Support Forums - All Posts - XOOPS Web Application System

21

Re: XOOPS Newsletter Mailer

2006/10/2 16:07
andycleff
Not too shy to talk
Posts: 108
Since: 2005/4/29

I think what you are saying is that you want a way to have a SmartMail newsletter list dispatch to all your registered users who have selected "Receive occasional email notices from admin/moderators" in their preferences. Correct?

Think through the rest of the operation details you'd like to see - for example: Would you also want the ability to override user preferences?

And we'll figure out what is possible.

FYI, we do have planned a "batch import" capability for email addresses.

Andy Cleff
Ampersand Design, Inc
Doylestown, PA
-----
Helping our clients bring great ideas into shape through integrated marketing, creative branding, print and web strategy, online learning and e-commerce.

www.ampersandesign.net

22

Re: XOOPS Newsletter Mailer

2006/9/30 11:47
andycleff
Not too shy to talk
Posts: 108
Since: 2005/4/29

Quote:

dev site requires seperate login which I didnt have so figured I'd throw it here. I guess I could register

Yes, please register. It's quite painless

Andy Cleff
Ampersand Design, Inc
Doylestown, PA
-----
Helping our clients bring great ideas into shape through integrated marketing, creative branding, print and web strategy, online learning and e-commerce.

www.ampersandesign.net

23

Re: SmartMail Alpha Feedback and Sponsorship Needed

2006/9/29 16:46
andycleff
Not too shy to talk
Posts: 108
Since: 2005/4/29

Xmail does what it does very well.

SmartMail attempts to do something different - the ability to incorporate blocks from other modules makes it very useful.

In addition, automatic dispatching on a predetermined schedule - like every wednesday - is also cool.

I encourage you to download the alpha and play around with it.

Andy Cleff
Ampersand Design, Inc
Doylestown, PA
-----
Helping our clients bring great ideas into shape through integrated marketing, creative branding, print and web strategy, online learning and e-commerce.

www.ampersandesign.net

24

Re: SmartMail Alpha Feedback and Sponsorship Needed

2006/9/29 15:52
andycleff
Not too shy to talk
Posts: 108
Since: 2005/4/29

SmartMail will include its own Mail Sender Service Interface - separate from XOOPs' mail handling for precisely that reason.

The plan is to have both batch size and pause duration settings to accomodate shared hosting environments.

So for example, admin could set the MSSI to send 100 messages, wait 60 seconds and repeat until all 10,000 messages have been sent.

Plus SmartMail will be flexible enough to allow admin to use just about any installed mail service on a dedicated server,

----

We have feature request tracking set up on dev.xoops.org.

However, I think it would be tough at this point to assign a specific cost to a specific feature.

We have a lot of general development work to do and I feel it would be better to contribute to "the pot" to get SmartMail to full RC status.

Andy Cleff
Ampersand Design, Inc
Doylestown, PA
-----
Helping our clients bring great ideas into shape through integrated marketing, creative branding, print and web strategy, online learning and e-commerce.

www.ampersandesign.net

25

SmartMail Alpha Feedback and Sponsorship Needed

2006/9/29 13:37
andycleff
Not too shy to talk
Posts: 108
Since: 2005/4/29

SmartFactory is developing a XOOPS module for creating and publishing e-newsletters. And we'd like some feedback on it.

Read more about SmartMail and download the alpha from here.

Make sure you review the readme included with the download. It contains important info about the module, including where to post bug reports and feature requests.

And while SmartMail is already pretty cool in its current incarnation - it is fully integrated with XOOPS permissions, talks to the membership module, has flexible page layout, and best of all it can automatically pull content from any other module block - frankly, we could also use more sponsors.

More sponsors = means more features and quicker development.

So far SmartMail has been made possible by the sponsorship of Ampersand Design, Inc, INBOX Solutions, American Killfish Association, Crispin Moorey and Jereco Marketing.

So please download the alpha, take it for a spin. If you like what it can do, help us continue with the project.

Thanks!

Andy Cleff
Ampersand Design, Inc
Doylestown, PA
-----
Helping our clients bring great ideas into shape through integrated marketing, creative branding, print and web strategy, online learning and e-commerce.

www.ampersandesign.net

26

Re: XOOPS Newsletter Mailer

2006/9/28 14:24
andycleff
Not too shy to talk
Posts: 108
Since: 2005/4/29

Thanks for all the great feedback so far.

