General settings

• Mailing list name: Choose a name for your mailing list
• Mailing list email: Enter the email the mailing list members will send their mails to
• Mailing admin email: The administrator will get notifies when something goes wrong, must not be the list’s email and must be a valid email address
• Active: Make sure the list is active (this enables mail retrieving and forwarding)
• Allow to access emails in frontend: You can publish the archive of emails on your site or hide them

Mailbox settings

WP Mailster uses a normal email mailbox that can be accessed with IMAP or POP3.
You can either choose one of the readily available settings or, what we recommend in most cases, use your own email provider (e.g. of the domain hosting you are using).

Adding a new Mailbox Server

Choose “New Server” in the Server dropdown menu.

You will see input fields to enter the server login information.

The settings in this section are crucial for a working mailing list. Ask your mail provider (of the mailing list email you provided in the last section) for the needed details or have a look at the settings of popular providers.

• User/Login: The login user, normally the email address or the part of the email address before the @ letter
• Password: The user’s password
• Host/Server: The address of the mail-server
• Port: The port number of the mail server
• Protocol: The protocol to use at this server/port
• Secure setting: You can enable a secured connection when the server supports this feature
• Use secure authentication: Some servers require a secure authentication
• Special parameters: Not always needed. A common “special” parameter is /novalidate-cert which disables the verification of the email server’s certificate. This is needed for self-signed certificates.

You can click on ‘Test connection‘ to make sure your settings are correct.

Sender settings

You have two choices here: the easy way is to use your normal mailbox sender (the one WordPress uses).
The other way (which is recommended) is only a little more difficult: using an SMTP server.

You can either choose one of the readily available settings or, what we recommend in most cases, use your own email provider (e.g. of the domain hosting you are using).

Adding a new SMTP Server

First, choose “New Server” in the Server dropdown menu.

• User/Login: The login user, normally the email address or the part of the email address before the @ letter
• Password: The user’s password
• Host/Server: The address of the mail server
• Port: The port number of the mail server
• Secure setting: You can enable a secured connection when the server supports this feature
• Use secure authentication: Some servers support a secure authentication

You can click on ‘Test connection‘ to make sure your settings are correct.

Mail content

• Subject Prefix Text: Text to insert before the subject
• Clean up subject: If active the subject of replies will be normalized so that no “Re: Re:” chains occur
• Convert email format to: The emails sent to the mailing list can be converted to a unified format
• Text version in HTML emails: When the format of the emails is HTML it is a good idea to include a text format version
• Custom header: Text to insert before the body: one field for HTML emails and one for text emails. You can use text variables here (see below).
• Custom footer: Text to insert after the body: one field for HTML emails and one for text emails. You can use text variables here (see below).
• Disable “powered by WP Mailster” mail footer: The footer can be disabled in the pro-editions

You can add custom elements to the mails posted to the mailing list.
Besides of normal text you can use text variables to insert texts dynamical. These are the available variables:

• {email} Sender’s email
• {name} Sender’s name
• {description} Senders’ description (if found in WP Mailster’s user data)
• {date} Email send date/time
• {orig_to} Original TO recipients
• {orig_cc} Original CC recipients
• {list} List’s name
• {post_email} List’s email address
• {admin_email} List administrator’s email address
• {site} WordPress site name
• {unsubscribe} Link to the unsubscribe page
• {recip_email} Recipient’s email (not working with BCC/CC addressing*)
• {recip_name} Recipient’s name (not working with BCC/CC addressing*)

The variables can be used in the subject, the custom headers and custom footers.
If you want to create nice unsubscribe links use the {unsubscribe} variable as the link location:

List behaviour

The settings in this tab largely determine how the list works and how it can be used.

• Mail copy to sender: Copy of the sent mail to the sender On/Off
• Email size limit: You can specify the maximum email size (in kByte) for the mailing list emails. If the email size is bigger the emails are not forwarded to the recipients. Zero means that there is no limit.
• Email content filtering: If activated emails are not forwarded that contain certain disallowed keywords. This words are configured in WP Mailster’s configuration. (pro-editions only)
• Allowed to send/post: Decide whether your mailing list should be public (also non-subscribers can post) or that you want to restrict the valid senders (based on their email addresses). Emails of unauthorized senders are blocked and not forwarded.

Moderation

Use the moderation functionality (Society & Enterprise edition only) to guard your lists against inappropriate content such as spam, off-topic discussions or unwanted solicitations.
The list administrator gets informed about a new message to be moderated. Approval or rejections can either be done via links in the emails sent to the moderator or in the WP Mailster email archive in the WP admin area.

