mem_postmaster - Postmaster Revamp

Manfre · 2009-09-02 02:50:36

Updated for compatibility by Bloke.

Postmaster Revamp – Ransom met!

The ransom has been met and is now released to the public. Grab a copy

Below are the improvements over the original Postmaster plugin.

General

Bulk send multipart mime emails featuring html and text from either:
- An article’s write page or
- A dedicated “direct send” page New Feature
Subscribers can subscribe and Unsubscribe with a ZemContactReborn Form
Emails are built with forms using txp tags, and can themselves contain article tags, other txp tags or other forms. Your email can be a simple one article blast or a complicated digest with sidebars. You’re only limited by how well you can design a newsletter to survive Microsoft’s crappy email rendering mechanics
Multi edit support for the lists tab. New Feature This will allow an easy way to remove everyone from the selected lists, or add everyone to the selected lists.
Auto subscriberLists migration for existing postmaster users. New Feature on import checks all subscribers Lists field, if it contains any of the List names, it’ll add a mapping to those if there is no corresponding list it will be ignored.

Write Page

Postmaster is now a collapsible area that (collapsed by default) similar to “advanced features” New Feature
The confusing “Yes, No and Test” radio buttons are changed to the simpler “Send to List” or “Send Test” buttons New Feature

Subscriber Management

Each subscriber contains…
- First Name New feature First and Last Names are now separate
- Last Name New feature as above
- email
- List Subscriptions *_New Feature: Allows for a multi-select for all list subscritions that automatically draws from the existing lists. No more list typos.)_
- 10 Custom Fields
Multiple record editing New Feature: The list view will behave similar to the article’s view, allowing you to select multiple subscribers and apply a new list to their subscriptions
All caching problems with the subscribers page will be addressed New Feature: No more zombie subscribers popping up after delete.

List Management

Lists contain the following fields
- List Name
- Description
- List Admin email (“from” email for full mailings and “to” email for tests
- List Unsubscribe Url New Feature: Instead of a text field for “unsubscribe url” there’s a fieldset with two radio options “use default unsubscribe page” radio and “custom unsubscibe page” radio with a text field.
- List Form _New Feature: Select autopopulates with all forms that begin with “newsletter-” or another string you select _
- Subject Line

Import/Export

Completely rewritten import/export mechanism New Feature: that includes
- Direct import of stock csv files (no more uploading a file to txp then doing the import by typing in a file number
- Direct export of the subscriber database (no more looking at a massive chunk of text on the page and right-clicking to save.)
Generally more reliable and less neurotic, no more false alerts.

Direct Send Capability New Features

Completely new sub-tab to Send form-based bulk mailings (as opposed to a single specific article) New Feature
Select the list you want to send to New Feature
Select the subject line New Feature
Select the “from” email (which temporarily overrides the list’s admin address) New Feature
“Send to List” or “Send Test” buttons invoke the send action New Feature

Revamped Progress screen

Improved professional looking progress bar. New Feature

Last edited by mrdale (2009-09-02 03:22:16)

mrdale · 2009-09-02 03:19:12

Yeah, this baby is slick.

Mega thanks, manfre.

And thanks to all those who co-sponsored this with me, it’s going to be really useful.

Tye

Jakob

Wet

Colak

Paperboy

Kostas45

rsiletti

hidalgo

kees-b

joebaich

tye · 2009-09-02 06:39:05

Cool – just downloading for a play :)

colak · 2009-09-02 06:43:32

Hi Michael,

I am using Ben’s plugin already with subscribers/lists etc already in place.
Just installed your plugin and this error was returned on extentions>postmaster>subscribers page.

Warning: Table 'ppp.bab_pm_subscribers' doesn't exist SELECT * FROM ( SELECT S.subscriberID, S.subscriberFirstName, S.subscriberLastName, S.subscriberEmail, GROUP_CONCAT(L.listName ORDER BY L.listName SEPARATOR ', ') as subscriberLists FROM `bab_pm_subscribers` as S left join `bab_pm_subscribers_list` as MAP ON S.subscriberID=MAP.subscriber_id left join `bab_pm_list_prefs` as L ON MAP.list_id=L.listID GROUP BY S.subscriberID) as T WHERE 1 ORDER BY subscriberLastName LIMIT 0, 20 in /users/home/xxxx/web/public/textpattern/lib/txplib_db.php on line 85

What seems to happen is that the plugin does not recognise the table prefix which – in my case – is: test_bab_pm_subscribers.
having said that, the plugin recognised the lists on extensions>postmaster>lists page.

jakob · 2009-09-02 09:40:37

Excellent. Big thanks!

THE BLUE DRAGON · 2009-09-02 11:00:42

Thanks!
what does ‘Emails per batch’ means?
is it will only send 50 from all the list?
or it will send 50, relax for some time and then send another 50 until the end?
this saturday I’m going to send to 1,200 subscribers will see how it works =)

ohhh now I see that it didn’t save the lists after updating from Ben’s plugin, it deleted all the subscribers from they lists
now I need to move all the subsribers to lists again.

and now I deleted all the subscribers because I export them all in Ben’s plugin
and when I try to import them it doesn’t work and give me the message: Inserted 0 addresses.
what do I need to change in the exported Ben’s file so I will be able to upload it to yours please?

