your weekly digest.
  • Send a daily digest with all posts from the previous 24 hours is ideal for active sites where subscribers really want to be kept in the loop. An additional setting will appear so you can enter the time of day to send the digest. Note that this depends on the time you have set for your site under "Settings" > "General".
  • Never will stop all emails from being sent.

5. Mail batches enables you to throttle delivery to large mailing lists if you experience timeouts or other server issues. 6. Get notifications allows you to select a user role to receive notification of new subscribers or cancelled subscriptions. 7. The Subscribers Management Page should be a page you create specifically for this use. This is the page your subscribers will land on when they click the "manage your subscriptions" link in the footer of any email they receive from you. Your users can easily unsubscribe from automatic notifications of any post type, or subscribe to a new one, simply by selecting from the list. You can include any content you like on the Subscription page; the subscription management part will be added automatically after your content. Note that the form depends on the user's unique subscription key, so it will only display when visited by clicking the "manage" link in an email. 8. Check Display a follow button? if you want the popup subscribe form to be available for your users to subscribe to your blog instantly.

Click the Follow button to pop open the subscribe form

Click the Follow button to pop open the subscribe form

Selecting Email Contents

The Contents tab will list all the post types active on your site. You can select which post types and categories to include in emails sent to your subscribers.

subscribe-by-email-2430-settings-contents

The post types you set here will also be available for selection by your subscribers on the Subscribers Management Page. This allows them to opt out of receiving notification of selected post types.

subscribe-by-email-2430-subscription-management

Styling Your Emails

Next up: getting emails looking the way you want them to. The settings under the Mail Template tab enable you to brand your emails with your preferred look & feel.

1. Upload and style your logo. 2. Set your email header options. 3. Set your email footer options. 4. Enter the confirmation email text. 5. Set additional options.

1. Upload and style your logo.
2. Set your email header options.
3. Set your email footer options.
4. Enter the confirmation email text.
5. Set additional options.

1. The Logo for notifications that you upload here is the image that will display in the header of all emails sent by this plugin. You can also set the maximum width for the logo in pixels. 2. The Header color and Header text color settings are self-explanatory. The Subtitle text appears in the email header. If checked, Show From Sender will display the Notification From Sender you entered in the General Settings. 3. The Footer text setting is where you can include any additional information you want at the very bottom of every email. This can be especially useful for contact info, etc. Here also, any HTML will render as text in the email. 4. The Subscribe Email Content setting allows you to customize the content of the email users receive when they subscribe. There is a link in that email that they must click in order to confirm their subscription. 5. Checking the Show featured images checkbox will ensure that the plugin attempts to include the featured image from each post in emails. Note that this may not function perfectly with every theme.

Live Preview

At any time during the setup, you can preview how your emails will look by clicking the Refresh Changes button. Once you're done with your settings, click Save Changes at the bottom of the screen. If you want to start over from scratch, simply click the Restore template to default link. Note that this will only clear your style settings, and all your general settings will remain intact. Here's what the email preview would look like using the example settings from our screenshots above:

subscribe-by-email-2430-settings-preview

Email Log

Every time an email is sent by this plugin, it is logged and you can view their details on the Sent Emails page.

Managing Subscribers

You can instantly see details about your subscribers by clicking the Subscribers sub-menu item. The subscribers page will display a sortable table of all users who have subscribed to your blog.

subscribe-by-email-2430-subscribers

You will see each subscriber's email address, the date they subscribed, whether or not they have clicked the link in their confirmation email, as well as the type of subscription. Confirmation email? Yes, this plugin has a double opt-in feature by default. New subscribers will receive an email containing a link they must click to confirm their subscription. If not clicked within 7 days, their data is deleted from the system. If you ever need to re-send a confirmation email to a subscriber within that 7-day window, simply hover your mouse pointer over the subscriber's email address and click the Resend confirmation mail link. You can also cancel a user's subscription in the same manner. If you need to cancel multiple subscriptions, tick the checkboxes and select the option from the Bulk Actions dropdown. The information in the Subscription Type column simply refers to how the users subscribed. Let's take a look at how your blog readers can be subscribed.

Creating Subscriptions

There are 4 ways that subscriptions can be created. Let's go through all of them.

Subscribe by Email Widget

Your blog readers can subscribe via the Subscribe by Email widget. It is very simple. Go to Appearance > Widgets and drag the Subscribe by Email widget to your sidebar. You can customize the title, the widget text, and even the button. Here's what the widget looks like (settings on the left, front-end widget appearance on the right):

subscribe-by-email-2430-widget

Subscribe by Email Shortcode

You can also use the following shortcode to display a subscribe form on any page, post or other post type: [subscribe-by-email-form] You can easily add that using the Subscribe by Email icon in the visual editor as well.

Subscribe by Email - visual editor icon

Follow button

With the "Display a follow button?" setting enabled, users will see a Follow button in the site's front-end. They can click the button to open a small form which they can use to subscribe.

Subscribe by Email - Follow button

Manually adding subscribers

You can also manually add subscribers, simply click Add Subscribers in your Subscriptions menu.

Add new user

You can add subscribers one at a time simply by entering an email address and clicking the Subscribe button. Or you can import a CSV file of email address to add them in bulk. Your CSV file should contain only email addresses with no header, so it would look something like this:

subscribe-by-email-csv-2110

Simply click the Browse button, select the CSV file on your computer and click Import.

Canceling Subscriptions

You saw above that you, as admin, can cancel subscriptions on the Subscribers page. Your subscribers can also opt out of their subscription at any time simply by clicking the link in the footer of any email they receive from you.

subscribe-by-email-cancel-2110

And that's it for all the plugin settings. Now it's up to you to write the best stuff on the web, and get it out to your new subscribers! Happy blogging!