Email Users





Are you using Email-Users? If so, please consider making a donation!

Email Users is a plugin I have used for a number of years on the MacDolphins web site.  After contributing a number of patches to the plugin, in late May of 2012 I was invited to be a plugin contributor which I accepted.  Being a plugin contributor allows me to commit changes to the Email Users plugin Subversion repository and release updates.

I have been responsible (both good and bad) for changes and enhancements in the 4.x releases.  The changes are documented in the Change Log but in summary, here are the key new features:

  • New menus which are compliant with the WordPress 3.x menu API
  • Re-architected Options model which is compliant with the new Options API.
  • New Users Settings page which allow bulk control over user settings for notifications and mass email.
  • Additional control over the default settings for all users.

You can download Email Users from the WordPress Plugin Repository or install it from the WordPress Dashboard.  I try to monitor the Support Forum and address any issues people encounter with the plugin.

171 thoughts on “Email Users

  1. Pingback: www.MichaelWalsh.org | The Magic of the get_users() Function

  2. Hi Mike,

    I wondered if it was possible to have a discussion with you regarding the email. Within the WordPress Plugin Directory I tried to go to the plugin homepage for documentation but, unfortunately the site it linked to was down.

    I wish to also ask whether you are able to modify the plugin slightly?

    Look forward to hearing from you.

    Sheldon

  3. Mike
    I am looking to do an “ask chad” section on my blog. I just want to capture emails, first and last name and their question. Would you recommend WordPress google forms? I know you made it , but from a layman’s perspective, Is it pretty easy to set up?

    Thanks
    Chad

    • Chad –

      If you use Google Docs then setting up WordPress Google Forms is pretty simple. That said, it sounds like all you’re looking for is a simple contact form. There are a number of plugins that provide that functionality. If you want to have all of the questions and emails addresses in a spreadsheet automatically, then my plugin is a good solution.

      Creating a Google Form is pretty simple, Google’s interface is very easy to use and the form you create has a complementary spreadsheet where the results are stored.

      My suggestion would be to try it and see if you like the results. You should be able to set up what you’re proposing in 30 minutes or less.

  4. Hi, is it possible to edit the default message that appears at the top of page/post notifications?

    Hello,

    I would like to bring your attention on a new post published on the blog. Details of the post follow; I hope you will find it interesting.

    Best regards,

  5. hi,
    Its a great plugin

    it is possible to change the sender name userform to other.

    Best Regards

    • You have the ability to change the “Send From” address on the plugin settings page (Dashboard->Settings->Email Users). When you set it there, you’ll have a choice when composing the message whether it comes from the email from your logged in ID or from the Sender Override email address.

      • Thanks for quick response

        There is a field “From Sender Name Override” i enter the site name but there is no changes in the email there is still userform

        • Maybe I don’t understand what you are asking. This is what I see on my site:

          Email Users Oveeride

          I am able to select between two email addresses. The first is for me (the current user), the second is the override address which is set up on the plugin settings page.

  6. I have the latest wordpress installed.I installed plugin,but when I try to activate it I keep getting a fatal error message and it says failed to activate due to fatal error,any idea of what could cause that

  7. Is there a way to add an attchment to the email message?

  8. Hi Mike

    I was able to installed Email users in my wordpress ver 3.5.2 but it does not work properly.

    When I tried sending emails, it did show emails being sent but the recipients did not actually receive the emails. Why?

    Please help me t fix the issue.

    • There are potentially many, many reasons why your users wouldn’t receive emails. First thing is to verify WordPress is able to properly send email. There is a Email Test at the bottom of the plugin settings page, does that work? If so, have you tried sending mail to a single user?

      • Hi, I’m currently having the same issue. I did a test and I received the email, and I’m also able to send to a single user and they confirmed receipt. However when sending to the whole group NO ONE is receiving them.

        • Can you test with the newest beta release and see if it is still an issue? new beta version which, to the best of my knowledge, resolves this issue. Thanks to the help of a few people in the Email Users community. I would not have been able to resolve this problem with out their help. If you want to check out the new build, please turn on Debug mode (see the article) as it will prevent email from being sent while you verify things appear operating normally. Mike”>Latest beta release is here.

          • I’m new to understanding this so I’m unsure how to test other than if the version shows up in my Update Plugins in my dashboard, which it does not. I have Apple so I don’t think I can download zip files.

          • On your Mac you can download the zip file, just like you can on a Windows machine. The file doesn’t (and shouldn’t) be unzipped. Once you’ve downloaded it, within WordPress you go to the Plugins->Add New menu and instead of searching, choose the “Upload” link that is above the search box. You would upload the zip file you download from my web site and WordPress will do the rest.

  9. Hi Mike

    Thanks for the quick response. I have tried Email test and also tried sending to my another email but still won’t work. Btw, my wordpress site is hosted in a VPS.

