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Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager
Sak,
Any of those three plugins seem like reasonable culprits, although the multiple categories should only be an issue [you’re correct that PM won’t be reading those] if you’re CALLING the categories in your form. Not sure if you are or not. You could try disabling them one at a time to see which one is causing the problem.
kees-b,
The size issue is one I thought about a bit but then hadn’t heard any complaints about it [I thought] and so I didn’t think of it again. I had been considering pulling some information into a second plugin anyway so it might make sense to do it in any case. I’m sure my code could be cleaned up, too … :)
[I’m also moving the help section OUT of the plugin and onto my site so that it’s easier to navigate, more easily updated, commentable, etc.]
snkhan,
Reading the ZCR thread may help with “two forms on one page” — I’m pretty sure Ruud made this possible with the last release. I’m not sure how that’s done, though. The way I had it thought out in my head is to use a SINGLE form. You could still style it so they seem separated, but the only piece of information required to unsubscribe is the email address. Keeping them in one form and making any other items required="no" should do the trick.
However, thinking about your “generating a unsubscribe successful page” question, makes me argue for splitting up all the functions onto different pages. Simply make a separate page for unsubscribing from email, and write your “Success” message in that article [including the <txp:bab_pm_unsubscribe /> tag in there as well. Whenever someone arrives from the link in their email, they will see your message. Have a separate page for the unsubscribe form [which is where you will send people who arrive from your website], and separate page for subscription. It’s clean and not complicated, and if you do it right, shouldn’t be something your users even notice.
Finally, I am having the same “always refreshing” issue on Safari, and on Firefox on a Mac, but not on IE7 or on Firefox on a PC. If I manually click the refresh button, the “Finished” message appears. The mails are sending correctly [and in the right number], but I’m not sure yet why that is happening on some browsers but not others.
- Ben
Last edited by benbruce (2007-01-08 18:44:15)
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Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager
Yes, using multiple forms on a single page should be possible with ZCR 4.0.3.18. It works by adding an extra hidden input in the form which contains an MD5 hash that uniquely identifies the form being used. This all happens automagically, so as a ZCR user you don’t have to do anything special to make it work.
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Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager
Hey Ben,
I went in this morning to have a go at your suggestions, and somehow managed to fix the problem.
The first thing I did was create a new mailing list called “testing.” It doesn’t seem possible for a person to belong to multiple mailing lists though. When I tried to add myself to the new “testing” mailing list, I got the following error message:
Warning: Duplicate entry ‘sak.102010@gmail.com’ for key 2 INSERT INTO bab_pm_subscribers values (‘’,‘Sakeel’,‘sak.102010@gmail.com’,‘testing’,’‘,’‘,’‘,’‘,’‘,’‘,’‘,’‘,’‘,’‘,’‘,’‘,‘bfe3d3dc38f743b04c7830c3f04e5280’) in /users/home/sakeel/web/public/sak/textpattern/lib/txplib_db.php on line 84
What I did next must have fixed the problem. I moved myself to the “testing” list, and sent an email. The first email that I sent through Postmaster to the “testing” list didn’t generate the error on the “sending” page that pops up, but still sent an empty email. This test was done with all of my other plugins still enabled, to see if the same error was still reproducable. No error message, but the empty email told me that something was still wrong.
I then moved everyone subscribed to the “default” list over to the “testing” list, and myself back to the “default” list to see if it was an issue with which list a subscriber belongs to. I sent a second email, and POOF it just worked. All plugins were still enabled, and the email came across just fine. So I moved everyone back over to the “default” list and all is well again.
Beats the snot outta me, but it seems to be playing well with others again. =)
Thanks,
Sak.
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Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager
Sak,
You’ve run into a subtlety of how PM works — there is a “unique identifier” for each subscriber, and that identifier is their email address. So you can’t subscribe someone who is already subscribed — it won’t let you. What that error message is saying is that you’re trying to enter a NEW subscriber with the same email address as a subscriber already entered. What you want is to UPDATE an existing subscriber, and currently there’s no way to do that with the form. To add someone to a list, you’ll need to do it manually through the edit subscriber page. Does that make sense?
This is something that will need to be updated as you might want to make a new list with 100 subscribers on it, and you’re not going to do each one manually [for now, though, a mysql statement would do the trick for larger numbers].
As for your fix, are you saying that the “default” list works fine, but the new list “testing” sends emails, but they are empty? Did the default list work fine BEFORE you made changes, then you made changes and it didn’t work, then you added a list and it worked? Sorry, just trying to get clear on what happened with you — try and capture the issue and add it to the help [for the next version].
- Ben
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Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager
Hey Ben,
Yeah, I figured that it might be a pain for larger lists to have to manually edit each subscriber. But for my test here I only have a few so it was easier.
So what happened is that the “default” list was sending empty emails originally when I made the first post here. When I created the “testing” list today, it also sent an empty email. It wasn’t until I moved all of the subscribers from the “default” list to the “testing” list, and back again, that everything worked fine. Here’s a step by step of the cure to this problem as I discovered it. Of course, the problem would have to come up again to verify if these steps fix the problem.
