Blogging by e-mail is a convenient feature in WordPress that allows you (and others, if you wish) to post on your blog just like sending an e-mail to any address. When set up, you can simply send an e-mail to a predefined address from where WordPress picks up the mail and posts it in the assigned category. This means you can even use your handhelds or cell phones to post on the WordPress weblogs without having to browse through the web pages.

Setting up the feature is fairly easy. The gist of the procedure is that you create an e-mail account specifically to be used for this purpose (so that your personal e-mails don’t end up as your blog posts), provide that address, password and mail server in the Admin panel. The next step is to run the wp-mail.php in your WP folder which picks up the e-mail and posts it on the blog. This last step took some time for me to comprehend. There can be numerous ways to do this:

• Execute it manually by going to
  http://example.com/wordpress/wp-mail.php
• Set up a Cron Job to do the task automatically (which I did)
• Automated browser actication (using iframes)

The following graphical tutorial (each step is followed by a screenshot) guides you through the complete process of setting up and activating the blog by e-mail feature in WordPress:

1. Log in to your WP admin menu and go to OPTIONS–>WRITING.

   

2. Under the heading of Post vie e-mail provide your mail server, login and password as shown below. The port is usually 110. You can also select the category in which your e-mails will be landed as posts. Note that the e-mail provided here must be dedicated for this purpose only as stated above. That’s all you need to do from the WP menu, the rest is from your cPanel.

   
   
   

3. Now login to your cPanel and go to Cron Jobs, as the screenshot below shows.

   
   

4. You may be provided with two menus depending on the cPanel version. I have cPanel 10 though and the screenshot below is taken from my menu. Click on Standard button to move on to the last few steps.

   

5. On the next page provide the e-mail address where the cron output will be sent, each time the job is executed.

6. Now enter the command to run, and this is the most important step. The command to be entered is:

   GET http://example.com/blog/wp-mail.php > /dev /null
   
   This command fetches the wp-mail.php and activates blog by mail automatically at a frequency which you set in the final step. (The screenshot is shown after the next step).

7. As a final step, select the frequency of the GET command execution to fetch the mails and relay them as WP posts. Save the cron tab and you’re all set to go!