[archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager

benbruce · 2007-03-13 04:57:05

ss,

When I say “a bit of tweaking” I mean some coding. So that’s why that was confusing. You are right that your users can only subscribe once with a single email, however, they can have as many lists in their subscription as they want. The trick is getting the information into the database — if they were ALL subscribing to the several lists at once, that would be easy. But giving them the option of which lists to subscribe to makes it trickier. This could be done with some tags (so that you wouldn’t have to know what I’m talking about at all) but that will require some time.

If you want to see what I’m talking about (and if you have Postmaster installed), go into ADMIN > EXTENSIONS > POSTMASTER > SUBSCRIBERS and then click the “edit” button next to a subscriber. You’ll see a field called “Lists:” and you can enter as many list names as you have in this field. Separate them however you like (with a space, for example). Now, if you mail to any of those lists, this subscriber will receive the email. Some more information is here.

Hope that helps (or, just helps explain). Or am I just spouting gobbledygook right now?

Ben

bancroft · 2007-03-13 11:04:30

bancroft wrote:

Hi Ben,
Thank you for a fantastic plugin. The only problem I’ve had is this appearing above the message:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=“UTF-8”
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Only seems to be in Gmail and I’m sending messages as plain text.
Anyone else get this?
Cheers,
Graham.

Just wondering if this is a bug or just how Gmail renders it. I’ve tried using the different mime types but nothing helps.

Graham.

Last edited by bancroft (2007-03-13 11:05:03)

benbruce · 2007-03-13 17:42:52

bancroft,

It’s not Gmail, since you receive emails there without the mime text.

My first guess based on the bit of info you posted is that you’re sending a text mail, and have included the “text” mime tag. But since it’s a text email, the mime information isn’t being read as mime information, it’s being read as text.

For text emails, don’t put any mime tag in the email at all. See if that works.

If not, can you post the Form you’re using to send mail? Maybe there is a clue there.

Ben

Last edited by benbruce (2007-03-13 17:50:01)

bancroft · 2007-03-14 02:23:38

Hi Ben,

It’s not Gmail, since you receive emails there without the mime text.

After a bit more testing, I have two emails on a test list me@mydomain.co.uk and my gmail address. Now I’ve got the me@etc forwarding to gmail, these are coming out fine, it’s just the messages going directly to my gmail account, which is bizarre.

Tried with and without each mime tag, still no different :(

Here’s the form I’m using

Dear <txp:bab_pm_data display="name" />,

A new article has been posted at <txp:site_url /> entitled '<txp:bab_pm_data display="title" />'.

Here's an excerpt:
<txp:bab_pm_data display="excerpt" />

You can view the full article here: <txp:bab_pm_data display="link" />

If you have received this message in error or do not wish to receive further email from blah please click on the following link to unsubscribe: <txp:bab_pm_unsubscribeLink type="text" />

It’s probably something stoopidly obvious that I can’t see for looking.

Cheers,

Graham

Last edited by bancroft (2007-03-14 02:24:53)

benbruce · 2007-03-14 15:51:52

bancroft,

hmmm … no, that form looks fine. I’m thinking there is an error in the way the header information is written in Postmaster — the text you are seeing in the gmail emails is header info, that shouldn’t be read as text but is being read as text — that other email programs don’t mind.

I’ll poke around a bit and try to find out what’s going on — I’m guessing it’s something with reading line breaks or something random.

Ben

mrdale · 2007-03-14 16:37:13

>ben

I was just showing someone how to use postmaster yesterday, looking at it from his perspective and thinking about how we could make producing a newsletter even easier.

“get newsletter” button on postmaster area of write page
You include a button (javascript or page reload…) that brings up an alert asking for a URL. then…

The body field is populated with the HTML body from the URL

The excerpt field is populated with a text only (html stripped) version of the same page.

The end-user get’s spared from a whole lot of mucking around. And you could add a more automagic approach…

URL field setting in postmaster admin
Just specify the URL permanently in one place in postmaster admin then when the user presses the “get newsletter” button, it pops in that url by default or let’s you specify another by typing over it.

I’d set up a section called “newsletter” with a main article at the top, then a list of article excerpts. The page would use “article_custom” to select only “newsletter” category items. My page template for this section would have styles inline, and be otherwise optimized for mail delivery.