1. Create “testing” list
2. Move my email to “testing” list. Sending a post to the “testing” list generated empty email.
3. Moved all subscribers from “default” list to “testing” list.
4. Moved my email from “testing” list back to “default” list. Sending a post to the “default list generated good email.
5. Moved all subscribers from “testing” list back to “default” list.
One other thing to mention, that I forgot in my other post, was that the very first thing that I tried to do was use the “Test” option at the Article -> Write form. The “Test” email sent fine, had content, etc. So that’s when I thought it might be related to an actual subscriber list, and went through the steps above to createa a second list. Thinking back, I wonder if perhaps this may be somehow related to how the two different emails are generated? It reminded me of the old bug that caused header information to be shown to a subscriber email but not a Test email. Just a thought, if it helps.
EDIT: Right, I just tested again, and moving myself back to the “testing” list generates an empty email. But you’re right, the “default” list was sending empty emails until after moving the subscribers.
Last edited by Sak (2007-01-08 20:23:45)
Thanks,
Sak.
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Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager
ruud wrote:
Yes, using multiple forms on a single page should be possible with ZCR 4.0.3.18. It works by adding an extra hidden input in the form which contains an MD5 hash that uniquely identifies the form being used. This all happens automagically, so as a ZCR user you don’t have to do anything special to make it work.
Thanks – I updated to the latest version and this was resolved. Thank you for your help :-) Ben, I’ll go with your suggestion of creating a custom unsubscribe section. Happy days!
Saj
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Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager
I can’t get the email to subscribers sent. It looks like everything works fine, but no mail is sent to people that subscribe. I use the same form used in the help, with some values changed.
Is there something that I might be overlooking?
Thank you
Z-
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Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager
Ben, any eta on the next version? Thanks!
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Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager
Version 0.3 is now available for download; in addition, a library plugin is now required; and finally, the help documentation has been updated and moved out of the plugin and onto my Web site.
It’s all available here.
- Ben
Changes from the previous version:
- added “display=” for all parts of the article
- added an optional “strip_html” attribute to the bab_pm_data custom tag which will allow a user to write an article once and get a textiled and a text version
- fixed zem_contact / postmaster issues; added some capabilities
- split the plugin into two parts: Postmaster and Postmaster_library
- added an “end” type for the bab_pm_mime custom tag
- fixed line break issue [sicher]
- dropped the “4.0.4” designation from the version number — it’s too long and complicated [replaced it with a note in the documentation]
- updated and moved the documentation to an external site
Last edited by benbruce (2007-01-15 02:32:27)
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#100 2007-01-15 02:32:09
Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager
Notes on the 0.3 release:
There have been some errors and issues brought up since Jan. 1 that were delaying the release; something to note is that I decided it was better to release 0.3 than delay, but the issues are unresolved. I’ve added a “Troubleshooting” section to the brand-spanking new Postmanual where I’ll post fixes as they come up.
The Help is significantly improved, and more importantly, more easily edited (since it’s on my site instead of built into the plugin); please help me and others out by leaving comments in the Postmanual — either adding to the documentation, or noting errors or omissions. I will be going through the help and adding “related articles” where it makes sense.
Finally, there is a second plugin now required for Postmaster to work — Postmaster Library. This was done because it’s such a big plugin and there is a limit to how big they can be. It shouldn’t effect usage at all, except that you need to download and activate both plugins for Postmaster to work.
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#101 2007-01-15 04:31:59
- RussLipton
- Member
- From: Spokane, WA
- Registered: 2005-02-17
- Posts: 36
Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager
Coolness.
I have had a few of the errors already described (endless cycling of Firefox/Mac; SQL error messages, etc), so haven’t posted redundantly. The mail (if in tiny test batches so far) has still arrived as promised. Despite the few glitches, this is a spectacular piece of work of vital importance to increasing my use of Textpattern. I am doing some pro bono work for a non-profit organization that could (will, I hope) use this productively to send out a newsletter to 1,000 subscribers … and gain a Textpattern website along the way. Thanks very much.
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#102 2007-01-15 06:07:09
Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager
>Russ
Go Zags
>Ben
Outstanding! Thanks for the new features.
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#103 2007-01-15 07:52:19
Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager
great work Ben :)
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#104 2007-01-15 08:43:13
Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager
benbruce wrote:
Notes on the 0.3 release:
Finally, there is a second plugin now required for Postmaster to work — Postmaster Library. This was done because it’s such a big plugin and there is a limit to how big they can be. It shouldn’t effect usage at all, except that you need to download and activate both plugins for Postmaster to work.
Ben thanks for this one! It installed without a problem on my unwilling host. Last week I did find a workaround for installing 0.2 though, by installing it locally and importing the database. I will upgrade that 0.2 postmaster today. I managed to succesfully import a bulk list of 3000+ adresses and I will report here if postmaster can handle that amount. It will take some time I think.
kees
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#105 2007-01-15 16:49:46
Re: [archived] Postmaster -- A simple email-on-post / newsletter manager
kees-b,
That’s great news; also that the Bulk Subscription worked with 3000 subscribers is an accomplishment; and your reporting on that number will continue to be useful. I haven’t heard of anyone with that big a list yet so that makes you a pioneer!
- Ben
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