Backup, Recovery, Move, Delete

All data (newsletter, subscribers, images, configurations, …) is stored exclusively in your blog (as files or data in the blog database). No data is copied to our servers.

Warning: the import and export procedures you find on administration side of Newsletter ARE NOT meant to do a backup and a restore. They are just options to import formatted data and export the subscribers.

Newsletter stores all its data into the WP database. You can find it in two locations:

the wp_options table under the keys newsletter* (which is the standard WP way to store the plugin settings)
the wp_newsletter* tables

Note: we cannot grant someone else is not using the newsletter prefix on tables and options keys.

If you want to backup only the Newsletter settings and data you need to extract the Newsletter options from the wp_options table and dump all the wp_newsletter* tables. Of course, if your installation uses a different table prefix, you need to replace the wp_ prefix with your own.

The table prefix is defined inside your wp-config.php file.

If you developed custom themes or someone developed them for you, they should be stored inside the wp-content/extensions/newsletter folder. You should backup it as well.

Maybe you’re even interested in other two folders:

wp-content/logs/newsletter contains, if enabled, the plugin working logs
wp-content/uploads/newsletter contains the resized images used in newsletters to fix the layout

The Newsletter generated images are stored on wp-content/uploads/newsletter and are not referenced in the media database so there is no need to extract media data from the database. If you change the domain or remove the generated thumbnails images won’t be visible on old newsletters anymore.

Using backup plugins

Every backup plugin has its own behavior. You need to be sure the plugin you use is able to backup even tables not strictly part of WP, like the Newsletter ones (wp_newsletter*). This is a common consideration valid for all plugins which need custom tables.

Moving everything to a new site

If you use specific services or plugins to backup and restore a site, be 100% sure they copy all the files and all the database tables! We saw trasnfer procedure limiting themself only to the WP official table and not trasferring the wp_newsletter* tables where all your data is stored!

Please avoid transferring only some of the plugin database tables, maybe to save space: it is usually a source of problems.

Hosting provider change with site transfer, keeping the same domain

If you are transferring the whole site to a new provider (all the files and the whole database), the Newsletter plugin is transferred as well with its configuration and database stored data (subscribers, newsletter, statistics, …).

Who manages the transfer will create a new database on the new provider, restore the database and copy all the files. Usually, nothing has to be changed, except the wp-config.php database parameters. Please check if you have an SMTP plugin installed and test if it’s working on the new provider (you may need to remove it if used to connect the site with the old provider’s SMTP service).

Hosting provider change with site transfer, with domain change

Usually, identical steps as in the previous paragraph are followed. The differences are the references to the old domain in the content of already sent newsletters. If you want to replace them (usually not a strict requirement) you need to process the content of the table wp_newsletter_emails.

You may need to review all the newsletter settings, the newsletter templates, the automated channels templates and the autoresponder series steps. The main problem is the images with an absolute URL linking to the old domain.

Transfer only the Newsletter plugin data to a new site

You need to back up and restore only selected data:

from the wp_options table all the newsletter* keys with their values (do not export the option_id column, when the data is inserted in the new site, the database will generate a new one.)
all the wp_newsletter* tables

Please note: on the starting site, the tables’ prefix could be different from the one on the final site. When you restore the tables, you need to rename them with the correct prefix then.

There is no need to transfer the single plugin and addon folders (from the wp-content/plugins) if you reinstall them in the new site, all the configurations are stored in the database.

Custom templates: if the plugin has been extended with old-format templates, they could be stored inside the folder wp-content/extensions/newsletter*; please move even those files. Custom templates can be stored elsewhere and registered to make the Newsletter plugin know their location: you must ask the site developer.

If you need to clean up totally your blog from the Newsletter plugin you should:

uninstall the plugin and all the addons from your blog plugin admin panel
use a database manager and drop every table named wp_newsletter* (wp_ is the prefix used by WP as default on not customized installations but it could be different in your blog)
remove all options in the wp_options table with the name newsletter or starting with the name newsletter_
remove the folder wp-content/logs/newsletter/
remove the folder wp-content/uploads/newsletter/
remove the folder wp-content/extensions/newsletter/

We do not remove all those information on uninstall. Data is yours and we cannot risk you losing years of subscribers, newsletters, and statistics just for an unwanted action!

Statistics tables (when they’re too big)

There are two statistics tables that can grow very quickly if you sent many newsletters to many subscribers:

wp_newsletter_stats
wp_newsletter_sent

Both tables are cleaned up when you delete a newsletter, removing the data related to that newsletter. So deleting old newsletters is a way to make them lighter.

If you prefer to preserve the newsletter content, both tables have a column named email_id that refers to the newsletter. So it’s possible to clean up the tables by deleting only the stats data (of course all reports for that newsletter won’t be available anymore).

An example of query is:

delete from wp_newsletter_stats where email_id=X

and

delete from wp_newsletter_sent where email_id=X

if possible do not clean up the wp_newsletter_sent table, since most of the report data is extracted from it.

The tables’ size

Checking the tables even after a deletion, may result in little change of their size. This is normal, even if the data is gone, the allocated space could be kept by the database.

In that case, a database optimization is needed, you can ask the provider to run those procedures.