How to use emailfooter.

Overview

emailfooter lets a company design one professional email signature and lets every employee fill in their own details and install it in their mail app. It runs as a WordPress plugin, on your site or on ours (emailfooter Managed).

If you are…	Start here
Installing it on your own WordPress site	Install and set up, then Set up your company
A company admin (design, people, invitations)	Set up your company
An employee	Your signature
An agency running signatures for clients	Agencies and Agency mode
The owner of the install (email, security, files)	Settings for the install owner
An emailfooter Managed customer	Using emailfooter Managed
A developer or hosting admin	For developers

There are three kinds of people in the app. The platform admin owns the install (the person who activates the plugin). A company admin designs a company’s signature and manages its people. An employee edits only their own details. In WordPress the roles show as “EF admin” and “EF member” until you rename them with Agency mode.

Install and set up

What you need

• WordPress 6.4 or newer, PHP 7.4 or newer, HTTPS, and a single-site install (multisite is not supported yet)
• Apache, LiteSpeed or nginx. The GD image extension is recommended for coloured icons
• Email delivery (SMTP) so invitations and password resets can be emailed. Without it the app shows copyable links instead

Install

• Request the download link on the Plugin page and download the zip from the email.
• In WordPress go to Plugins, Add New, Upload Plugin, choose the zip and install it.
• Click Activate. Whoever activates the plugin becomes the platform admin.
• The setup guide opens by itself.

The setup guide

• Welcome. Agency owners click “turn on Agency mode” here. Everyone else just continues.
• About you. Your name, work email, position, company or agency name and industry.
• Confirm your email. We email a 6-digit code from emailfooter.co. The screen lists exactly what is shared. If you can’t connect, choose “Continue offline”: everything works and a reminder stays in Settings.
• Your business. A company install creates your company. An agency sets its brand name, logo and colour.
• Finish. You land on your dashboard (company) or on Companies (agency).

Set up your company

Company admins use the menu on the left. Work through it in this order.

Business info

Company name, tagline, website, company phone, address and an optional legal footer. Add your social links here, and the logo.

• What goes in the picture spot? Choose Employee photo, or Company logo only to put the logo in the photo’s place on every signature.
• You can also show the logo beside, above or below the text, and set its width.

Design

• Quick themes. 24 colour themes with light and dark colours.
• Colours. Six colour roles if you want to fine-tune.
• Type, icons and dividers. Font, font size, icon style (filled, outline or text) and divider (thin, thick, dashed or none).
• Phone numbers. Show the company number, the personal number, or both.

Templates

Pick one of 10 layouts for the whole company (Classic, Executive, Profile, Aligned, Centered, Ribbon, Boxed, Compact, Reverse and Wide), or open the code editor and write your own HTML with merge tags for each employee’s details. Centered layouts keep the logo on the same centre line as the text.

People and invitations

• Enter an email address and role, and send an invitation. The person gets a one-time link that expires (seven days unless the install owner changed it).
• If email is not set up, the app shows the link so you can send it yourself.
• The roster shows each person’s role and join date. Revoke an open invitation any time.

Analytics

Counts the times signatures were copied and installs were started, over time, by mail app and by person. It counts recorded events only: it can’t see whether a pasted signature is still in use.

Your signature (employees)

• Open the invitation link from your email, choose a password and create your account. If you already have an account, sign in.
• Open My signature.
• Fill in your name, job title, department, email, phone and scheduling link, and add a photo if your company uses one.
• Check the live preview. Switch between light and dark to see both.
• Under Install in your mail app pick your app (16 are covered, including Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, Yahoo, Zoho, Thunderbird and Proton). Follow the numbered steps and use the copy button.

• You can change only your own details. Layout, colours and logo are set by your company admin.
• Copy as a rich signature, as HTML code or as plain text, depending on what your mail app accepts.
• Share link. Create a link to show your signature and the install steps to someone else. Creating a new link turns the old one off.
• Forgot your password? Use the “Forgot password” link on the sign-in page.

Agencies and Agency mode

Agency mode is off by default, so a normal company install stays simple. Turn it on when you run signatures for clients.

Turn it on

• In the setup guide, click the line for agency owners on the first screen, or
• go to emailfooter, Settings, General and switch on Agency mode.

