PrivateContent Mail Actions add-on
Documentation for v1.9 and later
Before going through documentation chapters, thanks for purchasing PrivateContent Mail Actions add-on and trusting LCweb!
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Once installed and activated you will be moved to the LCweb Dashboard.
It contains the summary of all LCweb projects with useful links and prompting you to validate them.
In fact you must link your domain with your license. The procedure is very quick:
- Go to the LCweb License Hub and register
- Login and navigate to the related product section
- Add a new license specifying the purchase code and the domain you will use it onto
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The system will give you an activation token
- Use it in the LCweb Dashboard, on your website
Once activated, you will see a new item in the WordPress admin menu
Click on "Mail Actions" to access the add-on configuration panel.
The very first thing to do in order to use it, is to setup the e-mail configuration
In most cases you won't need the SMTP configuration part.
Facing troubles using the "test e-mail" tool, consult your hosting guidelines about e-mails outgoing.
Normally any server has got a limited number of e-mails per hour. Usually this number varies from few hundreds to a thousand.
If you are expecting a high e-mail activity, be sure your server can handle that or e-mails won't be sent without any warning.
E-mail titles and texts caould contain placeholders to show dynamic data.
The allowed variables for each module are specified on top of each e-mail builder block.
Using Wordpress editor in "visual" mode, it will create the HTML code to be inserted in e-mail.
While using "text" mode you can send advanced e-mail templates (created by you or taken from external services like Mailchimp).
In any case an e-mail test is suggested before using a module.
You can also use PrivateContent User Data add-on shortcode to use custom users data in e-mails
Starting from v1.8, the add-on supports e-mail templates to be used. This means a fixed code will be used as base, while its contents will be replaced.
Let's make practical example: assume you created a basic template like this
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title>My site</title>
</head>
<body>
<div><h1>My Site Title</h1></div>
<div>%CONTENT%</div>
<footer>My site © %YEAR%</footer>
</body>
</html>
assume also to have attachedit to the "user verification" and "password recovery" systems.
It will be used as base and the %CONTENT% placeholder will be replaced each time with specific "user verification" and "password recovery" e-mail texts.
You can easily understand how powerful it can be, keeping all HTML and CSS codes in one place while only textual contents can be used for the add-on systems.
You can also use complex templates taken from external services like Mailchimp.
One of the simplest and most effective ways to verify users is to send them an e-mail containing a unique link, validating the e-mail address.
Enabling this system, e-mail will be mandatory in registration forms (be sure you added the e-mail field into them!) and registered users will be put in pending status.
By default, clicking the e-mail link, they will be automaticallu enabled. However there's an option to ignore the user status and only mark them as validated in the users list page.
- Landing Page
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If called directly, the landing page will redirect to the homepage. Then it MUST be a newly created page.
It should not be changed once the system is active or the links sent via mail won't work! - Users status
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Remember that users must be registered with pending status to trigger this system. Obviously an active user can't be validated again
- Manual e-mail sending
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Is also posssible to manually send the verification e-mail. Directly from Mail Actions settings for user group or on "edit user" page for individuals. Please note that user will be able to verify themselves only through the URL contained in last e-mail received
Essential system helping users having lost their password
Enabling it, a new linked text will be appended to login forms
The system will send an e-mail containing a new password.
This system may integrate with the "forced password reset" one, by User Data add-on.
This greatly increases the security level of the recovery system by setting an expiration time of 20 minutes for the newly generated password and forcing the user to reset it as soon as he logs in
Unsubscribed Users - Webhook
The add-on has got an endpoint URL to track mailchimp subscribed users.
The URL to use is in Mail Action settings, show once you set up the API key.
There you'll find a link guiding you on Mailchimp's page where to create webhooks.
Create a webhook with these exact options
Notes:
- Bulk Actions
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The sync uses Mailchimp batches to avoid excessive server usage. These actions (eg. manual sync) aren't immediate, then expect a little delay (around 5 minutes) to see changes in Mailchimp
- Users Management
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Remember that sync is performed from PvtContent to Mailchimp, then any change performed in Mailchimp won't be reflected
- Users Unsubscription
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The above note doesn't apply to useres deletion or subscription if you setup webhook. Unsubscribed/deleted useres will be marked as "no sync" in pvtContent
- User Categories
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Once you performed the first manual sync, a list will be created, containing user categories. this list MUST NOT be touched, to avoid sync troubles
Mail Actions adds a system to quickly contact user groups even without MailChimp.
It's a very basic e-mail system: just insert an e-mail title, description and select one or more categories you want to reach.
Be careful in case of massive users database: each hosting has an outgoing e-mail limit per hour.
If you exceed the limit, e-mail commands will just be ignored and won't be possible to know how many e-mails have been successfully sent.
The add-on is 100% multilanguage for both front and back ends. If a translation of your language has been created, WordPress will automatically switch between languages.
Plus it is compatible with WPML and Polylang!
How to create a translation
If you have WPML + String Translation add-on or Polylang, you can simply scan the plugin and translate strings via its UI.
Otherwise: go in the plugin folder, you'll find a two folders called "languages" and "lang_admin".
Inside you'll find the default.pot file. It contains english strings to be translated.
If you want to create or customize your language translation, follow these steps:
- Open the default.pot file with POedit
- Edit the catalog by inserting your data and setting translation's language
- Save the file with your language's i18n identifier and "pcma_ml-" prefix (the italian example is pcma_ml-it_IT)
- Go to the plugin folder ".. wp-content/plugins/private-content-mail-actions/languages" and paste resulting .PO and .MO files
If you create new translations, please contact me at support@lcweb.it sending your .PO and .MO files.
Otherwise they will be lost in next updates. Thanks!