Newsletter for Elxis 4.x

[datahell]

I develop a Newsletter module for Elxis 4.x.
People will be able to register in newsletter to receive a daily, weekly or monthly e-mail report with site news. The management of subscriptions and the e-mails dispatch will be fully automatic and it wont need the administrator to do anything to send the e-mails. The module will be available in 3-5 days.

Note
Elxis 4.x modules and plugins are much more improved than those for Elxis 2009.x and as the system is more powerful it is possible to make an Elxis 4.x module do what a small component would do in Elxis 2009.x. So we have smaller but smarter applications that can be developed faster and are easier to be managed. Such examples are the Photo Vote plugin and the upcoming Newsletter module.

[webgift]

Very good news!

[michalis1984]

I think this module will be installed by the majority of elxis users.

[nikos]

Very good news as a Newsletter for any site is a useful function.

I thought that this should be a component but you know better if is going to be a module.

I don't know if it is early to talk about details, but i would like to place here some thoughts if it is possible to be included

1. Option to select by simple clicks to send specific articles (for example the intro text of each with link on title for the whole article)
2. Option to type and send a short plain text message as e-mail and as sms via Clickatell for example
3. Option to select recipient groups and subgroups of many levels.

Am i asking too much?

[datahell]

Yes, you ask too much

SMS newsletter is too custom. How many sites will use that? And how to fit content items and links into an SMS? SMSes have a limit of 160 characters (not unicode) per message. As for custom text and custom dispatch I don't want to do that because I hate spam. People will get what they subscribed for any nothing more. They will also be able to un-subscribe and administrators will also be able to remove an email from the list.

The module will work like this:

Guests will register in newsletter with their email address (no other user data will be collected, not even name). Depending on the frequency selected (daily, weekly, monthly) the module will collect the new content added during the last period (last day, last week, last month) and send email notifications of the content added. Each row will have the item title, a link to it and a short description. You wont be able to send custom content or create different newsletters per subscriber. To reduce server load emails are sent in steps, by default 50 per run (10 to 100 configurable). If no subscribers exist, or no new content has been added during the last period nothing will be send. On each newsletter there will be a secret unsubscription code that users will be able to use in order to be removed from the notification list (not with their email as someone might unsubscribe an other person).

I believe it is absolutely fine for the majority of the web sites as it does what a newsletter should do, notify about new content. It is also extremely easy to use. Just publish it and you have fully automatic newsletters without ever again deal with the module.

[nikos]

For sms, ok you are right, it is a custom option for a minority of site administrators. The 3rd option i mentioned becomes from of IOS Newsletter for 2009.x which i consider that the possibility it has to send newsletter in groups and subgroups, it is very useful because in this way you can send targeted information and i was thinking if could be applied also in the new one for Elxis 4.x

All the rest functionality as you describe is just fine and will be a very good module.

[datahell]

It is not a newsletter component! It is a module that sends site's news. If it is not what you need don't use it!

[datahell]

Early preview of module's Newsletter front-end interface.

Don't forget that you must login in forum to see images and attachments!

[michalis1984]

Great! Sweet and simple!

I am waiting for the release 

[kyomar]

Awesome, I am looking forward to this new module. Well done!

[datahell]

The Newsletter module is ready!
Today I did all tests and works fine. It took me 4 days to finish it as it was quite complex. I also added some surprising cool features, you will see...
As the module requires some special care I will write detailed usage instructions on Elxis Docs before I publish it. If I don't do so I will have many questions, so it is better to wait a little more for the documentation. Most probably it will be released tomorrow morning.

[datahell]

Newsletter released!

Download module Newsletter
Newsletter module documentation at Elxis Docs

I will enrich EDC listing with some screenshots in the afternoon. Happy downloads!

[webgift]

Bravo! That's a great module development!

[hakangur]

I went to Elxis.net and attempted to register for the Newsletter. I tried with three different e-mail addresses (with yahoo.com, gmail.com and tu-claushtal.de extensions) but, each time I tried, I got the  "Subscription failed" message. I hope this is a temporary glitch.

[datahell]

Registration works fine. Try with a different browser....