• Moderation Mode: Switch the moderation on/off. You can either moderate all messages or only of a specific user group.
• Auto-Approve (Whitelist) Maybe you trust some senders more than others: with the auto-approval you can avoid that every message needs to approved.
• Notifications You can decide to keep the sender of the moderated email informed about the process by turning on notifications about the moderation and the moderator’s decision (approval/rejection).

Sending behaviour

• Recipient addressing: In general it is recommended to use the BCC recipient addressing in order to send mails to large recipient groups efficiently.
  If activated one “physical” mail is used to send it to as much recipients as defined in BCC recipients per mail. Otherwise each recipient gets a “physical” mail.
  It is common that you have to use SMTP sending and not the PHP mail function in order to use BCC addressing. If your WordPress system does not use SMTP for outgoing mails you probably need to configure WP Mailster to use a SMTP server for sending.
  Some mail providers and ISPs have restrictions regarding the number of BCC recipients and some do not allow mails that have no recipients in the TO-address-field.
• From email address: Choose whether the mailing list’s email address or the sender’s email address is used as the from address of the sent emails.
  Note 1: some mail servers do not accept an overwrite of the from address
  Note 2: due to the DMARC problematic, this setting maybe adjusted for some emails on the fly
• From name: Same option as From email address, only applies to the name of the sender
• Reply-To header: Determine the target address for replies to the mailing list emails. Note: it is a good idea to try out the different options to see which settings fits your purposes best.
• Bounces destination: Bounced emails are automatic replies to mailing list emails such as Out-of-Office emails and Delivery-Status-Notificatons (e.g. Notification regarding a failed delivery).
  Bounced emails are in general not intended to go to the mailing list subscribers. Therefore WP Mailster drops them when they return to the mailbox. This consumes, especially on larger lists, quite some computational efforts. In order to avoid this you can provide an email address where the bounces should go. Note: some email servers allow to overwrite this setting, some don’t.
• Send limit: Maximum number of emails to send per hour. 0 and empty field means unthrottled/unlimited sending. (pro-editions only)
• Max. send attempts: When errors occur during the send process it is later retried to send the mail
• Send reports: For verification/debugging the email sending process can be recorded. The send reports, when existing for an email, can be viewed in the email archive in the entry of the respective email:

Subscribing

• Allow subscription: Subscribing through subscriber plugin/module on/off. When set to No/off users can only be added to the mailing list in the backend.
• Public subscription: Allow subscribing when user is not logged-in on/off. When set to No/off only registered, logged-in users are able to subscribe to the mailing list.
• Use Double Opt-In subscribe: The Double Opt-In method requires the subscriber to confirm his subscription (by clicking a link in an email) before the subscription process is complete. (pro-editions only)
• Send welcome message on subscribe: When a person subscribes to a mailing list an automated welcome message can be sent out.
• Send welcome message when added in backend: When an admin adds a person to a mailing list in the backend an automated welcome message can be sent out.
• Allow unsubscription: Unsubscribing through subscriber plugin/module on/off. When set to No/off users can only be removed from the mailing list in the backend.
• Use Double Opt-In unsubscribe: The Double Opt-In method requires the subscriber to confirm his unsubscription (by clicking a link in an email) before the unsubscription process is complete. (pro-editions only)
• Send goodbye message on subscribe: When a person unsubscribes from a mailing list an automated goodbye message can be sent out.
• Send goodbye message when removed in backend: When an admin removes a person from a mailing list an automated goodbye message can be sent out.
• Allow digest: Subscribers are allowed to choose whether they want to receive the mailing messages in (daily/weekly/monthly) digests. (Society and Enterprise editions only)

Archiving

• Disable email archiving: You can disable the archiving of the mailing list emails (pro-editions only)
• Archive Retention: Per default, emails are kept indefinitely in the archive. You can also choose to auto-delete the emails (incl. attachment files) after a defined amount of days.(pro-editions only)

Notifications

• Notify senders of not forwarded emails: If an email is not forwarded (e.g. because the email address is not allowed to send or the email is filtered because of its content) the sender can be notified.
• Custom notifications (pro-editions only): You can create custom email notifications for the following events:
  • New email/post
  • Sender blocked
  • Bounced email
  • Filtered email
  • User subscribed
  • User unsubscribed
  • Send error

  One of the following recipient (groups) can be notified:

  • WordPress user – one certain user
  • List administrator – the mailing list’s administrator
  • User group – one WP Mailster user group

Tools

The tools section offers some specific functionality that you probably will not need every day. It is recommended to only use it when you know exactly what it does or if the support tells you to do so.