    • If the test message doesn’t work then it likely means that (a) your email is being flagged as SPAM or (b) wp_mail() isn’t working. If you are certain that your mail isn’t being flagged as spam, then you need to verify wp_mail() is working. Do you get email notifications from your blog for comments and/or user registrations? I had a couple sites where I was using Email Users which were running under IIS and the only way I could get mail to work was to install and configure the WP-Mail-SMTP plugin.

      Email Users assumes wp_mail() is working, if it isn’t working on your site then that is outside the scope of what Email Users does – you’ll need to figure out why wp_mail() isn’t working before trying to use Email Users.

  10. Thanks for the info. I have got it done earlier by installing Easy WP SMTP plugin and then configured my SMTP server settings. Now it is working perfectly. Thanks.

  11. Thanks for the plugin.

    In the body of the emails, can we include variables such as %user_login% and other items from the users and usermeta tables?

    I tried a few options but no joy.

    • There are a few keywords you can use but none of them are user based. The reason for this is Email Users sends the minimum number of email messages possible by putting all of the recipients in the BCC email header. Each user doesn’t actually receive a unique email message. The only exception to this is when you select a single recipient for an email. In that case the recipient will appear in the TO email header.

      Here is a list of keywords the Email Users supports:

      1. %BLOG_URL% the link to the blog
      2. %BLOG_NAME% the blog’s name
      3. %FROM_NAME% the WordPress user name of the person sending the mail
      4. %POST_TITLE% the title of the post you want to highlight
      5. %POST_EXCERPT% the excerpt of the post you want to highlight
      6. %POST_URL% the link to the post you want to highlight
      • It would be nice to use the name of the person receiving the e-mail to make it more personal, using a tag such as %USERNAME%, and it would change the name according to the user to whom the e-mail was sent. Is it possible?

        • This sort of request comes up periodically, usually on the WordPress Support Forum. The sort of feature you are asking for does not exist and isn’t planned due to how the plugin is architected to send the minimum number of emails as possible. However, there is something which is close by using the BCC limit setting and the ability to use the TO header intead of the BCC header when the BCC limit is set to 1. There is a better explanation here in a thread on the WordPress Support Forum.

  12. Hi Michael,

    I would be grateful if you could give me an example of a single filter using two different meta key/value pairs to make a custom group in Email Users (I posted to the WP plugin forum regarding this, too) – feel free to email me back directly.

    Thank you!

    • I am in the middle of some Email-Users work right now, I will see if I can put together an example in the next day or so. If you have a specific example that you are trying to use let me know and I can try and model an example after it.

      • mailusers_register_user_custom_meta_filter(‘Subscribed to Email List’, ‘wp_s2member_custom_fields’, ‘a:1:{s:10:”email_list”;s:1:”1″;}’);
        mailusers_register_user_custom_meta_filter(‘Level 1’, ‘wp_capabilities’, ‘a:2:{s:15:”s2member_level1″;b:1;s:15:”bbp_participant”;b:1;}’);

        I’m using this to create filters for s2member. Both of the above pieces of code work, and create two different filters. I want a single filter that filters by both attirbutes, which will create a filter that selects all Level 1 members with 1 (true) in their Email List field (which is an s2member custom field). Both are in the user meta table.

        Thank you.

        • The Custom Meta Filter functionality isn’t flexible enough to do what you are trying to. However, I can see how something like that would be useful. On my flight from Phoenix to Charlotte this morning I added a new filter that will allow filters to be updated dynamically. What this means is you could add a hook that will fire when you send and email or do a post/page notification. Before the recipient lists are built the action fires which means you could define a user meta value that is updated by the hook based on some other conditions.

          In my simple case I used my existing Police and and Fire department examples and extended by defining a new filter I called Public Works. When my hook fires it scans the existing users and sets the Public Works meta value for any user that is assigned to one of the departments I defined (Police. Fire. Parks and Recreation, etc.).

          In your case you could define a meta value and a filter name which are updated based on your conditions anytime the filter fires. It may not be exactly what you are looking for but it will solve the problem plus it makes it easy to integrate other plugins that use their own tables instead of meta keys and values.

          I will post a beta release that has a bunch of new features in it later today including this new action.

        • Email-Users v.4.5.0-beta-1 is out which includes the new action hook that should allow you to do what you’re trying to do.

  13. I have a situation… I was wondering if I can use this plugin to email one main user and bcc all the rest when any post happens. Any kind of help and advice will be much appreciated.

    • The plugin doesn’t do any sort of automatic post notification so if that is what you were looking to do, then no, you can’t do that. The only way to do want you want to do is to use the Post Notification process twice. The first time you would select the one user you want to receive the email directly. The second time you would select all users except the one user who already received it. Anytime more than one recipient is selected, all of the recipients go into the BCC header.

      • Thank you Mike for the suggestion. I’m very new to wordpress and started using it yesterday up until today. I have learned a lot also using ftp to change things there but do you know if there is a plugin that can do what I’m talking about?

