Send Images to RSS vs Solid Mail – SMTP email and logging made by SolidWP

Send Images to RSS bridges the gap between large websites and small emails, by replacing images in your feed with smaller, email friendly images, and attempting to add markup which email clients can handle. Between larger monitors, retina screens, and better image optimization, the images we serve up on our websites are larger than they’ve ever been. RSS to email services such as MailChimp, however, are constrained to what email clients can display, which is small, small, small. And although it’s possible to try to style images with a max-width in your emails, not all clients will honor it (I’m looking at you, Outlook). Send Images to RSS makes it easy to create beautiful, email friendly RSS campaigns, with minimal setup required, regardless of your feed setup. Full Text RSS Feeds If your site’s RSS feed is set to Full Text, this plugin makes sure your emails look more like your website: Replace overly large images with email friendly size images. Convert galleries from thumbnails to full width images. Add email friendly styling/alignment to your images. Summary Text Feeds If you’ve used Summaries as your RSS feed settings, this plugin has not been for you. Until now. As of 3.0.0, Send Images to RSS brings the awesome to you, too. Here’s the magic for your Summary feed: Add the post’s featured image to your excerpt. Choose the size and alignment. If no featured image is set, the plugin will use the first image uploaded to the post. Set a custom length for your RSS summary/excerpt. Pick the number of words you want your summary to have, and the plugin will aim for that, but with the added bonus of making sure the final sentence is complete. If you add a manual excerpt to your post, because you like to have full control, the plugin will properly use that instead. Automatically add a custom “read more” link to the end of every post summary, to keep your feed pointed back to your site. Known (non)Issues This plugin should work with any theme. Some themes and plugins do modify the feed for their own purposes. Where possible, I’ve tried to account for them: For summary feeds, the Yoast SEO RSS link is removed (the full text feed and front end output are not changed). For summary feeds, the excerpt filter added by the Woo Canvas theme is removed (the full text feed and front end output are not changed). For summary feeds, this plugin will replace the image settings for Display Featured Image for Genesis for versions 2.3.0 and later (because this plugin is smarter). If you’re using Display Featured Image for Genesis 2.2.2 or lower, this plugin will concede graciously. But you should update, please. For full text feeds, this plugin will not duplicate featured images if they are being added by Display Featured Image for Genesis–you will want to disable that feature in Display Featured Image for Genesis. NOTE: it is up to you to check that your feed output is still working, especially in your email system of choice, once it’s installed. I’ve attempted to set it up to handle XHTML or HTML5, and function even if your feed is wonky, but please double check, and let me know if you have issues, and if so, what specifically they are. Props Special thanks to Gretchen Louise for her summary feed contributions. Spanish translation offered by Web Hosting Hub

Your WordPress website is sending emails out daily, but are your users and visitors receiving them? When it comes to ensuring email deliverability, lean on a proven equation: SMTP plugin + email service provider = success. Solid Mail is an easy-to-use, set-it-and-forget-it SMTP plugin that will help you stop worrying about email deliverability. ❓How does Solid Mail Help You Implement SMTP Email on your website? Solid Mail makes connecting to many popular SMTP services straightforward and clear. Solid Mail currently supports the following Email Service Providers (ESPs): Sendgrid MailGun Brevo (formally Sendinblue) Amazon SES Postmark Manual connection (connect to any ESP) Enjoy complete flexibility and reliability in email delivery. Set up multiple connections to send emails via different Email Service Providers according to the From: address, and choose a fallback connection to ensure messages are sent even if a connection fails or the address doesn’t match an existing connection. Learn more about transactional email services for your WordPress website here. 🤔Why Should You Use an SMTP Plugin for Your WordPress Website Instead of the Native PHP Mail? WordPress out the box uses PHP’s built-in mail function to send emails such as password reset requests, WooCommerce order invoices and more. The issue? PHP Mail is only as good as your server and most hosts don’t have dedicated PHP Mail monitoring. Even hosts that specialize in hosting WordPress either don’t offer email services or don’t actively monitor for deliverability. That means you can be at the mercy of noisy neighbors sending spam to purchased email subscriber lists, or spammers running the latest scam. Either way it impacts the health of the server in the eyes of ESPs such as Google, Yahoo, Outlook, and others meaning that most of the time your emails don’t even hit the inbox! Go from spam-box to inbox with Solid Mail: an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) plugin. Combine with an email service provider such as SendGrid, Brevo, Amazon SES, and others and see your emails start getting delivered. An SMTP plugin – like Solid Mail – is essentially a higher-level and more advanced method of sending emails between servers that uses a username and password or other secure method to create the connection to an email service provider (ESP). ESPs (like those listed below) provide robust solutions to deliverability issues by running dedicated servers for sending that are managed ‘round the clock for issues like blacklisting, spam removal, and more. In addition they use authentication protocols like SSL/TLS to secure email transmissions and ensure better deliverability. Using an SMTP plugin combined with an email service provider instead of PHP Mail on the server leads to more reliable, secure, and efficient email communication for WordPress websites. Find out more about SMTP and WordPress email deliverability here. 📑How does Solid Mail Validate Email Deliverability with Email Logs? Solid Mail gives you an easy-on-the-eyes interface to review and inspect your comprehensive email logs and understand if your email was sent or not. This transparency helps in debugging any email deliverability issues with your website. Many email service providers offer advanced features like email tracking and analytics. Solid Mail’s email logs help optimize email strategies by making it easy for you to view and act on patterns and trends. 📧 Email Logging is a great way to help troubleshoot WordPress email deliverability issues But how do you know and validate that your emails are actually being sent from your website correctly? The answer is email logs. Email logs are crucial for validating that your emails are being delivered as intended, serving as an indispensable tool for troubleshooting and ensuring reliability in communication. These logs provide detailed records of every email transaction, including timestamps, recipient addresses, and errors in the SMTP authentication process.