“Is there a WordPress plugin that lets me send the current page’s text to any email entered in a form?”

From there, things evolved – quite a lot.

What began as a theoretical idea turned into a fully functional, bilingual plugin that detects the site language, integrates with SMTP, and securely delivers any page’s content to a recipient’s inbox.

This post documents how that happened.

Step 1: The Initial Idea

The original concept was minimalistic:

• Add a single input field to a WordPress page.
• When the visitor enters an email, send the full text of that page to them.

At first, I tried to use Contact Form 7 for this, but soon realized it would require too many hooks and workarounds.

A custom plugin would be cleaner – just one PHP file, one function, no external dependencies.

Step 2: Building the Core Plugin

I started by creating a folder inside wp-content/plugins/:

/wp-content/plugins/email-page-sender/
and added a file named email-page-sender.php.

The first working version looked like this:

<?php
/**
 * Plugin Name: Email Page Sender
 * Description: Sends the current page content to a user-provided email address.
 */

add_action('the_content', function($content) {
    if (is_page()) {
        $form = '
        <form method="post" class="email-page-sender">
            <input type="email" name="eps_email" placeholder="Enter your email" required>
            <button type="submit" name="eps_submit">Send</button>
        </form>';
        return $content . $form;
    }
    return $content;
});

add_action('template_redirect', function() {
    if (isset($_POST['eps_submit']) && isset($_POST['eps_email'])) {
        $email = sanitize_email($_POST['eps_email']);
        if (is_email($email)) {
            global $post;
            $subject = 'Page: ' . get_the_title($post->ID);
            $body = wpautop(apply_filters('the_content', $post->post_content));
            wp_mail($email, $subject, $body);
        }
    }
});

This minimal version worked – but only under ideal conditions.

If your server didn’t support PHP mail or lacked SMTP configuration, nothing was actually sent.

Step 3: Adding SMTP and Proper Headers

After testing, the first email failed due to Gmail’s DMARC policy:

“Unauthenticated email from gmail.com is not accepted…”

That’s when I integrated WP Mail SMTP and switched the “From” address to my domain (noreply@online-dentist.hu).

The fixed mail section became:

$headers = [
  'Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8',
  'From: Online Dentist <noreply@online-dentist.hu>',
  'Reply-To: schulmann.istvan@gmail.com'
];

$sent = wp_mail($email, $subject, $body, $headers);

Now the email passed DMARC and SPF validation perfectly.

The plugin also displayed a small JavaScript alert confirming success or failure.

Step 4: Handling Page Context Correctly

Originally, the plugin hooked into init, but that ran before WordPress loaded the $post object –
resulting in empty emails.

Switching to template_redirect solved this neatly:

add_action('template_redirect', function() {
  // email logic here
});

At that point, $post was fully accessible, and the content sent correctly every time.

Step 5: Adding Dual-Language Support

My site has both Hungarian and English sections (URLs like /en/…),
so I wanted the form labels and alerts to match the current language.
To detect the language, I used a simple URL check:

function eps_get_language() {
    $url = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] ?? '';
    return (strpos($url, '/en/') !== false) ? 'en' : 'hu';
}

Then I used this helper to localize text dynamically:

$lang = eps_get_language();

if ($lang === 'en') {
    $label = 'Would you like to receive this page by email?';
    $button = 'Send';
} else {
    $label = 'Szeretnéd megkapni ezt az oldalt emailben?';
    $button = 'Küldés';
}

and finally output the localized form:

<form method="post" class="email-page-sender">
    <p><strong><?php echo esc_html($label); ?></strong></p>
    <input type="email" name="eps_email" placeholder="Add meg az email címet" required>
    <button type="submit" name="eps_submit"><?php echo esc_html($button); ?></button>
</form>

Step 6: Showing Confirmation Alerts

To make it user-friendly, I added success/error messages injected into the footer:

add_action('wp_footer', function() use ($sent, $lang) {
    $msg = $sent
      ? ($lang === 'en' ? ' The page content has been sent!' : ' Az oldal tartalmát elküldtem!')
      : ($lang === 'en' ? ' Error sending email.' : ' Hiba történt az email küldése közben.');
    echo "<script>alert(" . json_encode($msg) . ");</script>";
});

It’s simple, but surprisingly effective.

What I Learned

• Never rely on PHP’s mail() in production. SMTP authentication is a must, especially when using Gmail or custom domains.
• DMARC and SPF records matter. Without proper DNS setup, even valid emails may bounce or be marked as spam.
• Hook placement in WordPress is critical. init might be too early; template_redirect ensures post data is ready.
• Internationalization doesn’t always need heavy plugins. For simple bilingual sites, even URL-based logic can be lightweight and effective.

Final Thoughts

This started as a quick “can I do this?” experiment – but became a small, elegant plugin that I’ll actually use on my personal introduction pages.

Sometimes the most satisfying builds aren’t the big, complex systems.

They’re the small, human-focused touches – like letting someone you just met receive your page with one click.

And that’s exactly what Email Page Sender does: a tiny but polished detail in the bigger story of how I built IT.

The post [9] How I Built a Dual-Language Email Page Sender Plugin for WordPress first appeared on Digital Nomad Blog.