Newsletter / Mailing list wanted

[Guest]

Hi there,

I'm about to develop a new website - however I'm looking for a newsletter mailing list module or external applicatin which can easily be incorporated into CMSMS...

The user should to be able to subscribe/unsubscribe to a list.
The editor should be able to generate newsletters using a specific template and the built-in editor.

Do you of any solutions?

Best regards,
Jacob from Denmark

[Woudloper]

Unfortunatly there isn't such a module/add-on available for 'CMS Made Simple' yet. Hopefully there will be one in the future. When you navigate to the following links you can see that several person (including me) have asked about such a module:

• Newsletter / Mailing list wanted
• Newsletter module
• Newsletter, mailinglist module
• Module request : newsletter module (including some feature suggestions)

[Jacob]

I've read all the posts mentioned by Woudloper and decided to build a module on my own. I read the tutorial (http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/tiki-inde ... ing+Smarty) on writing modules and unfortunately I realized that I'm not that skilled as a programmer

I hope there is someone out there who is willing to help me out. This is what I've thought of:

• A unique 'Newsletter' template customized for e-mail clients
• A content section consisting of newsletters. The section could be either visible or invisible  in the navigation. The page title would be the subject, the content should parse the 'Newsletter' template as usual (regarding content blocks)
• The module should produce an HTML form consisting of an email input field and two submit buttons (subscribe/unsubscribe). The HTML code for this snippet should ideally be placed in a module template. When a user subscribes he adds his email to a database table. When he unsubscribes he removes any entry in the database with that specific email.
• The admin interface would present the pages created under the specific content section in a dropdown menu. The administrator should be able to select a newsletter from the dropdown menu and send it. The 'From'-name and -email-adress should be two input fields prefilled with the administrators name/email.

Basically I want the script to compose an email consisting of the chosen page presented through the custom template and send it to the administrator and BCC it to all the recipients from the database.

I hope someone can help me setting up such a module...
Thanks in advance,
Jacob

[Woudloper]

I've read all the posts mentioned by Woudloper and decided to build a module on my own. I read the tutorial (http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/tiki-inde ... ing+Smarty) on writing modules and unfortunately I realized that I'm not that skilled as a programmer

I hope there is someone out there who is willing to help me out. This is what I've thought of:

• A unique 'Newsletter' template customized for e-mail clients
• A content section consisting of newsletters. The section could be either visible or invisible  in the navigation. The page title would be the subject, the content should parse the 'Newsletter' template as usual (regarding content blocks)
• The module should produce an HTML form consisting of an email input field and two submit buttons (subscribe/unsubscribe). The HTML code for this snippet should ideally be placed in a module template. When a user subscribes he adds his email to a database table. When he unsubscribes he removes any entry in the database with that specific email.
• The admin interface would present the pages created under the specific content section in a dropdown menu. The administrator should be able to select a newsletter from the dropdown menu and send it. The 'From'-name and -email-adress should be two input fields prefilled with the administrators name/email.

Basically I want the script to compose an email consisting of the chosen page presented through the custom template and send it to the administrator and BCC it to all the recipients from the database.

Great that you will contribute the 'CMS Made Simple' community and try to write you own module for a newsletter/mailing list. The documentation that you read is good, but you can also visit the wiki.cmsmadesimple.org. Here you can find several modules/add-ons that have been developed by other users of 'CMS Made Simple'. You can especially look at the Skeleton module which can be found at the bottom of the page. This is a very well documented module and will guide you through the creation process of module development.

For the different possible solution you can best take a look at the Mailing List Managers at hotscripts.com. If you will find e.g. an good open source version you can e.g. integrate this in a module. This has also been done for the several other modules that can be found on the wiki.

Regarding the template functionality you can (as said in the previous paragraph) look at several mailing list managers or look in the skeleton module. That module is working with .tpl (template) files.

You must need to focus on two parts when creating such a module. A sign-in script for the frontend and the possibilty to sign out from the mailinglist. Also the backend should be customizable. You should be able to create a plain document (by using a wysiwyg  editor on the page), store that in the database. Send the mailing, etc... Maybe some other module developers can also help you out, as I am not experienced with the development of modules...

[iNSiPiD]

It's very easy to plug in custom code. If you find another solution (e.g. free PHP scripts) you coul dinject the page into your content using the {embed} tag.

Also, there is an inexpensive service out there called Your Mailing List Provider - http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/ - which has a free and a paod version from $ 2.50 / month. I have signed up for the paid version.

A simple form is all you need to add to your page.

[Olaf]

How is it going Jacob? Any progress with the module? If you need dutch translations for it, just let me know.
Grtz, Olaf

[lemkepf]

Any progress? I'm thinking of writing my own if you can't come up with anything... Or if you have some code, and don't have time to finish, let me know.

[lemkepf]

I'm done with mine.
http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/newsletter/