        • I don’t know of anything which will do exactly what you want. The closest I can think of is JetPack which is a collection of useful WordPress add-ons from Automattic. One of the features it offers is automatic notification for users who subscribe. You might be able to build something on top of that – a small plugin that subscribes your users but I doubt if you’ll find anything that does exactly what you’re asking for as that is a pretty unusual use case.

          • I really appreciate your help today. I will look into JetPack, I can settle for something close to what I’m looking for.

  14. Hey! Good plugin! I was wandering if there is an option for user to be able to unsubscribe, if they don’t want to receive emails?

    • Yes there is. On the user’s profile there are two settings where the user can control their settings. There are independent settings for notifications and group emails.

      As admin there is a setting on the plugin settings page that enables or disables the user’s ability to control their own email-users settings.

  15. Work with buddypress? 🙂

    • To be honest, I don’t know. I have never tried it. I’ve never heard that it doesn’t work which with the number of downloads Emails Users has had I would have expected if it didn’t work but having never used BuddyPress I don’t know how different it is than WordPress.

  16. Hi Mike,

    How do you import email addresses from an account within the plugin?

    • The plugin doesn’t have the ability to import addresses, it assumes your target recipients are registered users. If you have a list of email addresses you’ll have to turn them into users before you can send them email via the plugin. I wrote a small plugin to auto-generate some dummy users for testing my Swim Team plugin a couple years ago, it isn’t too hard but isn’t currently a feature of Email Users nor is it planned.

  17. Pingback: Email Users | Best WordPress Plugins & Themes

  18. Hi Mike, I’ve just installed this plugin, but, when I try to send email to user(s) or group(s), I don’t see any users/groups in the recipients box. This is odd, as there are over 2000 users subscribed to my site (with mass email on), and the users/groups functionality works in the ‘Email Users 2’ plugin (even though that plugin is not sending emails – but that’s another matter ;-)). I’ve tried tweaking general settings for both ‘Email’ and ‘Email Users’, and I’ve tested on Chrome and Safari, but nothing changes. I’m on WP 3.5.2, for what it’s worth. Can you help?

    • Would you happen to be doing this on an iPad? If so, Apple’s implementation of SELECT boxes on IOS is pretty hokey and it doesn’t display the list of potential recipients even though they are there. If you are on another platform, we’d have to enable debugging to get more data.

  19. Is there a possibility to see the outgoing e-mail with all users in bcc?

    • Yes, if you enable debugging. To enable debugging you have to manually edit the email-users.php file and change the MAILUSERS_DEBUG constant from false to true. Enabling debugging will cause the plugin to dump a bunch of stuff the PHP error log including the mail heeaders where you can see the BCC content. For some web hosts you have to enable error logging at the server level.

      I typically use the debugging guidelines outlined on the WordPress Codex, particularly WP_DEBUG_LOG, so my error log ends up in my /wp-content folder.

    • I posted a “how-to” post on debugging Email-Users earlier today. It shows how you can see the users in the BCC header.

  20. I’m getting the warning below:
    `Warning: Missing argument 5 for mailusers_replace_post_templates(), called in …/email_users_options_form.php on line 323 and defined in …/email-users.php on line 1266`

    The `$post_author` argument is missing.

    Hoping you can fix that in a new release soon. 🙂

  21. Quick question , new to wordpress. Anyhow, I would like to use this plugin for front end users. Meaning, I’m creating dating website and users/subscribers could have their own mail box and send/receive messages within the site. Is it possible with this plugin?

    Many thanks, or any suggestions.

    • Email Users does not offer any mailbox functionality. It provides a facility to send email to the users of a web site using groups, specific users, etc. The actual email is delivered to the user’s email address associated with their user account. Users could mail each other however the mail itself would be handled outside of the WordPress site once the first one was delivered.

  22. Is there an option to change sender name & email?
    Thanks for great plugin

    • Yep. You can set a Sender Email Override on the plugin settings page which will then be displayed as a choice when sending an email or post/page notification.

      • Thanks bro you are the best 🙂

      • I can change the Override name and email, and also select it when sending an email. (eg. override info is Notice and noreply@mydomain.com) Unfortunately each time the resulting message is “From: WordPress” and the email is “wordpress@mydomain.com”
        Any ideas?

        • I just did some testing and on my site the override functionality works as it should. Have you tried putting Email Users into debug mode and looking at the mail headers to see if they look correct?

          • The PHPMailer debug info for from and fromname is incorrect.

            PHPMailer Object
            (
            [Priority] => 3
            [CharSet] => UTF-8
            [ContentType] => text/html
            [Encoding] => 8bit
            [ErrorInfo] =>
            [From] => wordpress@wmf.freshideademo.com
            [FromName] => WordPress
            [Sender] =>
            [ReturnPath] =>
            [Subject] => test

          • Hello Mike –
            I’m having the same problem as Rob. And my debug shows the same result – the FromName stays as WordPress, even though I have entered an alternative on the Settings page.
            I’d much appreciate any suggestion you might have on how to fix this!
            Thanks and regards
            Standingtree

          • If you enable debug (on the Email Users plugin settings page) what does the “From” field show?

