Quillrush Newsletter Studio for Sendy

📧 Quillrush Newsletter Studio for Sendy turns your WordPress dashboard into a full-blown newsletter creation studio for the Sendy + Amazon SES stack. Drag your latest posts into a beautiful responsive HTML email, pick the Sendy lists/segments to ship to, and send via your self-hosted Sendy installation, which forwards every message through Amazon SES. No HTML coding. No external SaaS. No paid tier.

⚠️ Requires a self-hosted Sendy install backed by Amazon SES. This plugin is the WordPress front-end — it does not replace Sendy or SES. If you don’t have Sendy + SES set up yet, see sendy.co and aws.amazon.com/ses.

✨ Headline features

• 🎨 Visual newsletter builder — drag posts in, see the rendered email update live.
• 📨 Two newsletter formats per campaign — The Roundup (subscriber-facing) and The Insider Brief (editorial pitch for media & partners).
• 📋 Auto-fetched Sendy lists & segments — pulled live via the Sendy API, shown as checkboxes with active subscriber counts. Cached 10 minutes; one-click refresh.
• 🧠 Remembers your last selection — the lists you sent to last time are pre-checked next time.
• 🔍 Infinite-scroll post search — AJAX-loads posts in batches of 10 as you scroll.
• 🖼️ Smart hero image — uses your uploaded banner if present, otherwise falls back to the first post’s featured image.
• 📱 Mobile-first responsive layout — 2 columns on desktop, single column on mobile (< 600px), auto-height cards.
• 📅 Three send modes — Save as Draft in Sendy, Send Immediately, or Schedule for a future date/time.
• 🕐 Timezone-aware scheduling — uses your WordPress timezone; shows current server time + zone next to the picker.
• ♻️ Auto-recovery for overdue campaigns — if WP-Cron didn’t fire on time, overdue scheduled campaigns are auto-sent on next admin page-load.
• 🛠️ Retry on failure — failed sends show the exact Sendy error + a one-click Retry Send button.
• ⚙️ Optional cron trigger — after each send, optionally hit scheduled.php?i=BRAND_ID on your Sendy host so queued campaigns process without a server cron.
• ✍️ Custom footer block — extra text/HTML above the footer in a highlighted box. Supports anchor tags + auto nl2br.
• 🌐 Social footer icons — Instagram, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), YouTube.
• 🗃️ Campaign history — every campaign stored as a qrnss_campaign custom-post-type entry with Status / Scheduled For / Error columns.
• 🔒 WordPress-native security — nonces on every action, manage_options capability checks, wp_safe_redirect() for all redirects.

📨 The two newsletter formats

🗞️ The Roundup — visual hero + 2-column story grid for your subscribers. Uses the «Custom Footer Text» highlighted box.

✉️ The Insider Brief — personal greeting, lead paragraph, centered hero with featured image, «What Else We’re Seeing» 2-column grid, «Why this matters» callout, «For Media & Collaborations» CTA block, and a centered About Us block. Built for media pitches & partner updates. All copy editable from Settings → The Insider Brief — Template Texts.

Pick the format per-campaign on the Create Newsletter page (Design Settings → Newsletter Format). Header and dark footer (logo, social, copyright, unsubscribe) are shared across both formats.

📋 Full settings reference

🔌 Sendy Connection Settings

• Sendy Installation URL — base URL of your Sendy install (e.g. https://sendy.yourdomain.com/).
• API Key — from Sendy → Settings → Your API Key.
• Brand ID (Optional) — from Sendy → Settings → Your Brand → ID. Required by some Sendy versions and used for auto-fetching lists.
• Default From Name — pre-filled into every new campaign.
• Default From Email — pre-filled into every new campaign.
• Auto-Trigger Cron — checkbox. After sending, hit <sendy-url>/scheduled.php?i=BRAND_ID so queued campaigns process without a system cron.
• Show Article Excerpt — checkbox. Insert a 20-word excerpt between the post title and the «Read More» button.

🎨 Footer & Social Settings

• Footer Logo URL — logo shown in the dark footer band.
• Copyright Text — footer copyright line. {year} is replaced with the current year.
• Custom Footer Text — textarea, HTML allowed. Shown in a highlighted box above the footer in The Roundup. Newlines → <br> automatically.
• «Read More Articles» Link — optional link below the post grid.
• Instagram URL / LinkedIn URL / X (Twitter) URL / YouTube URL — social icons in footer.

✉️ The Insider Brief — Template Texts (used only by The Insider Brief format)

• Greeting — e.g. Hi [First Name],
• Intro Paragraph — lead paragraph above the hero story (HTML allowed).
• Hero Section Label — small label above the hero (e.g. Hero Story).
• Grid Section Heading — e.g. 🔍 What Else We're Seeing
• «Why This Matters» Heading + Body
• Collaboration Heading + Body — e.g. 📩 For Media & Collaborations + CTA bullets and contact info (HTML allowed).
• About Us Heading + Body — centered About block above the footer.

📅 Send modes

• 💾 Save as Draft in Sendy — POSTs to create-campaign.php with send_campaign=0. Campaign appears in your Sendy dashboard as a draft. WP logs status: draft.
• 🚀 Send Immediately — POSTs to create-campaign.php with send_campaign=1. Sendy queues + dispatches via SES. WP logs status: sent. If Auto-Trigger Cron is on, also hits scheduled.php?i=BRAND_ID.
• ⏰ Schedule — stored as a qrnss_campaign post with status scheduled. WordPress registers a one-off wp_schedule_single_event for the chosen datetime. When the event fires, the plugin sends via Sendy. Datetime picker is timezone-aware and uses your WP timezone setting.

🛟 Failure handling

Failed sends never silently disappear:

• ❌ Red admin notice at the top of the Campaigns screen.
• 📋 Exact Sendy error in the Error column.
• 🔁 One-click Retry Send button (CSRF-nonced).
• ♻️ Auto-recovery — overdue scheduled campaigns automatically send on next admin page-load.

🗄️ Campaign history (CPT)

Every campaign is stored as a qrnss_campaign custom-post-type entry. Admin columns:

• Title — subject line.
• Status — draft (grey), scheduled (yellow), sent (green), failed (red).
• Scheduled For — datetime if scheduled.
• Error — Sendy error message if the send failed.

🔌 Sendy API endpoints used

All requests go straight to your own self-hosted Sendy installation at the URL you set in Settings. The plugin never talks to any third-party SaaS — Sendy itself fans out to Amazon SES from your host.

• api/lists/get-lists.php — fetch lists for the Create Newsletter screen (cached 10 min). Sends: api_key, brand_id.
• api/subscribers/active-subscriber-count.php — per-list subscriber counts. Sends: api_key, list_id.
• api/campaigns/create.php — Save as Draft, Send Immediately, scheduled fire. Sends: api_key, from_name, from_email, reply_to, title, subject, html_text, plain_text, list_ids, brand_id, send_campaign.
• scheduled.php (your Sendy host) — only when Auto-Trigger Cron is ticked. Sends: i=BRAND_ID query param.

🔒 Requirements

• WordPress 5.8 or higher (tested up to 7.0).
• PHP 7.4 or higher.
• A reasonably recent self-hosted Sendy installation.
• Amazon SES configured inside Sendy (out of scope for this plugin).