Why do I need a cron job?

It is important to understand that WP Mailster is a part of WordPress which is a PHP based web application. That means: it can not act/run without being triggered and it can not run forever when triggered. This is a technical limitation coming from PHP, not from WP Mailster or WordPress.

Triggering means that somebody accesses the site. During the page load WP Mailster is handling the jobs to do (mail retrieving and sending). Thus mails can only be send/retrieved when somebody is browsing your site, otherwise the delivery is delayed or never done.

As your site might not be browsed every few minutes 24×7 we recommend you to use a cron job that opens the site periodically.

There are two main options available for dealing with your cron jobs:

• Managed Cron Job (“we take care”)
• Own Cron Job (“you take care”)

The differences between the two are explained in the following.

Managed Cron Jobs – Mailster Cron Job Service

This is the easiest way to setup a cron job – we setup a cron job for you.
When you are a paying subscriber of WP Mailster, then you already have one cron job included that we will setup for your site.

You can do this by logging into your account at our site. There you will find a section where you can manage your cron jobs. Here you can also purchase additional cron jobs or extend the yearly subscription period.

We offer the Mailster Cron Job Service as a managed service on subscription basis.
It can be booked independently although the following subscriptions are included when you purchase our products.

Included cron job service:

• WP Mailster (Free): None
• WP Mailster Club: Basic Cron Job Service (1 Site, 1 Year)
• WP Mailster Society: Power Cron Job Service (1 Site, 1 Year) – dedicated!
• WP Mailster Enterprise: Sprint Cron Job Service (1 Site, 1 Year) – dedicated!

The cron job service can work with all of WP Mailster’s product versions. It uses either the “lazy cron job” or the “dedicated cron job” mode that are described below.

Own Cron Jobs – Set up a cron job on your end

In order to setup a cron job yourself, your hoster either needs to offer cron jobs as part of their hosting package, or you need need to have access to a URL-based cron job service like Easycron.com or Webcron.org.

There are two types of cron jobs:

• Lazy Cron JobThis type of cron jobs work by simply opening your WordPress site periodically.
  During the site loads WP Mailster then does its activities (retrieving and sending emails). The downside of the approach is, that loading your site utilizes server resources as the web server renders a page that is never looked at. And, if you don’t follow our instructions below, it may cause delays for your users.
• Dedicated Cron Job (WP Mailster Scoiety & WP Mailster Enterprise only)
  This type of cron jobs has the advantage it does not cause page load delays at all.Furthermore, no unnecessary server resources are used. The different tasks types of the dedicated cron job are excellent to run WP Mailster in an optimized manner and ensure ultra-quick delivery.

If you can (based on your WP Mailster product edition), then you want to use the dedicated cron job mode given the above advantages.

Lazy Cron Jobs

This type of cron jobs work by simply opening your WordPress site periodically. So it basically means a program browses an URL of your site.
The (sub-)URL of the cron job is not important, as WP Mailster is working during the pageload and the content of the loaded page itself is not interesting.

So, in short: setup the cron job to use the URL like http://your-site.com/wp-login.php (replace http://your-site.com with your address and make sure to use HTTPS if applicable).

Please read our separate section on where to enter the cron URL.

If you have use a cron job targeted at your admin/login screen you can also avoid page load delays for your site vistors. This can be done by setting the system plugin “Mailster Email Forwarder” which is responsible for retrieving/sending emails to only execute by page accesses in the backend. The setting can be changed here:

• Navigate in WordPress’s admin area to WP Mailster’s settings
• Search for the setting “Trigger Source“:
• Change the setting to “Backend activity only“:

Dedicated Cron Jobs

This type of cron jobs have the advantage that they do not cause page load delays for site users at all.

Furthermore, no unnecessary server resources are used. We strongly recommend using them.

To use it you will have to change the “Trigger Source” for Mailster accordingly. The setting can be changed here:

• Navigate in WordPress’s admin area to WP Mailster’s settings
• Search for the setting “Trigger Source“:
• Change the setting to “Dedicated cron jobs only“:

You may also want to increase the “Max. execution time” setting, recommended is half of your PHP max. execution time.

Dedicated cron jobs work with special URLs.
You most probably will only need this one URL:

The meaning of the parameters:

• wpmst_cronjob=execute: the general call to execute of Mailster’s dedicated cron job mode
• task=all: call the “all” cron job tasks, more on the different tasks below
• key=secret: this key has to be the same as the cron job key you provided in WP Mailster’s settings:
  
• debug=true: prints status information on the screen – an optional, but recommended paramater

Working with the all task is the recommended dedicated cron job setting and suitable for most setups.

