maennchen1 Newsletter Germany

maennchen1 Newsletter Germany turns WordPress into a newsletter system. Subscribers live in tables of
your own WordPress database, and mail is sent over the mail path of your own server. No
subscriber address and no sending statistic is handed to a third party, because there is no
third party involved.

The plugin was written for German and European operators, where data protection law makes
the location of subscriber data a practical question rather than a preference.

What it does

• A subscription form for your site, as a block, a shortcode or a widget
• Double opt-in, with a confirmation mail the operator writes
• An unsubscribe link in every mail: one click, no login (or confirmed by mail, if you prefer)
• Subscriber groups, so one newsletter can go to a chosen audience
• Newsletters in HTML and plain text, sent as multipart mail
• Scheduled sending over WP-Cron, in batches sized for shared hosting
• An archive page and a browser view for readers whose mail client mangles HTML
• Placeholders such as %abo_vorname% anywhere in subject and body
• Layout templates, and your own templates in an upload folder that updates never touch

Optional modules

Each of these is a separate file that can be switched on in the backend and left off
otherwise:

• A sending log of who received which newsletter
• Placeholder rules, for example for salutations
• Post notification, immediately or collected as a daily or weekly summary
• Spam protection for the subscription and unsubscription form, without a puzzle, without a
  third party and without storing an IP address

Requirements

PHP 8.1 or newer with the extensions dom and simplexml. A working mail path on the server —
either PHP mail, an SMTP account or wp_mail.

External services

This plugin contacts no server of the manufacturer and no third-party service. Mail goes
out over the mail path of your own server, and no subscriber data leaves your
installation.

One setting fetches content from elsewhere: with “Embed images in the mail” switched on, the
plugin downloads every image used in a newsletter from the address it is hosted at (usually
your own site) and attaches it to the mail. Nothing is sent along except the request for the
image. The setting is off by default.