Last edited by THE BLUE DRAGON (2009-09-02 11:22:23)

Manfre · 2009-09-02 14:25:58

Posted v1.0.1

Fix table prefix issue reported by colak
Closed some SQL injection holes carried over from Postmaster.

Emails per batch

If the batch size is 50, then it will send 50 emails, wait 3 seconds. This will repeat until there are no more emails to send.

Upgrade process

When the plugin detects that the mapping table (bab_pm_subscribers_list) does not exist, it will create it and then attempt to migrate each subscriber’s settings. For each subscriber, it will compare each of the list names against the subscriber’s subscriberLists string. If it finds the list name anywhere in subscriberLists, it will add a mapping for the user.

Examples:

lists = “Test”, “TestList”, “List1”

subscriberList = “TestList1”

The subscriber will be added to all three of the lists.

subscriberList = “Test”

The subscriber will be added to only the list “Test”

If this upgrade process fails for whatever reason, you can force it to run again by deleting the bab_pm_subscribers_list table. The subscriberLists field was intentionally left intact in case of problems.

Import/Export

Import and export in mem_postmaster behave differently from Postmaster. The biggest change is that mem_postmaster does not use txp’s Files tab during the import/export process. mem_postmaster still uses CSV with the same field ordering, but gives the option of exporting with a header row.

Note: If you do not delete the header row before importing, it will be added as a subscriber.

THE BLUE DRAGON · 2009-09-02 15:04:07

ok so I updated to v1.0.1 and still can’t import
If I add a subscriber, then export it, delete it, and then import it from the exported file (with or without an header) it doesn’t work
and give me the same message: Inserted 0 addresses.

colak · 2009-09-02 15:16:25

Hi Michael,

It looks like it’s working just fine now. Will have to wait until next month when it’ll be time for our next email but appearances look good:)

Can you please explain slightly more re “Direct Send”? All I get in that tab is

Select list: (pul down list)
Send From: (text field)
Subject Line:(text field)
Sent to Test button
Send to List button

By no multi-line field for the body of the email OR is my understanding of this tab wrong?

Manfre · 2009-09-02 16:01:21

Direct Send Tab

This tab allows you to send a form as an email to the selected list. This is meant for those times when it doesn’t make sense to create an article to send as an email. An example usage is to create a form that composing information about what happened in the past week on the site. You can use the same form repeatedly each week. It’s a cleaner workflow than having to first find the right article (or create it) and then send the email.

“Select list:” — This is the list that will receive the email.
“Override form [option]:” — This list will list all forms with a name prefix of “newsletter-”. This will not show if you have no matching forms.
“Use override?” — This is paired with the form select. If selected, the override form will be used. Otherwise, it will use the form configured for the selected list.
“Send From:” — This lets you specify the from address for the sent email. If blank, it will use the admin email configured for the selected list.
“Subject Line:” — This is the subject of the email.
“Send to Test” button — This will send a test email to the list administrator.
“Send to List” button — This will send the actual mass mailing.

colak · 2009-09-02 17:00:44

Hi Michael,

Thanks… It would be nice if there was a field in that tab so as to make the whole thing self contained. But no worries:)

Just noticed that the update to mem_postmaster deletes all existing subscriber names. Any ideas?

>Edit

Also can you post some basic subscriber/unsubscriber tags? Our existing form does not seem to work. Here’s what we currently have

<txp:zem_contact to="ourmail@mail.com" label="" thanks_form="news-subform">
<txp:zem_contact_text name="zemSubscriberName" label="Your Name:" required="1"  />
<txp:zem_contact_email name="zemSubscriberEmail" label="Your Email:" required="1" />
<txp:zem_contact_secret name="zemSubscriberLists" value="default subscriber" />
<txp:zem_contact_text name="zemSubscriberCustom1" label="Your website:" required="0" />
<txp:zem_contact_checkbox label="Check this box if you wish to subscribe to our newsletter. " />
<txp:zem_contact_submit label="Subscribe" />
</txp:zem_contact>

Our unsubscribe form

<txp:zem_contact to="ourmail@mail.com" label="" thanks_form="news-unsubform">
<txp:zem_contact_email name="zemSubscriberEmail" label="Your Email:" />
<txp:zem_contact_checkbox name="zemUnSubscribe" label="Unsubscribe" required="no" />
<txp:zem_contact_submit label="usubuscribe" />
</txp:zem_contact>

and this is the form we are using to send emails

Dear <txp:bab_pm_data display="subscriberName" />,
<txp:bab_pm_data display="Body" />

What do we need to change?

Last edited by colak (2009-09-02 17:46:05)

mrdale · 2009-09-02 18:13:21

colak wrote: Just noticed that the update to mem_postmaster deletes all existing subscriber names. Any ideas?

This is because The new postmaster has firstName and lastName feilds. I would do a csv export of your existing subscribers, break apart first and last names into two fields, then reimport.

Also can you post some basic subscriber/unsubscriber tags? Our existing form does not seem to work. Here’s what we currently have

I think you can just substitute the following on both the subscribe and unsubscribe forms

<txp:zem_contact_text name="zemSubscriberFirstName" label="Your Name:" required="1" />
<txp:zem_contact_text name="zemSubscriberLastName" label="Your Name:" required="1" />

and this is the form we are using to send emails…

Dear <txp:bab_pm_data display="subscriberFirstName" />, <txp:bab_pm_data display="Body" />

That should work

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#1 2009-09-02 02:50:36