Forum OpenACS Q&A: Mailing-List package released

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Posted by Malte Sussdorff on
The mailing list package has been released to contrib. The work was funded by Greenpeace International and done by Timo, Jarrko, Björn and myself.

This package allows you to handle multiple mailinglists with a number of features, among them:

  • Various mail types (plain, html, alternative)
  • Multiple Attachments, CSS support
  • Confirmation system (for signing up to a mailing list)
  • Localized, Categorized (multiple tree support)
  • History and Statistics (How many users have signed up to my mailing-lists, how many have used which link at what day).
  • Link tracking system (with automatic replacement of URLs)
  • Support for both signed up users (manual or mass subscribe) as well as arbitrary user selections (using SQL queries).
  • Split between mailinglists (who is the mailing send to), mail-classes (what is my default template for the mailing) and mail-jobs (when do I send what, with which template to whom).
User documentation can be found at http://gpi.sussdorff-roy.com/mailing-lists/doc/

One note though: This is not a replacement for mailman, as this package only allows the administrators to mail to the list.

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Posted by Malte Sussdorff on
One note on the statistics though. They depend on the charts package, which I'm not going to release at the moment, because we need to clean it up a little bit and document it further. I hope you do not mind this.
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Posted by Jun Yamog on
Thanks Malte.  I am sure this package and other packages you have contributed will be useful.
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Posted by Bjorn Thor Jonsson on

What version of OpenACS is the mailing-lists package compatible with?

Using the 5.0 branch from cvs I get the following error when choosing *Add a new mailing list* in the mailing-lists administration:

can't read "element(value)": no such element in array
    while executing
"lindex $element(value) 0"
    (procedure "template::widget::category" line 17)
    invoked from within
"template::widget::$element(widget) element $tag_attributes"
    (procedure "template::element::render" line 10)
    invoked from within
"template::element::render mailing_list_form category_ids {  }"
    ("eval" body line 1)
    invoked from within
...

Using cvs head I was able to add a new mailing list. Then when trying Mass Subscribe with a not registered email address this error occurs:

ERROR:  null value in column "username" violates not-null constraint
CONTEXT:  PL/pgSQL function "acs_user__new" line 54 at SQL statement
PL/pgSQL function "acs__add_user" line 21 at assignment
And when trying Mass Subscribe with a registered email address this error occurs:
ERROR:  duplicate key violates unique constraint "parties_email_un"
CONTEXT:  PL/pgSQL function "party__new" line 16 at SQL statement
PL/pgSQL function "person__new" line 14 at assignment
PL/pgSQL function "acs_user__new" line 28 at assignment
PL/pgSQL function "acs__add_user" line 21 at assignment

Then, still on the head installation, when choosing to add a new mailing list (which worked before) or view the existent one, the same error occurs as had on the 5.0 branch.

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Posted by Malte Sussdorff on
Well ......

The reason the package is in contrib is that we did not have the time so far to make sure it works with the 5-0 branch, as we developed it using the 5-0 HEAD in July 2003.

Timo wanted to work on this, but apparently he did not get around to do it so far.

You might want to contact C.R.Oldham or Brad Duell as they managed to get it installed. They said something about manually installing the dependencies.

In any case, I think we should use this thread to coordinate any work and success we had in getting the package to work with the 5-0 branch. Furthermore, anyone wanting to i18n this, is highly welcome as well (as this would allow us to move it to the offical tree).

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Posted by Caroline Meeks on
Thanks for bringing this package back up for discussion.

In the last week or so e-newsletters have come up in a couple of contexts for me and I may have a project that needs them.

Here is a commercial company that specializes in e-newsletters.  http://www.imninc.com/imn_index.htm

Is this actually closer to what people  referred to as a newletter then a mailing list?

To me a mailing list is generally people talking back and forth in plain text.

An eNewsletter is an image rich, html document that is mass mailed to a list of subscribers.

Does this package support both of these options or something in between?

I recently implemented clickthrough for urls stored in file-storage with Davb's new fs-cms (file storage based CMS), how similar is the tracking on this package to clickthrough?  I guess clickthrough is for tracking out going clicks and this is tracking incoming links.

I may need to expand clickthrough to track views of pdf documents in File Storage. Is the tracking in this package applicable/better for that?

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Posted by Timo Hentschel on
Ok. This seems to be a smaller problem and i will fix it (probably in categories since this is a problem with the categories package expecting the parameters as a ad_form {value}, but mailing-list providing them as {options}).
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Posted by Ben Chan on
has this error been resolved yet?  After going through /admin/install from OACS repository, it's still the same version from 2003
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Posted by Malte Sussdorff on
New version of the Mailing-List package has been commited to oacs-5-1. It includes enhancements done by Aristoi, enabling you to see a list of all subscribed users and mass unsubscribe them again.