---
title: "The Return of the Newsletter — How to Keep the Newsletter Concept Without the Work"
date: 2007-05-30
description: "$( document ).ready(function() { // Handler for .ready() called. $("
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2007/05/30/the-return-of-the-newsletter-how-to-keep-the-newsletter-concept-without-the-work/
---
# The Return of the Newsletter — How to Keep the Newsletter Concept Without the Work
So I implemented the [ShiftThis Newsletter plugin](http://www.shiftthis.net/wordpress-newsletter-plugin/), which costs $20. It's one of the few plugins that actually costs money. Although I'm still figuring out how to send 292 emails without my server stopping the process due to a spam prevention mechanism, so far I like the plugin. You can create the newsletter simply by selecting the posts you want to include. Then you just send it out. No copying and pasting (like you'd have to do in [Constant Contact](http://constantcontact.com)).

And you aren't required to use the registered users in your blog. You can import a .csv file of email addresses. However, when I attempted to send out the newsletter to the 292 email addresses (the Suncoast chapter listserv), it froze at 32%, and I received an email saying, "Domain idratherbewriting.com has exceeded the max emails per hour. Message discarded." And I was only on the A's!

As a quick solution, I just added the listserv email address as a subscriber, and it sent the newsletter to all 292 addresses in record time. The only problem is, people can't unsubscribe to it without unsubscribing from the listserv. But I'm still looking into that ...

### The Newsletter's Look and Feel

Here's how the newsletter from ShiftThis looks (with a bit of tweaking). It's the ideal.

[![Ideal Newsletter](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/ideal1.gif)](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/2007/05/ideal.gif)

However, many email programs, like Outlook 2007, strip out the header and images, so what you see unfortunately looks like this:

[![In Some Email Programs](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/reality1.gif)](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/2007/05/reality.gif)

Other times, for unpredictable reasons that I can't yet discern, the images in the newsletter appear as attachments:

[![Attachments in newsletter](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/attachments1.gif)](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/2007/05/attachments.gif)

Someone told me that the banner looks oversized and unnecessary. I agree, and considering the problems with the display in different readers, I stripped it out. This is more of the light version of the newsletter:

[![Solution — Light Newsletter](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/solution1.gif)](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/2007/05/solution.gif)

I have to add that the newsletter is not that simple to style. You need to know a bit about page templates, and be comfortable editing CSS if you want to change the look and feel of the newsletter. But it's not that difficult, especially if you've been using WordPress a while.