WordPress problems, solved plainly.
Plain Hooks explains the everyday WordPress jobs that still trip people up: getting site email delivered, sending a newsletter, putting pages in the right order, controlling thumbnail sizes, captioning images, and keeping the login screen safe.
Each guide starts from the problem rather than from a product. It shows what WordPress core already does, where the settings and hooks are, and when a plugin or an outside service is genuinely the better tool. Code is kept short and uses documented WordPress functions, with links to the official references.
Coming here from an old link to a plugin page? The plugins once published on this domain have been discontinued for many years and are not offered here. The pages at those addresses now explain how to solve the same problem with current WordPress. The help hub lists them all.
The guide most readers need first
Why WordPress emails disappear or land in spam, how wp_mail() works, and how to route site mail through an authenticated SMTP server or sending service.
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Logins & site adminWhat the message means, how the recovery link works, and how to get back in when the email never arrives.
Logins & site adminWhat each built-in role can do, which capabilities are risky, and how to give people the least access that lets them work.
Email & newslettersHow to send WordPress email through a Gmail or Google Workspace account today: server settings, app passwords, OAuth, the Workspace SMTP relay, limits and pitfalls.
Email & newslettersHow to run an email newsletter from a WordPress site today: in-site plugins versus email services, double opt-in, unsubscribe rules, and sender authentication.
Pages & imagesWhich image sizes WordPress creates on upload, how to change thumbnail dimensions, register custom sizes, regenerate existing images and avoid wasted disk space.
Pages & imagesHow WordPress decides the order of pages, how to set it with the Order attribute, navigation menus or drag-and-drop, and how to sort page lists in code.
Logins & site adminTwo kinds of lock-out for WordPress: limiting failed login attempts against brute-force attacks, and closing the site to visitors during maintenance without hurting SEO.
Pages & imagesHow captions work in WordPress: caption versus alt text, adding captions in the Image block and Media Library, styling them, and showing captions in templates.