          • Mike –

            Thanks for the response! Here you go…

            PHPMailer Object
            (
            [Priority] => 3
            [CharSet] => UTF-8
            [ContentType] => text/html
            [Encoding] => 8bit
            [ErrorInfo] =>
            [From] => wordpress@barcombe-sages.co.uk
            [FromName] => WordPress
            [Sender] =>
            [ReturnPath] =>
            [Subject] => Test for Email Users debug
            [Body] =>
            Test

            I appreciate your taking time over this – particularly as the plugin is free. Thanks!

          • What is in the wp_mail() debug section which should appear above the PHPMailer object debug?

          • This is interesting. Do you have a plugin that redefines wp_mail()? I ask because your wp_mail() debug output doesn’t look correct. What version of Email Users are you running? From the above it appears you have Email Users configured to use plain text instead of HTML formatted email, is that correct?

          • Hello again Mike –

            Plugin version is 4.6.5

            Other plugins used are:

            Add Post widget
            BackWPup
            Better WP Security
            Custom Meta Widget
            Jetpack (parts of) and Jetpack Only for Admins
            WP Logo Login
            SuperPost
            Wordfence Security
            WP Members
            WPFront User Role Editor
            WP Super Cache

            HTML is selected in Email Users settings.

            I had been though all plugin settings to see if any relate to email, but nothing jumped out…

            Thanks for your continued help!

          • Toward the bottom of the Email Users setting screen (Dashboard->Settings->Email Users) there is a section labeled “Email-Users wp_mail() Check” where it has an “actual” and “expected” path for wp_mail(). Do they match?

          • Hello Mike –
            Sorry for delayed reply – work got in the way!
            The fields match exactly, character for character. I’ve not included the detail for security reasons…

            Thanks

            Andrew

          • I am really scratching my head now – what version of PHP are you running? Does your host have it’s own special build of PHP? I’ve seen this a couple of times.

          • Hello again Mike!

            PHP is 5.3.13, via Dreamhost. A couple of random thoughts:
            1. Dreamhost suggests using its extra security layer which involves mod_security.
            2. I use the current version of the WP Members plugin to control site access. It seems there should be an option to bulk mail users via the Users panel, but that option has never showed up in my installation – ie before Email Users was installed.

            Could either of these be implicated..?

          • I cannot speak to WP Members as I am not familiar with it. I have run into mod_security before with my Google Forms plugin and it can be a giant PITA. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that mod_security is doing something with email although you’d have to access DreamHost to know for sure.

            Based on the debug information you’ve posted, there is something happening between wp_mail() where the from address still looks correct and the PHPMailer debug where it isn’t. It is possible there is a hook for PHPMailer that I am not aware of. Regardless, once the data is handed over to wp_mail(), where it still looks correct, there is nothing else Email Users does. At that point it is under control of WordPress and your server’s infrastructure.

          • Ah, well. I’s not the end of the world if a solution can’t be found – Email Users still does its job. Thanks very much for your time and help in trying!

            Standingtree

  23. I am want to have something similar to how %POST_AUTHOR% works but instead of the author I am want the User Role

  24. Well the nickname attribute would also work just fine as well.

    A little explanation of what I am using it for:
    There would be someone that posted an article and he is unable to actually log into the website and send the emailusers so someone else would have to go into it and do it for him so the signature would look like:
    %POST_AUTHOR% | %POST_ROLE%
    so when someone else is logged in the role of the author is still there vs the logged in user.

    Another way I know it could work is if each user could have their own template. (just like EU2 works)

    • or better yet be able to use shortcodes from other plugins in the email template. Now that would be better for a general audience perspective.

    • The %POST_AUTHOR% keyword uses the information for the user which authored the post, it has nothing to do with the person who is using the Notify function. Only the “from email” would appear from the user sending the notification and even that can be overridden with a setting.

      No plans to add multiple templates, that is out of scope at this time.

      • Got it! Problem was that i was using a variable that already existed and i was missing an entire line of code in a file. Not to me rude or anything here but there is at least 2 files one would have to update, the test email and the actual email (although only one file to do the job correctly but not ethically)

  25. After spending a chunk of time on it I got it recognizing %POST_ROLE% but it is only displaying a blank space.

    The main code that tells what different variables do works by it’s self but when added into the plugin and the other 3-5 files that contain variable information, it only outputs ” ” 🙁 more work to be done tomorrow!

    • There is only one file, email-users.php, that handles keyword substitution. Within that file there are two functions which handle keyword substitution, one for the subject and one for the body. If you are editing more than one file you’re not approaching it right.

      If you want to submit a patch I’d be happy to look at it.

      • That is what I thought as well but when I only did it in the one file it gave me errors stating that it was missing from 2 other files as well so i added it to them and the errors went away…

  26. Stupid comuter o-o

    Didn’t show that it posted and the fact that I hit cancel sums up to it being posted…sorry about that!

