My Newsletter

Description

My Newsletter is a lightweight newsletter plugin focused on a practical use case many site owners need immediately:

• send a campaign to WordPress users,
• send a campaign to commenters,
• optionally target commenters from a specific post,
• queue the campaign and process it in the background,
• include unsubscribe links in every message,
• track basic campaign progress in the admin area.

This plugin is intentionally simple and WordPress-native. It relies on wp_mail() for sending and WP-Cron for queue processing, which makes it easy to install and use on most shared hosting environments.

Core functionality

• Campaign composer (admin screen)

  • Create a newsletter subject and HTML content.
  • Use the WordPress editor for message body content.
  • Choose recipient source:
  • Users + Commenters
  • Users only
  • Commenters only
  • Commenters on a specific post

• Background queue processing

  • Recipients are queued in a custom plugin table.
  • Sending runs in batches through WP-Cron (instead of trying to send everything in one browser request).
  • Reduces the risk of timeouts and broken sends on slower hosting.

• Test email before full campaign

  • Send a test message to any email address from the composer screen.
  • Uses the same rendering path and unsubscribe footer logic as real sends.

• Secure unsubscribe links

  • Every email can include an unsubscribe URL.
  • Unsubscribe tokens use an HMAC-based signature (derived from WordPress salts).
  • Unsubscribed addresses are stored in a dedicated plugin table and skipped in future campaigns.

• Template variables (placeholders)

  • {{site_name}}
  • {{site_url}}
  • {{recipient_name}}
  • {{recipient_email}}
  • {{unsubscribe_url}}

• Settings screen

  • From name
  • From email
  • Reply-To (optional)
  • Max emails per cron run (batch size)
  • Footer HTML (appended to outgoing emails)

• Basic campaign tracking

  • Shows recent campaigns in admin.
  • Displays queue progress (total / sent / failed / queued).

How sending works (important)

This plugin uses WP-Cron. WP-Cron runs when your site receives traffic. That means:

• On active sites, sending progresses regularly.
• On low-traffic sites, sending may be slower.

For production use, it is recommended to configure a real server cron that triggers wp-cron.php periodically.

Email deliverability note

My Newsletter sends through wp_mail(). Actual delivery quality depends on your hosting and email configuration.

For best results, use:

• a real SMTP provider,
• a verified sender domain,
• properly configured SPF / DKIM / DMARC,
• a valid From address on your domain.

Data storage

The plugin creates two custom tables:

• wpnl_queue – campaign queue and send status
• wpnl_unsub – unsubscribed email addresses

On uninstall, those plugin tables and plugin options are removed.