However, there are more tasks available for dedicated cron jobs:

• all: sends and retrieves emails for all mailing lists. Recommended in most cases, but not recommended for big mailing lists or high traffic lists.
• fetchall: retrieves emails of the mailboxes of all active mailing lists
• fetch: retrieves the emails of the mailbox of one mailing list the emails in the mailbox.
  You have to provide the mailing list to use with the “id” parameter (e.g. &id=1)
• send: sends out mails in the send queue

While the task all is suitable for most cases, we recommend to use multiple cron jobs (e.g. one with the task fetchall and one with the send task) for big mailing lists (> 100 recipients) or high traffic lists.

Further examples:
Retrieve and send in one run, cron job key was set to “secret”:

Retrieve emails for all active mailing lists:

Retrieve emails for mailing list with ID 3:

Work on emails in send queue:

Debug mode:
To check whether the cron job is successfully executed you can copy the cron job URL into the browser and append this: &debug=true.
Example (retrieves emails from the the mailing list with ID 1, the debug mode is active):

You should get an output like the following:
Finishing up
Let’s get back to setting our cron job.

• Take the recommended task=all-URL or one of the variants (if you have understood what they do)
• Make sure you have changed the example.com address to point to your WordPress site, but have left the query parameters there
• Make sure to replace the cron job key URL parameter with the key you have setup in WP Mailster’s settings

What to do with your cron job URL / Setting up the actual cron job

As already mentioned: there are different ways to setup a cron job. This depends entirely on the options available to you.

We will introduce you to the following methods:

• cPanel – create a cron job via your webhoster
• Root Server – create a cron job from the terminal
• Web Provider – use a web cron job provider

cPanel Cron Job

This method applies only if your webhoster offers you a graphical administration interface (like cPanel) with cron job functionality. Most interfaces look similar to the following screenshot:

You specify the frequency of the cron job executing by selecting the appropiate options. We recommend to create a cron job that is run every 5 minutes.

Do this by selecting the every year/month/day/week day/hour option and by selecting multiple minutes in a 5 minute interval (e.g. 0/5/10/15/20/25/30/35/40/45/50/55).

Many hoster allow to only run local PHP scripts. Thus you create a PHP file named cron_job_mailster.php with the following content (here an example with a dedicated cron job URL):

You need to pay attention what you insert as the command to run.

In the example given, the first part, /usr/local/bin/php on our server, is the path to the PHP executable. This is a little different for each webhosting environment – but in most cases well documented in the hoster’s setup guide.

On some servers it is enough to write php or php5 without an exact path.

The second part, the parameter -f, tells PHP to parse and run a file. It is optional and may be omitted.

The last part is the path to the file, relativ from the root directory (that you can access). A good way to figure out this path is to login via a FTP client and navigate to the root. From this root the whole path to the cron_job_mailster.php file has to be used for the cron job command.

Most cPanel offer a way to review the cron job result, either by logs or by emails. You should use this at first to see whether you get the desired output (as previously when you accessed the cron job URL with the &debug=true parameter with your browser).

Terminal Cron Job

This method applies only if you have command-line access to your (Linux) server and the suitable user rights.

As the first step create a file named cron_job_mailster.php, see the section above on what to put into the file.

Edit /etc/crontab with a text editor and add the following line: * * * * * php /path/to/your/cron_job_mailster.php
This is the scheme of the crontab file:

Minutes [0-59]  
|   Hours [0-23]  
|   |   Days [1-31]  
|   |   |   Months [1-12]  
|   |   |   |   Days of the Week [Numeric, 0-6]  
|   |   |   |   |  
*   *   *   *   * php /path/to/your/cron_job_mailster.php

The * means “every”. So our line makes the cron job run every minute (in every hour, day, month, year).

As this might generate too much unnecessarily server load we change it to “every 5 minutes”: */5 * * * * php /path/to/your/cron_job_mailster.php

For small, low traffic lists (e.g. announcement mailing lists) you might find an “every hour” setting more suitable: 0 * * * * php /path/to/your/cron_job_mailster.php

Basically every interval is possible. Many more examples on the crontab’s syntax can found on the web, e.g. on Wikipedia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron).

An alterantive to use the PHP executable to trigger the site is using other applications that act like a web browser. This has the advantage that you don’t have to work with PHP scripting file.

Here is an option of a cron job that is executed every 5 minutes using the command-line tool wget:

That’s the best option in order to not download/save anything while executing wget – otherwise you would save the returned HTML on each cron job execution

Note that you have more options in terms of command-line programs to use (e.g. lynx or curl). You have to see what is available and working on your host.

