Update: WP Responder has been added to the WordPress Plugin repository. You can install WP Responder through the WordPress dashboard through the Plugins > Add New feature. Look for “WP Responder” as the search phrase.
The success of any blog depends on the number of people who are actively reading your blog at any time. To help you get more blog subscribers and monetize your blog, I have been hard at work to create this plugin for the past 15 or so days to make it what it is now.
There are many blog subscription plugins available but none of them did what I wanted them to do. They were all limited in features or were paid software, possibly violating the wordpress license which prohibits creating proprietary wordpress plugins.
You might be wondering why would you offer e-mail subscriptions when most people would rather use RSS. Aren’t emails annoying? Not if you do it right.
Why provide E-Mail Subscription when you can just offer RSS?
All blogs on the internet today brovide RSS subscriptions. For the top blogs such as Techcrunch and mashable, RSS is the primary channel through which their readers read the blog. However, RSS has some limitations. The most important one I see is control. Being able to customize who gets what message.
- RSS Isn’t Suited To Every Blog’s Audience Outside the world of technology blogs and other blogs that have a tech-savvy audience, providing RSS feeds is simply not enough. Asking them to find and learn to configure a RSS feed reader may be too much of a learning curve just to stay updated with your blog. The medium should not stand between you and your subscribers. E-mail is a very basic application. Anyone who knows how to user the Internet knows how to use e-mail.
- RSS Feed E-Mail Services Aren’t EnoughServices like FeedBlitz and FeedBurner provide e-mail subscriptions for a blog’s content via E-Mail. They allow blog subscribers to subscribe to your blog via email. But these services cannot be used to send email to your subscribers without making a post on your blog. Although Feedblitz provides the e-mail broadcast feature on a paid subscription. This is essential if you would like to market your products and services to your blog readers.
- RSS Can’t Filter Recipients – As your readership increases, you will find yourself writing on general topics. The blog becomes less and less relevant to an individual with a specific interest as the reader. This subscriber may only be interested in posts that you file under a specific category. Some posts are better given delivered by e-mail to a small subset of your subscribers.
- RSS is just one channel to reach you – RSS is just one channel through which people can reach you. You can’t make a posting about
Prospects Need Repeated Exposure To Your Message To Become Customers
Most prospects (who in this case are blog susbcribers) will not buy from you on the very first exposure to your advertisement or sales pitch. They must be exposed to your message 5-7 times before they buy from you.We cannot send these repeated messages through blog posts as our blog will begin to look like a bunch of sales letters and will make us lose subscribers.
We should also be able to reach our readership without making a blog post. This is the motivation to create WP Responder.
What is WP Responder?
Below is the features of this plugin:
- Create Unlimited Number Of Newsletters – Apart from delivering blog posts to subscribers, you can create newsletters that are meant to be exclusively used for building a audience.
- Create Unlimited Followup Autoresponders – Usually newsletter subscription plugins support only creating newsletters to which you must send broadcasts manually. With the WP Responder, you can create followup messages to get your prospects ready to buy your product or build a loyal following via E-Mail.
- Create Post Series – For the longest time, creating a post series has been the way to increase blog subscribers. But most bloggers don’t promote their post series after they have finished up the series. This feature allows you to offer subscribing to a post series (posts filed under a certain category) by e-mail delivered at regular intervals such as once in 2 days.
- Much More – There are many more features you should look at that will be help you build a readership for your blog if you have one. This blog is currently using this plugin for e-mail subscriptions. The plugin is available for free download here:
When I try to join the mailing list to receive WordPress responder it doesn’t continue and I never receive a confirmation email.
What else can I do to get it?
There was a bug in the version of WP Responder I was using. You can try downloading it now.
Hi Raj,
I have added the plugin to my blog which already has a number of registered and confirmed subscribers. How do I get these subscribers in the Wp Responder database without sending out another confirmation email?
Hi nash,
I have decided against implementing that feature as it will most likely get this plugin footprinted as a source of spam. This will inturn ruin the deliverability completely for others who use this plugin.
Raj
Hey There,
I was looking at the autoresponder system, and it says “more fields” on the generate a form page, but there is nothing there. I need to be able to also collect people’s phone numbers – do you have a way of adding additional form fields?
Thanks,
Justin
Justin,
Add more fields by defining custom fields for the newsletter. You can find the custom fields under Newsletters > Click on ‘Custom Fields’ next to your newsletter. There you will be able to define more fields for the newsletter. These fields can be optionally added to a subscription form when generating the code for it under the Subscription forms seciton.
Raj
Hi Raj:
I have just installed the plug-in with my site. Looking great ,awesome plug-in. Currently testing the features of the plug-in. I will write a review on blog after the testing process is completed.
Thank u
Sakthi,
Thanks. Much appreciated.
Raj
why i cannot receive the follow-up emails?
does the wpr-cron work?
PS: the confirmation messages go right! but the broadcast couldn’t work!
