Hank Pantier

Even if you have the WordPress app for your android or iPhone, sometimes it’s just easier to send an email.  At the end of this tutorial, you will be able to send an email and have the subject line be the title of your blog post, and the body of the email show up as the body of the post.

Setting up your WordPress blog where it can receive and publish posts via email is pretty simple.  A couple of steps and a the install of a plugin and you’re pretty much off and running.

1. Create a dedicated email address that you will use for the sole purpose of updating your blog
2. Configure WordPress to access that account
3. Install a plugin so that WordPress can publish messages from that email account
4. (OPTIONAL) set up user so that posts will automatically post.

Create a dedicated email address that you will use for the sole purpose of updating your blog
This step is something that you’ll have to complete after talking with your hosting provider or email provider – I am going to leave this up to you.  See step three below for a valuable tip, though.

Configure WordPress to access that account

1. Log in to WordPress with the administration login you use to administer your WordPress blog.
2. Go to Settings > Writing.
3. Read the instructions under Post via e-mail at the bottom of the page. At the end of these instructions, WordPress will suggest three random strings of numbers you may want to use for the login name of the new e-mail account you’ll create.
4. Create a new e-mail account on your web host’s mail server or a separate e-mail server, using one of the suggested numeric strings (or your own secret word) for the username (also called a “login name”). A mail server receives e-mails on your behalf and stores them for retrieval. Do not use public, free e-mail servers like Yahoo, Hotmail, etc., for this account.

Install a plugin so that WordPress can publish messages from that email account
At this point in time, everything is set up where you can send an email to your new address and WordPress CAN access your new account. What we have to do now is tell WordPress that it NEEDS TO access the account.

You can do this manually by visiting http://example.com/installdir/wp-mail.php immediately after sending an email to your newly setup address – but that is kind of a useless step as far as i am concerned.

A better way to accomplish the email retrieval is to automate it.  The easiest way of doing this is to install and activate the WP-Cron plugin.  You will want to activate WP-Cron-Mail after install.

At this point, you’re pretty much done – you can send an email to your newly created address, WP-Cron will run (it runs about every 15 minutes) and pull the email into POSTS.  If you proceed no further, these posts will be marked as Pending and you’ll have to manually publish them.  You can change this by adding a user with your newly created email address.

(OPTIONAL) set up user so that posts will automatically post.
Go to Users -> Add User and create a new user for your blog.  I set their user level as author (so they can publish) make the name anything you like – typically I use EmailPoster and make the email address the address you created in step one (the email address you send mail to).  Now when WP-Cron runs it will automatically set any emails to this address as published.

let’s see if this gets automatically published.

I am testing WordPress’ post by email feature. I’ve never used it before, but sounds kinda cool. http://codex.wordpress.org/Post_to_your_blog_using_email

if so, she’ll kick my arse.

not as good as last year

aargh

aargh

seriously – waste of time…thank God for free WiFi