Web Provider Cron Job

There are many web cron job providers out there. For example Easycron.com and Webcron.org.

They all enable you to setup a URL-based cron job relatively easily.

Here an example based on Easycron’s user interface:

You need to enter the URL and define the frequency (here every 5 minutes).

Installation

If you don’t have installed WP Mailster yet, have a look at the installation tutorial for the system requirements and the quickest way to install WP Mailster.

Open WP Mailster and get started

• Open WP Mailster (Start Center)
• Choose ‘Add mailing list‘ from the tasks list

General settings

In this section you will provide some basic data of your new mailing list.

• Mailing list name: Choose a name for your mailing list
• Mailing list email: Enter the email the mailing list members will send their mails to
• Mailing admin email: The administrator will get notifies when something goes wrong, must not be the list’s email and must be a valid email address
• Active: Make sure the list is active (this enables mail retrieving and forwarding)
• Allow to access emails in frontend: You can publish the archive of emails on your site or hide them

After that click on the next tab (Mailbox settings).

Mailbox settings

WP Mailster uses a normal email mailbox that can be accessed with IMAP or POP3.
You can either choose one of the readily available settings or, what we recommend in most cases, use your own email provider (e.g. of the domain hosting you are using).

Adding a new Mailbox Server

Choose “New Server” in the Server dropdown menu.

You will see input fields to enter the server login information.

The settings in this section are crucial for a working mailing list. Ask your mail provider (of the mailing list email you provided in the last section) for the needed details or have a look at the settings of popular providers.

• User/Login: The login user, normally the email address or the part of the email address before the @ letter
• Password: The user’s password
• Host/Server: The address of the mail-server
• Port: The port number of the mail server
• Protocol: The protocol to use at this server/port
• Secure setting: You can enable a secured connection when the server supports this feature
• Use secure authentication: Some servers require a secure authentication
• Special parameters: Not always needed, read corresponding tip in WP Mailster to learn more

Click on ‘Test connection‘ to make sure your settings are correct.

After that click on the next tab (Sender settings).

Sender settings

You have two choices here: the easy way is to use your normal mailbox sender (the one WordPress uses).
The other way (which is recommended) is only a little more difficult: using an SMTP server.

You can either choose one of the readily available settings or, what we recommend in most cases, use your own email provider (e.g. of the domain hosting you are using).

Adding a new SMTP Server

First, choose “New Server” in the Server dropdown menu.

• User/Login: The login user, normally the email address or the part of the email address before the @ letter
• Password: The user’s password
• Host/Server: The address of the mail server
• Port: The port number of the mail server
• Secure setting: You can enable a secured connection when the server supports this feature
• Use secure authentication: Some servers support a secure authentication

Click on ‘Test connection‘ to make sure your settings are correct.

Further settings

At this point you have the basic setup for a working mailing list.

Of course, there are further tabs with settings helping you to customize and finetune your mailing list. Those settings are covered seperately and can found (under the respective settings title) in the tutorial section.

Save the mailing list

After that click on Add mailing list to save your settings.

If you did all settings you will get the message that your new mailing list was saved and will be back at list where you can manage all your mailing lists. Now we are ready to add recipients to our mailing list.

Adding recipients

It is nice to have a mailing list. It is even nicer to actually have some people that want receive the list’s mails. Now let’s add some of those folks to our recipients…

• Go to the ‘Mailing Lists’ menu
• Click on ‘Manage recipients’
  

The tab ‘All recipients’ gives an overview of all recipient names and email addresses – well, not too much until now.

• Click on the ‘List members’ tab and then ‘Edit List Users’

• Choose all users you want to add on the left side
  
• Click on the single arrow pointing to the right
• Click on ‘Save Changes’ to add the selected users to the mailing list

You can add every WordPress user as a recipient. Don’t worry if not all recipients belong to your WordPress users – you can store them under the user section and add them later.

A feature that you might find useful if you want to manage several mailing lists are user groups that you can add to the recipients.
Example: you have a group ‘Designers’ that is enrolled in the mailing lists ‘Support’ and ‘Development’. Whenever the designer department has a new co-worker or intern their email addresses have only to be added in the group ‘Designers’ not in every mailing list.

Send a mail

All set!
Now go ahead and send a greeting email to your mailing list – all recipients should receive it 🙂
In our case we would send an email to project-group2@example.com.

You can send it any way you like – use your favorite email client (Outlook, Thunderbird, GMail, …).

What next?

Now it is time for testing the list and, if needed, to adapt the other mailing list settings.