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

benbruce · 2007-06-06 16:14:22

mrdale,

Do you have the Database Manager plugin installed? If so, you can go to Extensions > DB Manager and click on “bab_pm_subscribers” or whatever your subscriber table is called. That will bring up the results page with all of the subscribers listed. Scroll over to the right until you see the column called “flag” and any email that was sent will have “mailed” in that column.

If you send a new batch, this information is scrubbed, but you could continue with the same batch by returning to the bulk mail page (without hitting the “Save” button again on the write tab). If you don’t know that url, or your browser doesn’t remember it, it can be figured out.

Not sure what your problems are. What is the server error that you got?

ma_smith,

I can’t think right now, I’ve got to get to work. If you can post any more information about what’s going on that would be good. Have you set PM up before and NOT had this problem? What is different? Etc. The first test I’d say to run is to set it up following the tutorial (in other words, the simplest set up possible) and see if you can send a test mail.

Ben

Last edited by benbruce (2007-06-06 16:17:20)

mrdale · 2007-06-06 16:25:45

> Ben

This is a great plugin. User/server error I think.

So, the first 50 on my list are tagged with “mailed”. I actually called one of these poor souls and confirmed that he received 4 emails. The rest are blank for that field.

The error I’m getting is a 500 error. Internal server error. could this be related to the number of emails being sent at once? Could it be some problem with the way I’ve set up lists? perhaps it has to do with a glitch in a particular email address.

I’ve done successful emailings before, so something needs to be sorted out. Just don’t know what…

squaredeye · 2007-06-06 17:50:42

Ben,
I’ve not set up Postmaster before.
I don’t have much to give you as everything seems to be working fine except for not seeing the emails released.
Would you be interested in a login? Perhaps you’d see something quickly that is incorrect?

I’ve gone through the documentation and can’t find anything I’ve done incorrectly.

Matthew

benbruce · 2007-06-07 00:44:53

mrdale,

RE: the 4 emails received by one subscriber — did you hit the “Save” button four times while trying to make this all work? If so, then things may be OK. If not, that’s a big, huge bug. Please let us know. If you DID though, then here’s my thoughts:

PM scrubs the “flag” column each time you click the “Save” button, then (supposedly) mails all the emails in the list you’ve selected, marking each one “mailed” as it goes.
Assuming your server has a problem with the way PM is trying to handle batches, I think PM is mailing the first 50 emails (as expected), then running into a problem with your server and breaking off.

If any of that sounds right to you, then I’m thinking it’s an issue with the refresh method used by PM.

ma_smith,

I could check it out, but I’m leaving town for the long weekend. You can send mail to txpplugins@benbruce.com and I’ll check tonight if I have a moment — otherwise I probably won’t be able to give any help until next week. If everything is set up exactly as described in the tutorial and you’re still not getting mails, there’s a problem.

Ben

mrdale · 2007-06-07 03:24:02

Oh, Oh, pick me…

I have a cunning theory on why this happened.

Yes indeedy I did attempt to do four mailings. Each one producing a 500 error. But I think the error was produced because I stupidly decided to use a separator in the cascading lists. A “-” to be exact. I’m sure that threw a wrench in the works. Possibly producing a 500 error. In fact the logs say this…

##.###.91.174 – - [06/Jun/2007:15:16:06 +0000] “GET /textpattern/index.php?event=postmaster&step=bulkmail&radio=1&list=Waters&artID=3 HTTP/1.1” 500 346 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4”

Notice the “-”

##.###.91.174 – - [06/Jun/2007:05:32:39 +0000] “GET /textpattern/index.php?event=postmaster&step=bulkmail&radio=1&list=Waters&artID=3 HTTP/1.1” 500 346 “http://tld.com/textpattern/index.php” “Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4”

Later there’s on “-” but there is a full url following so I’m not sure why the server barfed this time.

When I looked at the dB I noticed that the 51 of the emails were marked “mailed”. So I figure I export the table, delete the records marked as “mailed” and try sending again with a low number like 10 at a time, then see what I see.

Anybody have any other ideas?
-Dale

Last edited by mrdale (2007-06-07 03:25:20)

mrdale · 2007-06-07 05:50:16

Looks like it was all just a regular old time out problem with the the batch being set too high. FWIW I ended up using 5. That woked through most of the list. I jury rigged it after the 500 errors by deleting the records flagged as “mailed”, then saving the article again and setting mail options.

This worked. I’ll revisit again but another time.

Thanks again for a great plugin.

squaredeye · 2007-06-08 01:47:44

Ben,
Dale helped me figure it out. It was an issue of a popup being blocked. Apparently the way PM handles things if the popup is blocked it doesn’t process. I got it figured out. Thx. Safe travels.

mrdale · 2007-06-08 05:21:06

So I need clarification on a few things sometime.

Do I have to do anything specail to my unsubscribe article? like include a bab_pm_unsubscribe tag or does it just work so long as it is specified in the list prefs.
When the server times out (as mine invariably did) If I go back to the url of the process, (and not click save again) will postmaster understand not to send to the records marked “mailed”?

Request
A progress bar on the send popup. How hard would that be.

Anyway, Thanks again…

FireFusion · 2007-06-08 07:12:56

ma_smith wrote:

Ben,
Dale helped me figure it out. It was an issue of a popup being blocked. Apparently the way PM handles things if the popup is blocked it doesn’t process. I got it figured out. Thx. Safe travels.

Excellent. That just fixed my problem to. Thank you!

benbruce · 2007-06-11 15:15:36

Guys,

Am I right in thinking that everyone has figured out their issues? That’s great!

I’m going to add the last few posts to the postmanual for future reference.

Ben

benbruce · 2007-06-11 18:47:44

Do I have to do anything specail to my unsubscribe article? like include a bab_pm_unsubscribe tag

Yes. Here’s more

When the server times out (as mine invariably did) If I go back to the url of the process, (and not click save again) will postmaster understand not to send to the records marked “mailed”?

It should. The query that it makes is (translated into English): “get every email address in the list provided that does NOT have “mailed” in the flag column”. Each address gets mail added after it is sent, and then that column isn’t scrubbed until the next time you send a mailing. So you could wait an infinite amount of time, return to that url and it should continue where it left off.

Request: A progress bar on the send popup. How hard would that be.

This was something I wanted to do from the beginning but kept getting sidetracked. I think this is a great idea, and much more user-friendly.

Anyway, Thanks again…

You’re welcome, sorry I couldn’t be more help last week.

Ben

Last edited by benbruce (2007-06-11 19:26:05)

WebKat · 2007-06-12 10:15:24

I hope it isn’t too rude of me to not read the entire 27 pages—I did skim through about 15 pages, and I did try to search.

I want to let people have the option of subscribing to more than one list at once, and I want to use checkboxes to do that. How would I create that form? let’s call my lists “default” and “newsletter” to make it easy. I looked at the <txp:zem_contact_checkbox /> tag but couldn’t really see an obvious way to make it do what I wanted to for this particular thing. I basically want something like this:

Subscribe to newsletter [x]
also receive notification about new articles? [ ]

where the newsletter one is checked by default and the other is not.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#253 2007-06-06 16:14:22

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

#254 2007-06-06 16:25:45

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

#255 2007-06-06 17:50:42

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

#256 2007-06-07 00:44:53

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

#257 2007-06-07 03:24:02

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

#258 2007-06-07 05:50:16

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

#259 2007-06-08 01:47:44

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

#260 2007-06-08 05:21:06

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

#261 2007-06-08 07:12:56

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

#262 2007-06-11 15:15:36

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

#263 2007-06-11 18:47:44

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

#264 2007-06-12 10:15:24

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

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