Public page. [newsletter] shortcode. What is the Newsletter public page? What about the [newsletter] shortcode?
The Newsletter public page is a regular WordPress page where the only content should be the [newsletter] shortcode. That page is used by the plugin to show many kind of messages: from the subscription form to the unsubscription messages to the subscriber profile form. The page must be set on the Newsletter’s main settings, ne public and published. Do not delete it! On first installation, the Newsletter plugin creates the page and set it up for you.
Links to social profiles and pages. Which socials are supported? How can I add my socials link to newsletters?
The link to the social pages and profiles of your business can be set on the Settings/Company configuration page. All well-known socials are supported and more added when they become relevant. There is no option to add custom socials but a simple text block can be used to link socials not present in the configuration.
To add your social link to a newsletter you can simply insert the social block and set the type of social icons you like more.
How many emails can I send with my blog? The number of emails you can send from your blog (usually emails per hour or emails per day) depends on the limits imposed by your hosting provider and the hosting plan you have. After asking the provider how many emails you can send, you should set the delivery speed of the Newsletter plugin accordingly. The delivery speed can be set on the Newsletter’s main settings as emails per hour. If you have a per-day limit, just divide it by 24.
Setup on a multilanguage blog. WPML. Polylang. The Newsletter plugin recognizes automatically multilanguage blogs and offers the option to configure all messages for each language. When inside an administrative page, switching the language on the black top bar enables access to all the configurations for that language. The “all language” option provided by WPML and Polylang needs to be used for the common settings, for example, the delivery speed.
When newsletters are composed, the “posts” block and the “custom post types” block will show a language selector to include only the post in a specific language. Read all the multilanguage setup details.
Return path. Where can I change the return path? Why the return path is not set correctly in the newsletter? Why the return path has been changed on the delivered email? The return path can be set on the Newsletter’s main settings and it must be a valid email address where messages can be sent by the email provider to signal problems with mailboxes invalid emails or spam. If the return path address is not correctly set in your newsletter, it has been changed by your mail provider or service or by an SMTP plugin. For example, email delivery providers change it to intercept the returned delivery error message (DSN) to manage bounces and complaints. Those providers have usually an option to forward the error message to the original return path.
SMTP. Can I send newsletters with an SMTP? Is it compatible with SMTP plugins?
Yes, you can use any SMTP plugin (WP Mail SMTP, WP Mail SMTP Pro, Fluent SMTP, Gravity SMTP, …) to connect your blog to an SMTP service and the Newsletter plugin will send all the messages and newsletters with that plugin. To understand how an SMTP plugin works, take a look at this picture.
Vice versa, if you install our SMTP addon, the plugin will send all emails with the configured SMTP but other emails generated by your site won’t use that SMTP.
How does the delivery engine work? Why does it run every 5 minutes? Why the first batch is sent within 5 minutes?
When you start the sending process of a newsletter, the delivery engine, to respect the delivery speed set on the Newsletter main settings, sends the newsletter to a subset of the targeted subscribers and it repeats this operation every 5 minutes (12 times per hour) to keep into the “emails per hours” limit and until all subscribers have been processed. On the Help/Delivery page, you can have an overview of the delivery engine’s current status, speed, newsletter being sent, and so on.
Can I set the sending speed in emails per minute? No, that speed cannot be set since the sending process starts every five minutes. The speed set as emails per hour on the main settings panel is used to send that (value/12) emails every five minutes. For example, if the speed is set to 1200 emails per hour, the delivery engine sends 100 emails every 5 minutes. You can change the sending process to start every minute setting the constant “NEWSLETTER_CRON_INTERVAL” to 60 seconds in your wp-config.php. That is not recommended since the WordPress internal scheduler won’t be able to respect this interval (and requires an external scheduler trigger adequately configured).
Can I set the maximum number of emails per second? Yes, on the Newsletter’s main settings, you can set the maximum number of emails to be sent per second. The plugin will add a small delay after each newsletter to keep the delivery rate within that limit.
Can I set the Newsletter plugin to send only during specific hours? No, it is not possible to set the plugin to send only at specific hours of the day, for example from 8 AM to 8 PM. You should pause the newsletters that are being sent and then restart them.
The Newsletter public page is missing or not published for (one or more languages).
