Postmaster Revamp (Ransom met!)

mrdale · 2009-08-19 18:41:48

Next Gen Postmaster. Who’s Interested?

Postmaster has been very useful for me as a nice, in-house mass mailer that integrates tightly with TXP.

Problem is, while I can make it work pretty well, the interface and some of the methods are quirky and rough around the edges. So much so that I can’t possibly let clients use it unattended. So I’ve commissioned a revamp of the project and I’m thinking of releasing back into the wild for a ransom so I can recoup a portion of my costs…

Who’s interested? Check out the feature set and let me know.

Fancy Donate Button

[update] $300 it is $50 to go
[update] Donations are up to each user, do you think a ransom of $300 is appropriate for this level of tool? I’ve never done one of these before.

Donors and Total

Many Thanks go to the donors so far:

Tye
Jakob
Wet
Colak
Paperboy
Kostas45
rsiletti
hidalgo
kees-b
joebaich

Ransom has been met Thanks to all above donors. I’m doing some final testing today, but I think we’ll be able to release in the next day or so.

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 (2009-08-31 18:07:58)

jakob · 2009-08-19 18:57:32

the interface and some of the methods are quirky and rough around the edges. So much so that I can’t possibly let clients use it unattended.

My sentiments exactly.

The dedicated “direct send” was sorely missing for those who didn’t want to craft a page first.

I don’t use Postmaster all that much (perhaps for the above reason), but I’d be willing to contribute. Just depends on the price you were thinking of :-)

wet · 2009-08-19 19:53:58

+1

paperboy · 2009-08-19 23:27:52

I use postmaster all the time so… +1!

rsilletti · 2009-08-20 00:28:13

I’d like to see it out there +1

tye · 2009-08-20 05:32:38

Count me in for this for sure :)

I’m sure I read somewhere that it has email throttling, only sending 50 an hour or so… if I am mistaken, this would be a good feature to add also.

colak · 2009-08-20 06:43:30

postmaster should remain in the txp arsenal

+1

jstubbs · 2009-08-20 06:47:59

Never used Postmaster so can’t say – but wouldn’t it be a good thing to be able to export a list of users to a dedicated solution like Campaign Monitor? I’d like to be able to do this with ign_password_protect users via the txp_users or ign_users table.

tye · 2009-08-20 06:56:38

You already can export the users from postmaster in this format

Subscriber Name, Subscriber@example.com,Subscriber Lists, Custom 1,,,,,,,,,Custom10

mrdale · 2009-08-20 17:34:34

tye wrote: I’m sure I read somewhere that it has email throttling, only sending 50 an hour or so…

So Postmaster sends out the emails individually, although it does send them all out at once in serial. I don’t know if this addresses your concern.

Everyone Thanks for your interest, so do you think $300 is a reasonable target? How do you go about running a ransom?

colak · 2009-08-20 18:06:28

Hi Dale. Who’ll be taking on the developent of the plugin?

mrdale · 2009-08-20 21:14:37

colak wrote: Who’ll be taking on the developent of the plugin?

Ok, it’s top secret, so I’m only going to whisper this once. It’s a mem_joint.

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#1 2009-08-19 18:41:48