What it unlocks

• Companies. Add a company for each client with its admin’s email and an initial password, then share the login privately. Open any client to edit it; a banner shows you are viewing as platform admin.
• Enquiries. The inbox for requests from the enquiry form.
• Branding. Your brand name, logo (and dark-mode logo), browser icon, accent colour, wp-admin menu name and an extra line for emails. The app, sign-in pages and emails use it.
• The “Powered by emailfooter” line. On by default in emails and invitation pages. Switch it off in Branding if you like.
• “Request one” link. Set where the sign-in page sends people who need an account, or leave it blank to hide it.

Turn it off

Switching it off hides Companies, Enquiries and Branding and blocks new companies. Your companies and branding are kept, and the credit line comes back. Switch it on again to restore everything.

Settings for the install owner

Open emailfooter, Settings (platform settings). You need to be a platform admin.

General

• Invitation expiry (1 to 30 days), enquiry notification email, and the app address (the page the app lives on).
• Agency mode and, in Agency mode, the platform name.

Front page

Choose whether your website’s home page is your normal front page or the app’s sign-in screen. The app stays at its own address either way.

Email (SMTP)

• Switch on Use my own SMTP server and pick your provider to fill in the host, port and encryption.
• Enter the username, password and the From address your provider lets you send as.
• Click Save & send test email. Invitations will say they were emailed only after a test succeeds.

Choose whether the server is used for emailfooter’s emails only or for all WordPress email. You can keep the password out of the database by defining EMAILFOOTER_SMTP_PASSWORD in wp-config.php.

Public files folder (Beta)

Optional. Gives logos, photos and the app’s own files a neutral public address at /ef-files/, stored inside wp-content. A hosting compatibility test runs first, and a ten-minute keep-or-undo window protects you if something misbehaves.

Security (Beta)

Optional levels (Off, Standard, Stealth) that reduce visible WordPress signals and limit the public REST API. A test runs first, changes wait for you to keep or undo them, and there are several ways back in if you lock yourself out (see Troubleshooting).

Connection to emailfooter.co

Shows whether the install is connected, what is sent each week (an install ID, your site address, the plugin, WordPress and PHP versions, and whether Agency mode is on), and lets you disconnect. Companies, people and signatures are not part of it.

Mail apps and uninstall

Limit which mail apps companies can pick from. “Delete all emailfooter tables and settings when the plugin is deleted” is off by default so an accidental removal doesn’t lose data.

Using emailfooter Managed

Managed is the same software, hosted and looked after by us. You use the app exactly as described above for company admins and employees. The parts about installing, email set-up, the public files folder and security are handled for you.

• We set up your workspace after your pricing request, and you invite your team.
• Your company admins manage the design, people and invitations; employees install their own signatures.
• To change something that only the install owner can change, ask us through the contact page.
• You can ask to move to your own install later: the software is the same.

For developers

WP-CLI

Constants and switch files

Name	What it does
EF_CONNECT_OFF	Define as true in wp-config.php to block the connection to emailfooter.co. The plugin works the same.
EF_HARDENING_OFF / file ef-hardening-off	Turns the Security levels off if you are locked out. The file goes in the site’s main folder.
EF_FILES_OFF / file ef-files-off	Turns the public files folder off. The file goes in wp-content.
EMAILFOOTER_SMTP_PASSWORD	Supplies the SMTP password so it is not stored in the database.

Shortcode and block

Add the enquiry form to any page with the block “emailfooter enquiry” or the shortcode [emailfooter_enquiry]. It has a hidden trap field and a small maths question to stop simple bots.

Roles, data and cron

• Roles: ef_admin (company admin) and ef_member (employee). Platform admins hold the ef_platform_admin capability. Company roles can’t open wp-admin.
• Tables use your WordPress prefix with ef_ (workspaces, memberships, invitations, events, enquiries, audit).
• REST API: namespace emailfooter/v1. One daily scheduled job tidies expired invitations and sends the weekly check-in.
• Filters include emailfooter_request_url, emailfooter_public_namespaces and emailfooter_trusted_proxies.

Source

The interface in build/ is compiled from ui/ (Vue 3 and Element Plus), included in the plugin. BUILDING.txt has the two commands to rebuild it. See the licence guide.

Updating and uninstalling

Updating is manual for now. To update, download the newer zip, then go to Plugins, Add New, Upload Plugin, choose it and replace the current version. Your data is kept, and any upgrade steps run the next time the app loads. Back up first if you can. See the changelog for what changed.

To uninstall, deactivate and delete the plugin in WordPress. If you switched on “Delete all emailfooter tables and settings…” first, your companies, people and settings are removed too, along with any server rules and the public files folder. Otherwise the data stays in your database in case you reinstall.

Troubleshooting