In a multisite language (with WPML or Polylang), the Newsletter’s public page needs to be set for every language on the Newsletter’s main settings and it is not correctly set for the languages reported in the notification. The public page is a regular WordPress page used by Newsletter to show its messages to the subscriber and it must contain only the [newsletter] shortcode. In a multilanguage site, there must be one page per language set as “public page” each one containing only the [newsletter] shortcode.
How to connect Gmail. How can I send emails using Gmail? To connect your blog to Gmail you need to use an SMTP plugin. We suggest looking for Fluent SMTP or WP Mail SMTP (but there are many others) since they have a special procedure to connect to Gmail (the Google service does not accept anymore the old plain SMTP connections). Our SMTP addon does not support Gmail. Remember that Gmail is not designed to deliver a big volume of marketing emails and Google can put in place filters and blocks or account suspension.
How can I change the delivery speed? The delivery speed can be changed on the Newsletter’s main settings inputting the speed as emails per hour. if you use a “Delivery Addon” there could be an option to set the delivery speed on the addon that overrides the main value.
I have the SMTP error “Could not connect to SMTP”. This error is related to network problems when the hosting provider does not allow the site to connect to an external service like an SMTP. You should contact the hosting provider and ask to remove that block. Sometimes that message is shown even when the credentials (username and password) are wrong.
I get the error “Could not instantiate mail function”. That error means the hosting provider (where the blog is installed) has blocked the mailing service. You should contact them and ask to restore the email service for your blog and to get information about that issue. Every email from your blog is blocked, not only the ones sent by the Newsletter plugin.
The website cannot send emails. When sending a test I get “success” or “email has been sent”, but the email is not received. This is usually a filter of your hosting provider that drops the email without returning an error. You should as a first step contact the hosting provider where your blog is installed and ask for a check. If you’re using an SMTP plugin, you should run a test from the plugin’s administration pages to be sure the SMTP is set up correctly.
When I test my newsletter I receive it to my email address but no other addresses receive it. There are a few options to evaluate.
1) Check the other email addresses’ spam folder, the test newsletter could be there.
2) Your provider could be filtering the emails, so try to ask them.
3) If you use a delivery service (Amazon SES, Sendgrid, Sparkpost, and so on) be sure the account is active and approved, otherwise you can send emails only to the registered address.
4) Send a test newsletter to test@thenewsletterplugin.com and contact us for support.
How can I manage bounces? How can I process the delivery status notification messages?
When a message cannot be delivered due to problem of the recipient (wrong email address, mailbox full, message refused, and so on) a DSN (Delivery Status Notification) message is returned to the sender. That message should be processed and, if needed, change the subscriber status to “bounced” or “complained”. The Bounce addon offers this functionality (read very carefully how to use it). For a more reliable bounce management we suggest to use a professional delivery service.
Lists
Can I increase the number of lists beyond the 40 preset? Yes, the number of lists can be increased beyond 40, the default number, setting the constant NEWSLETTER_LISTS_MAX in the blog’s wp-config.php file. When the constant has been changed the Newsletter plugin must be deactivated and reactivated to update the database. Read more on the Newsletter’s constants page.
How can I add a new list? Where are the lists managed? Lists can be managed on the Subscription/Lists management page. To activate a list it’s only required to give it a name. Lists set as “public” can be shown to the subscriber on the subscription form or the profile editing form (configurable on the Subscription/Form and the Subscriber/Profile administrative pages).
Clear or reset all the settings. It’s not possible to reset all the settings, but every settings panel has its own default, just empty the configuration fields, or set them to “default”.
Clean up the installation. Remove all data. Delete all plugin data. To clean up an installation you need to remove specific tables from the database and options from the WordPress options table. All instructions can be found on this page.
WP Cron and Scheduler
The scheduler is not working. The WordPress cron is not working. Newsletter job missing. There are issues with the delivery engine.
When there is a problem with the WP Scheduler first install the WP Crontrol plugin: it does not resolve the problem but provides a view of the WP background jobs status. If you see late jobs, the WP cron is not triggered (at all or not enough often). Refer to this page for some solutions. If you have a paid Newsletter license, you can activate the corn trigger from the Help/Support page directly from your plugin.