I am having the same trouble as Peter – I set this up and get the confirmation messages, but the automated followup messages aren’t going out. I found an error on line 17 of “thecron.php” and fixed it, but still nothing. I’ve set a cron job on that file for every minute and am running it manually for testing, but still not getting my immediate followup or any others.
What am I doing wrong?
Raj:
I have the same problem which is reported by “Peter” and “Justin Handley”. The Auto responder function is seems to be not working! which is the objective of this plug in development.
really i greatly admired by this plug-in because this plug in is one of the few available plug-ins for great functionality but the sad point its seems to be not working.( i have found that very few plug ins are avaialble at free of cost auto responder function integrate with wordpres blogs)
so how earlier you fixing and relasing the plug-in to the public will increase your reputation and fame. we will looking more from you ( on behalf of our readers)
I wish you best of luck
Was this ever fixed? Looks like the product is 90% of the way there…but, my PDF does not automatically go out after someone makes a request though my site.
Unless, I did something wrong?
Thanks,
Peter
RetireNation.net
Peter, it isn’t finished yet. I’ve been finding a lot of bugs since by last mailout regarding the plugin. It will be atleast a couple of more weeks until I can get this properly cleaned up and ready to be used.
Hold tight :)
Raj
My web gal got it working somehow; seems to be working fine – as far as I can see.
Thanks,
Peter
Hi!.. when I’m activating your plugin it shows me this error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CLASS in /membri/abletonfacile/blog/wp-content/plugins/wpresponder/lib/classes/Swift.php on line 18
Hope you’ll fix soon :-) or maybe Have I a old php version? Let me know please
Hi Luca,
The plugin requires that you run PHP5. Abstract classes are supported only in php5.
Warm Regards,
Raj Sekharan
Oh damn, ya, you’re right!
hmm.. because I’m workin on a free domain webservice.. Is there any your Wp responder that works on PHP version that isn’t fifth?
Thanks
Unfortunately Luca, no. I haven’t created a version of WP Responder that works on php4.
Warm Regards,
Raj
Nice plug-in ;-). Is there a way to set up cron on the system server via Cpanel? The issue of the cron job relying on traffic/web visitors doesn’t look too good. Thanks ;-)
Hi Udegbunam,
You can create a cronjob to run wp-cron.php which is located in your wordpress’s root directory. This will automatically run the crons for the wpresponder plugin also.
Raj
Thanks I’ll try that out and holla back @ ya.
P.S: Do you mind adding the subscribe to comments plug-in on your blog. It will make it easier for commentators to follow up on replies ;-)
Hmm. Something just occurred to me. If I were to set a cron on wp-cron.php, I hope this wouldn’t affect WordPress’ default Scheduled posts function?
NoUdegbunam, scheduled posts won’t be affected by settinga cron job on wp-cron.php. Sheduled posts will appear only at the time when they are published. You can set the cronjob without any side effects.
Warm regards,
Raj
Okay… Downloaded this today and got the following error:
======================================================
Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.
Warning: require_once(/var/www/vhosts/mywebsite.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/wpresponder/lib/dependency_maps/cache_deps.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /var/www/vhosts/mywebsite.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/wpresponder/lib/swift_init.php on line 16
======================================================
So after the error, I took a look inside the plugin’s directory… I don’t even see the following directory or file:
dependency_maps/cache_deps.php
Any ideas?
Thanks,
jack
Hi,
I just tried to install and the plugin could not be activated.
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘{‘ in /home/name/publicnamel/wp-content/plugins/wpresponder/wpr_install.php on line 8
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Jim
Hi,
I contacted my server people and they made a change to go to PHP5.
I attempted this morning and received.
Warning: require_once(/home/name/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wpresponder/lib/dependency_maps/cache_deps.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/jimsle/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wpresponder/lib/swift_init.php on line 30
Thanks,
Jim
“This plugin does not have a valid header”
Hi Stephanie,
The plugin files may have been placed within a sub folder in the plugins directory. The path to wpresponder.php file should be :
/path/to/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wpresponder/wpresponder.php
Not:
/path/to/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wpresponder/wpresponder/wpresponder.php
Raj
Okay, I just downloaded, installed and tested this plugin. I also at first got the same error. The subscribe email went out as it should, but the welcome email never arrived. I took the suggestion and added a cron job to wp-cron.php and restested. Everything worked like a charm.
As a side note, if you try to install this plugin from the dashboard, it will not work, it is not in the right folder. It appears that when wordpress unzips it, another folder is added as Raj mention.
Thanks for a great plugin Raj.
Where is the download file? I keep requesting but the confirm link is missing in the reply email.
Also, where are the instructions? Is there a help file anywhere?
I cannot wait to try this plugin as it looks very promising.
Super plugin!
I just cant get it to save my subscription forms. it says that is saved it, but when i go back, there is nothing there.. ?? any body?
I have the same problem as Aleksander…my Form doesn’t save. And when I copy and paste the code, I try to subscribe and I get an error.
“The newsletter to which you are trying to subscribe doesn’t exist in our records. ”
Please help.