  27. Hi I just edited the Default email (about latest post), to something to remind old users we are still alive. If i now go to the page where you select user groups, if I put nothing in the content box on that page, will it auto send the new Default email content I just did?
    cheers

    • No. The default email is just for post and page notifications. When you use the Send to Group or Send to User feature, you need to put whatever content you want to send in the message body field.

  28. Hi, is there anyway to send the email to the user with username included and password information ?

    • No there is not. WordPress user passwords are salted, there is no way to query it from the database and send it to user and it would be a security issue regardless. There was a similar question about per user email on the Support Forum recently, check my response there.

  29. Hello Mike!

    I did the upgrade to the 4.6.7 version and when I try to send the emails, the plugin says:

    “You must enter a subject.
    You must enter some content.”

    But the content and the subject are there.
    Do you know what could be happening?

    Thanx!
    Andy

    • The only thing I can think of that might be happening is another plugin is mucking with the POST data before Email Users gets a chance to look at it. Have you installed any other plugins recently? What version of Email Users were you using prior to updating? That part of the code has been stable for a long time.

  30. Hi Mike,
    I’m creating a website using your plugin for registered users to be able to send email to eachother. If i call the function it is displayed in the “dashboard” mode which confuses the users. Is there a code available to call the function from a page?
    Thanx for your advise,
    Martin.

    • I don’t understand what you’re trying to do. Are you trying to have Email Users work on the front end? If so, that usage model isn’t supported.

  31. Hi Mike,
    I love your plugin.
    I want to ask if there is a way to make the plugin send post Excerpt when I use the “Email Users” link found on the post editing page, when I click the link, it takes me to a page that has my full post already formatted there, but I want to be able to send excerpts with a read more link so that my subscribers will come to my blog for the whole story!

    • Yes, that is supported. In fact, it will use the excerpt by default if you have defined an excerpt AND you haven’t changed the default notification template to use the %POST_CONTENT% instead of %POST_EXCERPT%. Does the excerpt field on your posts contain content? It won’t automatically extract an excerpt from the post, you need to define the content of the excerpt field for it to be used.

  32. Mike,
    I installed the plugin in but every time I try to make/save changes to the Plugin Settings on the Dashboard, it asks me “Are you sure you want to do this” with a “Please try again” link. The screen returns to the settings page but the changes are not retained.

    Any thoughts?

    WP 3.9.1

    Tom

    • My first thought is plugin conflict. I have not run into this issue except in the odd case where I am trying to save the settings after not having used my virtual machine development environment for a while and the WordPress cookies are stale so I have to login first. But that is a very odd corner case and it doesn’t happen again once I have logged in.

      The quick test to determine if it is a plugin conflict or not is to temporarily disable all other plugins and see if the behavior persists.

    • Here is post (not mine) with an explanation of this behavior and some ways to chase it down. I do not believe this is a NONCE issue within Email Users. It would have come up before.

  33. Nice plugin Mike, really helpful and thank you for investing time to create it.

  34. Hello Mike.

    I think that you plug-in looks tremendous.

    Unfortunately, for some reason, I cannot get it to send to multiple recipients (either multiple users or a group) when hitting the Notify Users button from inside a Post. Everything is properly presented (all the users and groups) but no-one gets an email…? It works perfectly when I select a single user though.

    Any ideas as to where I might be able to hunt for where the conflict is (as I assuming that it is with my set-up rather than with your plug-in)?

    Thanks
    Jonathan

    • Do you have an address in the “bounce” email setting? If so, try removing it and see if it works. There appears to be a bug with the bounce setting that some users are running into. It results in duplicate ReplyTo headers which some hosting providers ignore and others don’t. I plan to fix it but have been traveling for work and am just getting caught up over the weekend.

      • Hi Mike – thanks for your speedy reply. I don’t have a bounce address set, so it must be something else. I’m going to swap a few things in and out to see if I can find the problem and, assuming I do, I’ll get back to you and let you know.

        Cheers
        Jonathan

  35. Hello, Where can we change the default notification body?

  36. Mike, Hello! I found out the strange behavior of your plugin! It seems that, Email Users works for certain amout of users as I understand. Because when I notifed 113 users it hasn’t worked! Then I reduced amount of users to 80, then it has started to work! Can u explain me what’s problem?

    • The behavior your are seeing is likely due to a limit on the number of email addresses which can appear in the mail header set by your hosting provider. Try setting the BCC limit to one of the values less than 100 and see if it works when you sent to all 113 recipients. It should send multiple email messages, breaking the addresses up into chunks based on the BCC Limit setting.

  37. Hi Mike,

    First off, thanks for a simple, awesome email plugin 🙂

    I posted this to an old topic on the WP Support forum, but since the issue was marked “Resolved,” you may not have seen it.

    Anyway, your Email Users plugin is the only one I’ve found that integrates with User Groups (by Katzwebdesign). I need a frontend group (as in, groups created by the aforementioned plugin) email solution, because those using it likely won’t be admins, but contributors, and won’t be going into the admin area for ANYTHING else, thus sending them there for this one feature would be quite jarring.

