WP Newsletter plugin was fantastic – until I broke it. Help.
First impressions were good enough to make me part with money. The first thing I did was try out the ‘subscribe to newsletter’ widget by putting it on the front page. Great.
Next step was to try to create a newsletter and test it. At this point, I hit the first snag. How do I create a template of my own? There’s no obvious way (unless you’re a software developer yourself) – so I picked apart the existing one and slightly changed it.
I then tried adding some content and pulling in a few blog posts and test-sending it to myself. It worked well (with the results above).
Then I lost my newsletter. Why? Because the damn ‘delete’ link is right next to the ‘edit’ link without a space between them. Whaaaaat?!!
I got it working again (see above) but then I clicked something in the ‘Options’ panel and it blew up. The bit that’s broke is something to do with the ‘sending to people in my subscriber database’ part. I can still go in and design my ‘hand-altered’ newsletter, so if/when I finally get it the send part fixed, it’ll just be a matter of pressing ‘go’.
I’m sure WP Newsletter Plugin will turn out to be worth the £15 I paid for it. However, like much of what’s being developed these days, its beyond the grasp of most people of my age.
And it seems like its getting harder and harder to find basic ‘how to’ guides for these things. There’s a gap opening up between developers and the rest of us – and I think it’s getting bigger.
On the plus side, I’m still confident that WP Newsletter Plugin will be worth the money. Right now, though, I’m very much on the wrong side of the information gap. 
UPDATE: I installed this plugin on another blog and tested it. It worked ok, until I went into options and changed the following two settings:
“Minimum User Level for Newsletter Management:” (I changed it to 10 administrator) and
“Delete Unsubscribers from Database:” (I checked on)
That blew up the plugin with the same errors as on this blog.
DOUBLE UPDATE: Have since got it working again. See this post.
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