Post by Email

Inspired when you’re on the go? Publish blog posts directly from an email account.

Enable Post by Email

Activate the Post by Email feature from Jetpack → Settings → Writing → Post by Email in your site’s WP Admin.

Create an email address

Post by Email requires an email address to post to, not from. To create this secret email address, please follow these steps:

1. Go to Jetpack → Settings → Writing → Post by Email.
2. Click the Create Address button. Jetpack will generate an email address which is a random string of letters and numbers, followed by @post.wordpress.com.
3. Click Regenerate address under you see an address you are happy with.
4. Make sure this address stays secret. Anyone who knows this address will be able to publish posts on your blog.

Note: The Post by Email feature is only usable via email clients. Our anti-spam controls will always block posts from PHP scripts, including PHPMailer.

Publish a post via email

To publish a post via email, follow these steps:

1. Compose an email from any email client which support rich text or HTML formatting. You may NOT use PHP scripts, including PHPMailer.
2. Use the address generated above as the recipient.
3. Use the subject line for the post’s title. If it’s not possible to provide a subject line due to your email provider, use a shortcode instead.
4. Use the email body for the post’s content. Your email can be plain text or formatted. Be aware that the Post by Email system will strip any HTML tags that it thinks will interfere with a post’s display on your site. For example, italic and bold formatting will be retained, but colour and font changes will not.

Please note that you can only post by email to one site at a time. If you try to post to multiple email addresses at once, only the first one will be used.

Remove email signature

Post by Email will remove:

• signatures that match the standard signature block pattern (that is, dash dash space)
• Anything after a <hr/> HTML tag, and will attempt to clean up cellphone network signatures as well.
• Content after a special [end] shortcode on its own line, with a blank line above it

Include attachments

Post by Email supports sending PDF files and images as attachments.

PDF attachments sent using Post by Email will appear at the bottom of your post, accessible by a link.

Image attachments will be included in your post as follows:

• Single images will be displayed inline (a single image is defined as an image without another image immediately following it).
• Multiple images will be displayed as a gallery.

Multiple galleries and single images are allowed in the same post. You can use the [nogallery] shortcode to disable all galleries in a post.

Shortcodes

Shortcodes can be embedded in your email to configure various aspects of the published post. Inlcude shortcodes anywhere in the body of your email, making sure they are in lowercase, and with no spaces between the left square bracket and the shortcode content.

The following shortcodes can be used when posting by email:

Add categories

[category x,y,z]

Add existing categories to your post, or create new categories. Categories must be comma separated.

[category holidays, main-dishes]

Note: it’s possible to add categories by matching existing category slugs. For example, ‘main-dishes’ may add the ‘Main Dishes’ category if it exists. If the ‘main-dishes’ category did not exist, however, then a new category with the slug and name ‘main-dishes’ would be created instead.

Add tags

[tags x,y,z]

As with categories, you can add any number of tags to your post, each separated by a comma. Add existing tags, or create new ones.

[tags one potato, two potato, three potato, more]

In this example, four tags will be added to your post: ‘one potato’, ‘two potato’, ‘three potato’, and ‘more’.

Delay publication of your post

[delay +1 hour]

The delay shortcode will accept any time allowed by PHP’s strtotime function. For example, you can use the following to delay your post by one hour, or two days, respectively.

[delay +1 hour]
[delay +2 days]

Change your post status

[status publish | pending | draft | private]

Sometimes you may want your post to be private, or to be reviewed by yourself or someone else before being published. To do this, you can use the [status] shortcode to set the post status.

[status private]

This will post your content with a ‘private’ status.

[slug some-url-name]

Specify a post title

[title Your post title]

By default, the title of your post will be taken from the subject line of your email. In some instances, such as when sending an email from some cell phones or via a MMS-Email gateway, you may not be able to provide a subject. In these cases, you can set your post title from inside the email with a shortcode:

[title My Fancy Post]

This will set the title of your post to ‘My Fancy Post’.

Withhold email signature or other content

[end]

Everything after the [end] shortcode is ignored. If you use this, make sure it’s on its own line with a blank line above it.

Change auto-gallery options

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

– replaces the auto-gallery with a slideshow [nogallery] – disables the auto-gallery and displays all images inline

Disable comments on a post

[comments on | off]

Use the above short code to turn comments on or off for a post.

Change a Post’s Jetpack Social settings

Jetpack’s Jetpack Social feature lets you notify other web services about your posts. With the [publicize] shortcode you can control this from Post by Email.

Note: your Jetpack Social settings must have been previously configured for these shortcodes to work. Importantly, if you have already configured Jetpack Social and don’t include these shortcodes in your post, then it will be shared to all of your connected Jetpack Social accounts.

The following Jetpack Social shortcodes are available:

[publicize off] – disable all Jetpack Social notifications.

[publicize facebook] – Sends a notification from Facebook only.

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Privacy Information

Post-by-email is de-activated by default. It can be activated any time by toggling the Publish posts by sending an email in the Post by Email section from Jetpack — Settings — Writing in your dashboard.

Data Used
Site Owners / UsersThis feature utilizes the local ID of the user configuring or publishing via this feature. This ID is used to check for an active Jetpack connection and actually create/update the email address for posting.Additionally, for activity tracking (detailed below): IP address, WordPress.com user ID, WordPress.com username, WordPress.com-connected site ID and URL, Jetpack version, user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.	Site VisitorsNone.
Activity Tracked
Site Owners / UsersWe track when, and by which user, the feature is activated and deactivated. We also track when, and which, configuration settings are modified.	Site VisitorsNone.
Data Synced (Read More)
Site Owners / UsersWe sync options that identify whether or not the feature is activated and the configured email address used exclusively for posting content.	Site VisitorsNone.