    I only need the /wp-admin/admin.php?page=mailusers-send-to-group-page to be exposed to the frontend. Everything else can remain as is. Could you describe how this MIGHT be accomplished in the plugin’s php files, or else would you be willing to provide this enhancement as a paid service?

    I don’t need Buddypress or any other membership-type plugin like that, because I already have all of those types of features configured; I JUST need a frontend UI for these non-admin users to send emails to particular groups 🙂

    I appreciate your help, as this is the last major feature issue I’m trying to resolve with my app’s beta 🙂

  38. Hi Mike, Is there a tutorial or FAQ on how to set up groups from a WP subscriber list? We have 4378 opt-in subscribers but can only send 900 at a time. I wish to segment the list into 5 groups so I can choose a group and send, vs the shift click function I have been using. Thanks for your help.

    • No, Email Users simply leverages what other Groups plugins do. I don’t have a lot of experience with any of them other than making small groups to test with.

  39. Hi Mike– quick question for you! Does the actual mail sending happen on line 1720 and 1722 of email-users.php with @wp_mail(… ?

    • Yes – the call to wp_mail() (which is a WordPress provided function) actually performs the send operation. I’ve poked around the phpMailer a bit (which is what actually handles the email based on the available resources on the hosting platform) and it eventually hands off to sendmail (in most cases) on the Linux platform, I am not sure what it does on a Windows box.

      There are a couple of calls to wp_mail() depending on whether you are sending email, page/post notifications, or using the test function.

  40. I am trying to plug the wp_mail function adding a $priority, eg.

    function wp_mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers = ”, $attachments = array(), $priority = 1 ){}

    then trying to set mail from email users with priority of 0. After I plug wp_mail can I just modify lines 1720 and 1722… as in…

    if ($base64)
    @wp_mail($to, sprintf(“=UTF-8?B?%s?=”,
    base64_encode($subject)), base64_encode($mailtext), array_merge($headers, $bcc),,$priority=0);
    else
    @wp_mail($to, $subject, $mailtext, array_merge($headers, $bcc),,$priority=0) ;
    do_action(‘mailusers_after_wp_mail’) ;

    .. to send the new var along?

    • I don’t know. I’ve never tried to override the standard wp_mail() function but if you add another argument, then yes, what you have proposed should work. Why do you want to do this? I don’t know that the phpMailer class (which wp_mail() eventually uses) supports any sort of priority so you’ll likely have to extend that class as well.

  41. I am looking at batching emails with wordpress mail que plugin(https://semperplugins.com/wordpress-mail-queue-wpmq/). The plugin works out of the box to que all wordpress email or to selectively que only their subscribe2 emails. I think subscribe2 is similar to your plugin. Anyway the pluggable function in wpmq is as I described above, adding the priority variable. Mails that are sent from subscribe2 I suspect get tagged with priority=0 before they are sent. The whole point is so that when I que a list of 300 emails I still need my notification emails sent in real time and not at the end of a que that may take over an hour.

  42. Just got a reply from their support:

    That’s exactly what you need to do, search for ‘wp_mail’ and add a sixth parameter of 0 (zero).

    To be really clever you can wrap it in an if statement to make sure things don’t break should WPMQ ever get disabled:

    if ( function_exists( ‘wpmq_mail’ ) ) {
    // wpmq is enabled
    @wp_mail( $to, $subject, $body, $mailheaders, $attachments, 0 );
    } else {
    @wp_mail( $this->email, $subject, $body, $mailheaders );
    }

  43. Hi Mike – We tried sending a group email yesterday and brought down our mail server due to our host shutting us off for too many emails in an hour. I thought Email Users throttled the number of emails sent per hour. We have never had this issue before, so I am wondering why we are seeing it now. I looked for a setting to throttle or limit the number per hour, but did not find one. I also looked for documentation, but did not find that either. Can you let me know if Email Users does throttle sending email to, for example 50 per hour, and if so, how do we turn that on or determine why it is not working. Thank you so much! Elysa

    • You’re not missing anything, Email Users does not have any support for scheduling or throttling outgoing email. This feature is requested fairly often but isn’t something I plan to implement. It isn’t because I don’t think it is a good idea but it isn’t simple to do and it would take a fair amount of time to do it right, something I am woefully short of right now.

  44. Hi Mike!

    Would it be possible to get Email Users plugin to pick email addresses from a list created with WP Users plugin User List (https://wpusersplugin.com/downloads/amr-users-plus/)? I have added extra meta data fields to user accounts and want to filter out the list of receivers from the meta data every time an email gets sent.

    Kind regards
    Michael

    • If your want to create a recipient list based in user meta fields then yes, it should be possible. There is an example here on my site about tagging some users as fireman and others as policemen and how to create a filter to mail to just one or the other. The example usage of the filters can be found in this post.

