To install Courier, download the plugin, unzip it and drop the courier folder into your plugins folder (not your mu-plugins folder) on your Web site.

Put the internal folder named courier in the wp-content/themes folder. This is where you will create your templates for your different newsletters.

Activate the plugin. On activation, two e-mail categories will automatically be created for you — breaking news and a per-issue e-mail edition. There will be basic templates in the themes folder (the one you just put in wp-content/themes)for those two categories, though they will require a little bit of customization, and I highly recommend creating your own. Please note: You will have to have a theme folder and file for each category, even if you just want to start with a blank e-mail.

In the admin panel, there will be a new cluster of links on the left side for Courier. The top link, simply marked Courier, contains various settings for how the plugin performs. The second link allows you to compose and send e-mails, the third allows you to view and edit users, and the last link allows you to view e-mails that have already been sent.

Following the top link adjust your settings to match your Web site and server. You can add and delete categories, change the from field of your e-mails so they send to a different e-mail address than defined in WordPress, customize the footer of your e-mail and adjust the number of e-mails sent at a time. This is important to ensure you do not crash your server.

At the bottom of the page are controls to manage large numbers of users at once. From time to time you may be hit by a spammer, so you have the option to purge unverified users. You can also import users from College Publisher and Feedburner.

When the plugin is customized to your liking and you are ready to start sending e-mails, simply place the [courier] shortcode on a page to display the registration form.

Importing users

Courier contains built-in functionality to import users from College Publisher and Feedburner. A file is included in the package that describes in detail the process. Please read it carefully before proceeding, as many of the databases from College Publisher contain anomalies. If you would like to import users from another source, feel free to contact me and I will be glad to help.