nolimit-news-dist/docs/SETUP.md

Setting up Nolimit News

Installing it

Needs	Version
WordPress	5.9 or newer
PHP	7.4 or newer
WooCommerce	not needed

1. Download nolimit-news.zip from the latest release.
2. Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, then activate.
3. Open Newsletters in the admin menu.

Later versions arrive in Dashboard → Updates like any other plugin: it checks its own release feed and is never looked up on wordpress.org. The first time you open its screen it offers to switch automatic updates on for it; that is WordPress' own setting, in WordPress' own place, and you can say no.

Making mail actually leave

This plugin hands every message to WordPress (wp_mail()), so mail leaves however the rest of your site's mail leaves. On most hosting that is the server's own mail function, which is often slow, rate-limited or marked as spam. For a newsletter, set up a real sender first: an SMTP account or a mail service, through any SMTP plugin, or Nolimit Send. Without that, a test send may arrive in a spam folder or not at all, and a large send may be cut off by your host's hourly limit. The screen tells you when mail fails: if the first five messages in a row are refused, the send stops by itself rather than working through your whole list.

Sending runs from WordPress' background scheduler (WP-Cron), one batch a minute. On a quiet site that only runs when somebody visits, so a scheduled time means "not before", never "exactly at". If WP-Cron is switched off on your site, the Send screen says so, and your server has to call wp-cron.php itself.

The first ten minutes

1. Templates → How every issue looks. Set the brand colour, the address of a public logo image, and your postal address. The address is printed at the foot of every mail: marketing mail is expected to say who sent it and where they are. Pick the default template.
2. Lists → New list. Give it a name and a line about what people are signing up for. Leave "Offer this list on signup forms" ticked for lists the public may join; untick it for one you only fill yourself.
3. Put the form on a page. Add the Newsletter signup block, or the shortcode [nolimit_news_signup]. With no list named, it offers every public list.
4. Write an issue. On the Send tab, Write a new issue. It is the block editor with only the blocks that survive an email program: paragraphs, headings, lists, quotes, images, separators, columns, a button and a product card. Open the Add to the issue panel and drag a product in, or click it.
5. Preview, then send a test to your own address. Look at it on a phone.
6. Send now, or Send not before a time. Pick the lists; a person on several of them is mailed once.

When the last message has gone, the issue is published, which puts it in the archive at /newsletters/ on your site. The Newsletter archive block lists the latest issues on any page.

Checking that it works

• A signup arrives as pending, and you receive the confirmation mail. Follow its link: a page with a button appears (a mail scanner that opens the link cannot confirm anyone by accident), and pressing it makes the person subscribed.
• The unsubscribe link in a test send goes nowhere, by design. In a real send it takes one click, and the person is not mailed again.
• Mailed N of N on the issue's Send panel counts what was handed to your mail system. It cannot know what the receiving servers did with it.

Leaving Mailchimp

Subscribers → Import reads the CSV files Mailchimp lets you export. Do the three separately:

• Subscribed people join as subscribed. You tick a box to say they agreed to receive your newsletter.
• Unsubscribed people are recorded as unsubscribed, so no later import can bring them back.
• Cleaned addresses are suppressed and mailed nothing.

Only the address and the name are read, and the file itself is not kept. A large file is handled in steps; the screen says which row to carry on from. Imported people stay visibly not confirmed until they follow a link, and Ask the imported people mails them in batches of 50 to do exactly that. They stay subscribed whether or not they answer.

Opens, privacy and the law

Counting opens is off until you switch it on under How every issue looks. Switching it on adds one invisible image to each mail and records, in your own database, that this person's copy was opened. It is an estimate: some mail programs load images for the reader and others never do. Switching it off stops recording at once and removes the image from later mail. Nothing is ever sent to anyone else.

Settings → Privacy → Policy Guide gets a paragraph that matches your choice. Personal data exports and erasure requests from WordPress cover the lists: an export includes the dates the person asked and confirmed, and an erasure deletes the address and its consent records.

You are responsible for having consent to mail your list. The plugin helps by keeping the proof: confirmed means the person followed their own link, and an imported person who has not is shown as one you are asserting rather than one you can show.

Deleting it

Deactivating keeps your lists, subscribers and issues. Deleting the plugin removes its tables, its settings and every issue, because the subscriber lists hold personal data with no other owner. Export what you want first (Subscribers → Export these as CSV).

If something is wrong

You see	It means
A template "was found and not used"	It broke a rule (a script, a link tag, a missing unsubscribe token). The message says which; fix that and save again.
Stopped with "The mail system said:"	Your mail setup refused the first messages. Fix it, then Carry on where it stopped; nobody is mailed twice.
/newsletters/ shows a 404	Open Settings → Permalinks and press Save once.
Scheduled issue did not go at the time	WP-Cron fires on a visit. Visit the site, or have the server call wp-cron.php every minute.