  45. Hi, I installed Gmail SMTP so how many emails I can send per day? Can I send up to 100 or more? Thanks

  46. Could I suggest some screenshots added to the plugin directory? It’s essential when evaluating a handful of plugins to see if a particular plugin suits needs. Thanks 🙂

  47. Great plug-in. I am trying to change the received email name (not the address) using the “From Sender name overide”, but it still seems to use the original name …
    Am I missing a trick somewhere?
    Thanks

    • There is a setting on the plugin settings page (Dashboard > Settings > Email Users) where you can set the Email Send User Override Name and Address. The name field is just above the address field. When set, the plugin uses these two values to populate the headerr.

      • Many thanks Mike, however for some reason it still shows “Admin” as the user name (the original set name) and not the new one I selected. Could it be that my email client has the original name stored so doesn’t recognise this change in emails from the site?

  48. Hi Mike. I am wondering if you can do some custom mods for me with the Email plugin. Please email me at your convenience. Thanks!

  49. Please help! I am at my wits end. I have 18,000 users i need to email, and planned to send them in groups of 990 as is recommended, bit even clicking on “send a group message” produces the following error:

    Internal Server Error
    The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
    Please contact the server administrator at webmaster@bullyingbosses.com to inform them of the time this error occurred, and the actions you performed just before this error.
    More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
    Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

    I’ve tried increasing PHP memory and tested for a corrupt htaccess….but no help. Can you assist????

    • With 18,000 users you want to send to, how many users does your WordPress database have? My guess what is happening is the database query the plugin uses to gather up users and their emails is timing out. There is a debug setting which when enabled, will add some metrics to the database query and output the results as comments in the HTML for the page. Where the query was run (e.g. the Send to Users page).

      You can also look at the page where you’re getting the error and look at the page source and try and figure out if the HTML is incomplete. If it is, then it almost certainly means the query is timing out and the page never renders properly.

      • Thank you so much for your response! To be honest, I am not entirely sure what you are asking; I do not know how many users my WordPress database has, or how to find out. I only know I have 18K subscribers who need to be notified of my new post, and I cannot reach out to them!

        Are you able to advise how to enable the debug setting? If this doesn’t work, do you think re-uploading core WordPress files to cPanel might be a solution?

        I cannot tell you ho much I appreciate your time and assistance.

          1. On your Dashboard there is a “Users” menu on the left side. When you click on it, you’ll see a list of 20 users and you can page through your users. In the upper right corner under “Search” should be a number. This number indicates how many users exist in your WordPress database.
          2. The debug setting is on the Email Users plugin settings page (Dashboard > Settings > Email Users).
          3. The Debug checkbox is at the bottom of the first section of options. I don’t think re-uploading the WordPress files will have any effect one way or the other.
          • Thank you for clarifying. Yes, I have 17,925 users in my WordPress database. When I go to Dashboard>Settings>Email Users, I just get a blank page after a long loading period. 🙁

          • That is probably beyond what the plugin is capable of supporting. I don’t think you want a drop-down list which contains 17,925 names to choose from. I am not sure what to tell you here other than you might be able to bucket your users into groups and then use the ability to mail to specific groups instead of by user. That shouldn’t overwhelm the form elements used to construct the page.

          • I didn’t see any way to create groups….I only saw the option to use existing roles as groups, which doesn’t help. Do you know how to “bucket” users? I did end up sending to all 18,000 in the individual message option in batches of 900. It was horrible. I as far as I can tell, the plugin doesn’t even give you a way to ensure they were sent. Whats worse is I’ve gotten almost zero response, which leads me to believe something went wrong.

  50. Nice plugin i must say, but for like a month + now, mails are not been send to group but to single participant

    • Nothing has changed on the plugin side – has anything changed on the WordPress side? Is it possible your host has implemented a limit on the number of users which can be emailed at one time? This would explain why mailing to a single user works but a group does not.

  51. Hello – my site is hosted by WordPress.com (on a business plan) Until recently, communications sent using Email Users were sent via wpdatacenter.com, but now they are sent via a.atomicsites.net. Is this a change on the WordPress.com side or the plug-in side? Thank you.

    • This change would be from your hosting provider. The Email Users plugin does not have the ability to change the email headers which are set or modified by your hosting infrastructure.

  52. Hi Mike, Great plugin, we’ve been using it for years. We have over 1000 users though and finding the user we want to notify can get tricky. The sort doesn’t seem to be working. – No matter which I choose, it seems to always sort the same way – and a straight search field would be perfect – if we could just paste all or part of an email address we are trying to locate in a search box, that would be really helpful.

    Thanks for your help

  53. Hi. Just got Email Users and when I select HTML the form does not update to the HTML editor and looks to be plain text. When I enter in text and hit submit it bring us the HTML formatter and looks like that page reset, however the email in plain text still gets sent out. Is there a way to setup so that the HTML editor is avialble when I select HTML email without having to send a plain text email to get to that screen?

    • This happens if/when you have some sort of Javascript error on the page preventing the HTML editor for loading correctly. This is likely caused by another plugin or your theme. You’ll need to disabled plugins and enable them one at a time to isolate the offending plugin.

