Newsletter - Is there a better option?

Corporal Joined: Feb 12, 2003 Posts: 58 Location: USA

Hello,

I run a site that has over 10,000 members, 4,000+ who opt to receive our newsletter.

The problem is that the newsletter in php-nuke is, to put it nicely, not that great and filled with errors.

Has anyone noticed you have never received a newsletter from phpnuke.org? Chances are it's because they cannot successfully send one to all the members that have subscribed.

My newsletters do not reach the vast majority of subscribers either, since I receive a timeout error with every send.

I would love to see a newsletter module that has the capability to send html, and send in waves, say 100 at a time... then onto the next batch of 100. Even if the html part was not there that would be OK, but it seriously needs some type of function to send to the partial list, take a break, and continue sending for sites that have a large audience such as mine.

Anyone here, since there seem to be a great deal of excellent coding minds resident, up for the challenge of creating a better newsletter function?

Note: I have played with the newsletter from bariba, and while it is a great script, it has the same timeout errors and the registration is not integrated with nuke... It's along the lines of what is needed, but if your visitors never see it, what's the point. (there is also some wasted code by recording who got what newsletter and when, i don't think this serves a viable purpose)

Don't get me wrong, it's an excellent effort, both the standard newsletter and the modified ones, and certainly a showing that I couldn't hope to beat on my own (being a code delinquent) but I think the nuke community needs better.

Thanks for your time.

Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2003 6:15 am

Help me test this hack and maybe you`ll end up getting what you want, save a copy of your admin/modules/newsletter.php file, then place this one in that folder and give it a go, i didn`t get a chance to test it and the only part i am doubtful of is the runs after the initial one mostly because of the url for it so with your testing of the file we can find out if it works as it is or if it needs the header location to be modified, currently it is set to send 100 emails per batch with html enabled, both things can be edited so anyway, i`ll be waiting for your reply:

http://nukecops.com/uploads/chatserv/newsletter.zip

Joined: Jan 31, 2004 Posts: -88

Actually, phpnuke.org don't send out newsletters cause FB doesn't have time to write them

AI

Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2003 4:13 pm

I modified the code a bit more to have it echo the time it took to send the newsletter and how many people were emailed, tested it as well but only to people subscribed to the newsletter which is not that many, i don`t dare test a mass email as some people hate getting newsletter type emails so that is the only part that remains to be tested.

Corporal Joined: Feb 12, 2003 Posts: 58 Location: USA

Hello chatserv,

I will test the newsletter script you have there . . . but it will take a couple days, since we just sent one out. (like to have a good 10 new articles and developments before we send another - 2/3 days max!)

At any rate, thanks for your time and I'll be sure to let you know how the test goes. In the meantime, if you do come up with any advancements just post that you made a change here and I will make sure I have you're latest copy before sending.

Thanks Exclamation

Corporal Joined: Feb 12, 2003 Posts: 58 Location: USA

Hi chatserv,

We did have something to announce so we sent out a newsletter... but it appears that it was only sent to the first 100 subscribers, I don't think the loop worked and I did not receive an echo message during the process.

Could you please take a look at the code again?

Appreciate the help!

Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2003 7:20 am

Ok, i went over it, for one thing i think i had an incorrect call to the header location and maybe an incorrect variable in one of the sql queries as the first one was using while list($email_addr) which i believe should be while list ($email) like the second one is, i could be wrong but it`s worth trying, let me know how it goes.

Posted: Thu May 08, 2003 9:27 pm

is the newsletter working now?

Corporal Joined: Feb 12, 2003 Posts: 58 Location: USA

Yes, it works perfectly now.

Nuke Soldier Joined: Jun 24, 2003 Posts: 10

Hi all.
What version of phpnuke is this newsletter for?
I'm trying to send out a Newsletter in html via phpnuke 6.5, but it doesnt seem to be recognising html and formatting it properly.

Sending in plain text, the Newsletter doesnt keep spacing or anything like that, so the users are being sent a big block of ugly unformatted text.

When I tried the newsletter script in this thread, it didnt work at all.
No errors from the page, but no email sent.

Can anybody help?

Cheers.

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 6:48 pm

I'm wondering, does the Newsletter module from http://www.bariba.de timeout on a large send?
We only have 97 subscribers, doesn't timeout yet...

Nuke Soldier Joined: Jun 24, 2003 Posts: 10

Thats the Newsletter I have just started using.
Much better! Smile

I'm not sure if it will time out on a large user base.
I dont have many users signed up for mine yet.

Nuke Soldier Joined: Aug 06, 2003 Posts: 10

chatserv or JackX,

Could I get the code you are refering to?

I downloaded the code that is linked... but it doen't appear to have the looping code in it.

Thanks in advanced.

SCROFT

Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2003 1:09 pm

SCROFT, I use the Newsletter module in my post above. We have over a 100 subscribers, and it never times out.
Nice News letter too.

If you can't find it at their site, let me know.

mikem

Nuke Soldier Joined: Jun 11, 2003 Posts: 12

chatserv wrote:

Help me test this hack and maybe you`ll end up getting what you want, save a copy of your admin/modules/newsletter.php file, then place this one in that folder and give it a go, i didn`t get a chance to test it and the only part i am doubtful of is the runs after the initial one mostly because of the url for it so with your testing of the file we can find out if it works as it is or if it needs the header location to be modified, currently it is set to send 100 emails per batch with html enabled, both things can be edited so anyway, i`ll be waiting for your reply:

http://nukecops.com/uploads/chatserv/newsletter.zip

I just jumped into here and need to ask a question. What I have found in configuring Postman pro is that batching at 100 is an excellent choice but you also need to set a delay so that the server cron dameon doesn't think it is a runaway process.

On one server 10 seconds was sufficient on another server I had to increase it to 30 seconds before it was working properly.

Is this mod based upon the bariba hack? and is it available?

I would like to test it also