reebok

Phunky,

Why don’t you make your newsletter plugin an open source project? Just release your plugin and let people help you work out all the bugs. Make an area on your web site where people could download the plugin and then offer them the ability to make comments, feedback, suggestions, and what have you. It’ll be just like the WordPress themes that so many people release. Theme creators get tons of help and feedback. Just a thought.

I’m wondering if anyone else has encountered this or considers the following to be a problem. I use the Mighty AdSence plugin to insert Google ads on my blog, though I’m sure the problem I’ll be mentioning applies to any means of inserting Google ads. Mighty AdSense works well and is easy to configure and manage. The problem I’m having is that while the ads automatically get placed into every post, those same ads also appear in the summary posts that show up on the homepage. There’s a setting that allows you to place the ad at the bottom of the post but that doesn’t seem to make a difference even if there is a “more” tag included in the post. I’m currently using a plugin that automatically summaerizes every post on the homepage and provides a read more link for each post. Having all those Google ads show up on the homepage just doesn’t look very nice , especially if those ads are conforming to the context of the individual posts. Having a mix-match of contextual ads showing on the homepage is not a good thing IMO. Does anyone else consider this to be a problem? If so, how have you worked around it? This also brings up another question which others have already mentioned. Since this is happening, what are the ads basing themselves on? Are they conforming to the individual posts or are they conforming to the content on the homepage? Hope someone has some answers. Thanks!

red-star,

I’m so glad to hear you’re developing a newsletter plugin. Us WordPress bloggers need something like this desperately. As far as features go for your newsletter plugin, some core functions I’d like to see are:

* the ability to place the subscribe form on any page within the blog. A small email field and subscribe button that could be placed on the widget bar might be kind of cool also.

* have the plugin log all the email entries entered and use that list for the newsletter.

* have the ability to easily edit the list if anyone should unsubscribe. Some automation for this would be a bonus. For instance, if someone does indeed unsubscribe, then that email address would automatically be deleted from the email log. But if we have to do that manually, that would be ok also. I understand this would be a first release for the plugin, so I’m not expecting a ton of fancy features. Being able to edit the email log is a must though.

* Optional fields that would let subscribers enter in their name would be cool. That way we could have the option of using their name within the newsletter (i.e. a mail merge type function.)

* Have the option to have the newsletter be in either in text or HTML format.

* Have the ability to insert images, links, formatting (i.e. underline, italics, bold, etc.). Basicly it would be the same sort of options you get when writing a blog post. If you do include the ability to insert images, please also include some control over the image alignment, and the type of text wrapping that could be used. As far as inserting links, please make it possible to have the links show either as full URLs or simple text.

* Have a field where we can easily insert a URL to a logo image for the newsletter. This would automatically place the image at the top of the newsletter in whatever alignment we choose (left, center, or gith alignment). .

* have something that can detect email bounces. I think it’s pretty likely that people will type in the wrong email address. Perhaps it would be a good idea to include an auto-responder that would send out a message with the instruction to verify their email address.

* Allow for the ability to save drafts of the newsletter. Something similar to what we have when we write blog posts would be good where we can Save, Save and Continue or Publish.

* A scheduler function to automatically send out a selected newsletter that we’ve already created.

Those are the ideas that I have. I hope you’ll consider at least some of the suggestions. Thanks!