  54. Hello Mike,
    I am using the email users plugin. I am trying to update my php from 5.6 to 7.2 and I ran the php compatibility plugin and I got an error for email users plugin. I don’t know if its a website killer or just a generic oh-oh watchout this could possibly be trouble a 1 in a million problem.
    This is the error message. What do you think? I’m not technical so keep it simple please.
    Ray

    FILE: /home2/xxxxxxxx/public_html/wp-content/plugins/email-users/email-users.php
    ———————————————————————————————————–
    FOUND 0 ERRORS AND 1 WARNING AFFECTING 1 LINE
    ———————————————————————————————————–
    443 | WARNING | Function create_function() is deprecated since PHP 7.2; Use an anonymous function instead
    ———————————————————————————————————–

    FILE: /home/xxxxxxxx/public_html/wp-content/plugins/email-users/email_users_custom_filter_class.php
    ———————————————————————————————————–
    FOUND 1 ERROR AND 2 WARNINGS AFFECTING 3 LINES
    ———————————————————————————————————–
    96 | WARNING | Function create_function() is deprecated since PHP 7.2; Use an anonymous function instead
    98 | ERROR | “$this” can no longer be used in a plain function or method since PHP 7.1.
    102 | WARNING | Function create_function() is deprecated since PHP 7.2; Use an anonymous function instead
    ———————————————————————————————————–

    • Based on another report it looks like there is a limitation with PHP7 right now. I have an issue testing PHP7 because my hosting provider doesn’t offer it. I need to find another solution.

  55. Is this compatible with PHP 7.3? Getting errors on scan.

    • Based on another report it looks like there is a limitation with PHP7 right now. I have an issue testing PHP7 because my hosting provider doesn’t offer it. I need to find another solution.

  56. Is there a way to address each e-mail to a specific user? Something like

    Dear [user-first-name]:

    • No, this isn’t possible because of how Email Users sends emails. It doesn’t send a unique email to each recipient, it sends a single email with all of the recipients in the BCC field. Because of this, each user technically receives the exact same email. The only way to add a unique salutation would be to send a separate email to each recipient but that isn’t something Email Users supports today.

  57. Really enjoy using the email user plugin. Recently, Wordfence starting showing it as an abandoned plugin. do you have plans past Version: 4.8.8? thanks in advanced!

    • I have tried to find someone to take over the plugin without success. I have been out of the WordPress business for a while now but it looks like I may be starting a new project using WordPress. I am in the process of rebuilding my development infrastrucutre and once I get that set back up I will take a look at updating Email Users so it is recognized as current.

  58. hi mike how can I check my users are receiving the emails which are being sent through your app?

    • There isn’t a guaranteed way to validate email receipt but you can copy your own email or another email on messages sent so you can verify they were sent. It is impossible to guarantee delivery because you don’t have control over the recipients email settings, spam filters, inbox rules, etc.

  59. Hello Mike
    Not sure what happened with my mass email through your app.
    But cannot seem to trouble shoot it? Would really appreciated any guidance.
    Right now running WP 5.7.1
    With Buddy Press 7.3.0
    And your “Email Users” 4.8.8

    Also running:
    Mass Messaging in BuddyPress version 2.2.1
    Maybe there is a conflict there?

    • The easiest way to sort out a conflict is to disable all plugins and enable one at a time to make sure each works by itself. Once all are known to be working in isolation, start enabling one at a time until things stop working to narrow down the culprit. I don’t know of a better way to find problems like this.

  60. Hi, thanks for the great plugin, i was wondering if there is an option to add receipients manually ( emails of non members ) like we do inside any email provider ( gmail, yahoo…..).

    please suggest other ways to achieve this if there is no available option currently !

    thanks

    • Email Users only has access to the users the WordPress site knows about, there isn’t any mechanism to add addresses manually. You would have to create a user for each address you want to add. The simplest work-around would be set up an automatic forwarding rule in your email client so when you get copied on the email it gets forwarded to the addresses you wanted to add manually.

      Email Users does have some hooks to manipulate the headers so you could technically write a small plugin which modifies the email headers to add the addresses but unless it is always a fixed set of email addresses, this seems like a lot of work to do in order to achieve the goal, it would be easier to add users to WordPress.

  61. Hello,
    I’ve a bug with your plugin.
    When install the name of plugin is “Notifications” and same in dashboard menu and all work good.
    But after few time or when changing page the plugin name change to “Email users” in plugin list and dsahboard menu, and when click menu it’s redirect in frontend with 404 error O_o
    What’s happen ?

    • I am not following what you are doing. The plugin doesn’t change names, it is always called Email Users. Any time you have unusual behavior the best course of action is to disable all plugins except Email Users (or which ever plugin is suspect) and see if the behavior changes. If things work as expected, start enabling plugins one at a time until the issue returns. What you’re describing sounds like a plugin conflict but figuring out what is causing the conflict can take some trial and error. Email Users hasn’t changed in forever so it is unlikely it is the source.

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