Plain Text generator for The Newsletter Plugin

The Newsletter Plugin is great for generating HTML newsletters on your WordPress site. Its sophisticated Drag & Drop Composer makes it very easy to create a newsletter that looks good and renders well in a variety of email readers.

But it is generally considered good practice to include “plain text” version of the newsletter as well. For some background information on this, see this article on the Litmus blog.

The Newsletter Plugin authors recognize this need and provide a box where you can enter the plain text version. By default, it contains a standard text that does not reflect the content of the newsletter:

This email requires a modern e-mail reader but you can view the email online here:
 {email_url}.

Now wouldn’t it be nice if you could automatically generate a real plain text version of your HTML newsletter?

That’s exactly what my Plaintext add-on does. And it’s free!

Usage

Plaintext for the Newsletter plugin adds a new item “Plaintext” in the Newsletter Settings menu. The Plaintext Settings panel has two options:

Auto-generate plain text for newsletters

When this option is set to “Yes”, a plain text version of each newsletter is automatically created just before the newsletter is sent.

When this option is set to “No”, a command is added to the newsletter’s Edit/Advanced panel that allows you to manually generate a plain text version of the newsletter and customize it if necessary.

When your HTML newsletter is ready to be sent, click the “Auto-generate from HTML” command. The plain text version of your newsletter appears in the box below it. You can modify or customize the plain text version at this point.

When you are done, Save your newsletter. Clicking Send Now or Schedule will automatically save it as well.

Auto-generate plain text for transactional emails

When this option is set to “Yes”, a plain text version of each transactional email is automatically generated.

Transactional emails are all other emails sent by the Newsletter plugin, e.g.: the Welcome message, the Activation email, the Goodbye email.

Example

Here is an excerpt from an HTML newsletter:

and here is the plain text version generated by the Plaintext add-on:

Wearing a new hat at Easter (https://animaplates.com/projects/easter-bonnet/) 
is a long-standing tradition that represents the renewal of nature in springtime. 
I wanted to reproduce that idea because I am so looking forward to seeing the flowers in bloom again! 
 Video (https://animaplates.com/projects/easter-bonnet/) 

Prerequisites

This add-on will only work if you have The Newsletter Plugin installed.

Installation

Plaintext is available from the WordPress Plugin directory.

Install the Plaintext add-on just like any other WordPress plugin.