If you haven't downloaded the SmartMail 0.8 Alpha yet, you can get it here.

We expect to release an update next week with the first round of improvements, so please keep the testing going.

Post any bugs you find here.

and any feature requests here

PS: If you want to continue the discussion on SmartObjects, great. Please start a new topic!

Andy Cleff
Ampersand Design, Inc
Doylestown, PA
-----
Helping our clients bring great ideas into shape through integrated marketing, creative branding, print and web strategy, online learning and e-commerce.

www.ampersandesign.net

27

Re: XOOPS Newsletter Mailer

2006/9/26 19:44
andycleff
Not too shy to talk
Posts: 108
Since: 2005/4/29

Experiencing a short delay while we de-bug the installation package.

Hang in there. It will be worth the wait.

Andy Cleff
Ampersand Design, Inc
Doylestown, PA
-----
Helping our clients bring great ideas into shape through integrated marketing, creative branding, print and web strategy, online learning and e-commerce.

www.ampersandesign.net

28

Re: XOOPS Newsletter Mailer

2006/9/25 16:25
andycleff
Not too shy to talk
Posts: 108
Since: 2005/4/29

Quote:

The electronic form should mimic the printed form as closely as possible. The concept of building a newsletter from blocks does not sound as if it will do that.

Second, is some form of email throttling built into SmartMail to overcome problems that many of us face of exceeding the hourly outgoing message limit on our servers?

Matching a printed format with email can be tough - depending on the recipient's email client and their local preferences.

Have you ever "turned off images" in Outlook and seen what your beautifully formated HTML email messge looks like? Or seen what LotusNotes does to your CSS?

One solution would be attachment capability - ie. a PDF. We have this on SmartMail's feature's list - but not for the beta release.

Mail throttling will be part of the Mail Sending Service part of SmartMail. Most likely with admin control for both batch size and pause-between-batch duration.

Quote:

The concept of building a newsletter via blocks on the site does not seem natural to me. More likely would be the facility to take news content from something like news, rss and newbb, and tie it into a templated newsletter.

I had the exact same reaction when I first got into the SandBox. But I have subsequently changed my mind.

What you have suggested - taking news content from something like news, rss and newbb, and pputting it into a templated newsletter - can be done with SmartMail and the WhatsNew module.

Automatically. And on a repeating schedule.

For other content you can use XOOPS custom blocks - with the XOOPs WYSIWYG editor of your choice. You could even use custom blocks to create an issue entirely of manual content.

SmartMail is an out-of-the-box-thinking solution.

Keep an open mind....

Andy Cleff
Ampersand Design, Inc
Doylestown, PA
-----
Helping our clients bring great ideas into shape through integrated marketing, creative branding, print and web strategy, online learning and e-commerce.

www.ampersandesign.net

29

Re: XOOPS Newsletter Mailer

2006/9/25 14:18
andycleff
Not too shy to talk
Posts: 108
Since: 2005/4/29

One thing to keep in mind when you get to the sandbox - SmartMail module is not a traditional "Mail list /Newsletter manager" along the likes of phpList, evenmail, xmail, etc.

I kept looking at it from that point of view and it caused nothing but confusion in my poor brain.

SmartMail uses standard XOOPS blocks (module or custom) to generate the content of an issue.

So "authoring" consists of:
1. Defining which blocks are to be included and where they are to be located in your newsletter template (SmartMail Newsletter templates are very simple - six possible block locations within a simple HTML table layout - much like a XOOPS theme.)
2. Creating the content through other XOOPS modules.
3. Having SmartMail automatically build an issue (or multiple issues on a schedule).
4. Publishing issues thru SmartMail's Mail Sending Service.

Andy Cleff
Ampersand Design, Inc
Doylestown, PA
-----
Helping our clients bring great ideas into shape through integrated marketing, creative branding, print and web strategy, online learning and e-commerce.

www.ampersandesign.net

30

Re: XOOPS Newsletter Mailer

2006/9/25 11:46
andycleff
Not too shy to talk
Posts: 108
Since: 2005/4/29

"Patiences is a virtue...but I haven't got the time!"

Let see if I can't shake a copy loose from the grasp of the SmartFactory. They are such perfectionists...

Andy Cleff
Ampersand Design, Inc
Doylestown, PA
-----
Helping our clients bring great ideas into shape through integrated marketing, creative branding, print and web strategy, online learning and e-commerce.

www.ampersandesign.net

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