This would make the whole newsletter process a snap for newbies. All they’d have to do is…

make a new article or two, and designate them with the “newsletter” category
save the newsletter intro article as sticky
designate some existing articles with “newsletter” category.
Go to the write page and hit “get newsletter”
(test and) Distribute the list

Bob (ben,bruce) is indeed your uncle.

Implementation sounds pretty straightforward. Thoughts?

Last edited by mrdale (2007-03-14 16:40:25)

benbruce · 2007-03-14 20:11:08

mrdale,

I have to get my head around what you’re saying, but I think you can do what you want already, using the list form instead of a url.

Set up the FORM to have the sticky article at the top, the txp:article_custom pulling in section “newsletter,” have styles optimized for email, etc. Designate some articles section=newsletter, and on the write tab, select a list that is associated with that form and select test, and click save (instead of “get newsletter” and auto-populating and all that, the FORM will populate itself). This form would not use any <txp:bab_pm_data /> tags at all (it’s not pulling from the article you’re “in” in the write tab, it’s using article_custom to get it’s data).

Again, let me mull it over for a while and I’ll see if I can’t come up with a template to work from. If that doesn’t do what you want, it sounds like what you want could conceivably be just an added button to the module with it’s accompanying functions, so someone could sort of plug it right into the plugin …

Ben

PS. I thought there was an article in the Postmanual describing this technique but I’m not finding it.

Last edited by benbruce (2007-03-14 20:34:22)

mrdale · 2007-03-14 21:53:41

Thanks, I’ll have to check the new “forms” feature. I forgot about that…

NeilA · 2007-03-23 10:21:32

Hi Ben,
Firstly, thanks so much for this amazing plugin.

I have the current version (0.3) working pretty well in a very simple set up.
There is one problem stopping me moving ahead with it:

The subscription form I’m using is not working.
I cut and paste the example of the ‘automatic list’ sub form from the manual:

<txp:zem_contact to="youremail@yourwebsite.com" >
<txp:zem_contact_email name="zemSubscriberEmail" label="Your Email:" />
<input type="hidden" name="zemSubscriberLists" value="list_name" >
<txp:zem_contact_checkbox label="This is not Spam. " />
<txp:zem_contact_submit /> </txp:zem_contact>

(Obviously changing the email to a real address and the list name to a real list.)

When the form is submitted, it’s treated as a regular zem_contact form – ie: like an enquiry from the website.
No data is added to the database. An email is sent, but again, as a regular zem_contact form.

Just tried the other ‘simple subscription form’ from the manual with the same result. I must be doing something wrong?

This is the list of other plugins in use:

asy_captcha 1.0
ign_password_protect 0.4.2d
jnm_audio 0.3
mcw_templates 0.2
Postmaster 0.3
Postmaster_library 0.1
rss_admin_show_adv_opts 0.1
smd_lib 0.21
smd_random_banner 0.22
tru_podcast 1.1
zem_contact_lang 4.0.3.6
zem_contact_reborn 4.0.3.19
zem_event 0.30
zem_paginate

I have made a couple of minor label edits to zem_contact_lang

Any other pointers?

Thanks!

gluteus · 2007-03-23 12:38:38

stupid question: which email-adress did you enter?
I had the same problem because I entered an existing email adress in the list.
Did you tried different email-adresses?

dave

Last edited by gluteus (2007-03-23 12:40:14)

NeilA · 2007-03-23 20:22:06

Thanks Dave, but I did enter a different address (and there was only one other subscribed).

Cheers

maniqui · 2007-03-23 20:29:32

Hi NeilA

It seems to be a very similar problem to the one I posted.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#181 2007-03-13 04:57:05

Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager

#182 2007-03-13 11:04:30

Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager

#183 2007-03-13 17:42:52

Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager

#184 2007-03-14 02:23:38

Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager

#185 2007-03-14 15:51:52

Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager

#186 2007-03-14 16:37:13

Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager

#187 2007-03-14 20:11:08

Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager

#188 2007-03-14 21:53:41

Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager

#189 2007-03-23 10:21:32

Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager

#190 2007-03-23 12:38:38

Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager

#191 2007-03-23 20:22:06

Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager

#192 2007-03-23 20:29:32

Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager

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