Send automatic or manual newsletters with latest site content or custom text.
Module Newsletter by Ioannis Sannos is a rich Newsletter system for Elxis in compact size. The module controls automatically users subscription and unsubscription tasks and is able to send automatically Daily, Weekly or Monthly newsletters with site news. The module is also able, in manual mode, to send newsletters with custom text. In this article we will show you how to use module Newsletter and what you can do with it.
Configuration parameters
General configuration parameters.
- Mode The module has 2 working modes, Automatic and Manual. When Automatic it sends automatically newsletters by collecting the latest content that has been added on site. When Manual it sends newsletter with custom text 5 minutes after the last save of module parameters.
- E-mails per run Module newsletter is being activated by the guests browsing the site. Before it displays the public subscription form it checks if it must send newsletter and if yes sends it. You will notice that your site will take some more time to load than usually when sending newsletters. If you set the E-mails per run too high this loading time will last more and you might face timeout problems. The best value depends on how fast your server is. If you have set this value to 10 and you have to send e-mails to 80 subscribers then newsletter will complete the dispatch procedure is 8 runs, which means that needs someone to perform 8 clicks on the site. The module will try the whole day to complete the dispatch so it is almost impossible not to complete it.
- Exclude domains Comma separated list of domains and TLDs you don't want to register in newsletter. For example if you set gmail.com no one having email at gmail will be able to register. For more domains add commas. Example: example.com,something.de,bad.fr. To block emails from whole countries use just the TLD, for example .cn for China. Mixed example: example.com,.cn,.something.net,.ru,.mk,badsite.com.uk
- DNS Check If enabled, the module will perform a DNS check on the given e-mail address during subscription in order to avoid people adding e-mails for non-existant domains. For example aaaaa@zazazazaza.es is a valid email and with DNS Check disabled the module will accept it. But if DNS Check is enabled the module will detect that domain zazazazaza.es does not exist and will not accept the e-mail. It is strongly recommended to enable this option except if it generates errors for you (blocked by your PHP installation).
- Time lock If enabled then under no cirmcumstance a newsletter will be send sonner than 8 hours since the last dispatch. We recommend you enable this option as it makes the module runs faster in some cases (avoids useless checks and queries in database).
- CSS suffix An optional suffix to be added on module's DIV box with CSS class module.
Configuration parameters for Automatic mode.
- Collect e-mails If you select Yes the module will only collect e-mail subscriptions and don't send automatically newsletters.
- Frequency How often to send newsletter. There are 3 options here: Daily, Weekly and Monthly. Pick the best option based on how often you add content in your site. Note that if you send newsletters too often (daily) you might make angry your subscribers and force them to unsubscibe.
- Day The day of the week to send newsletters if Weekly is the chosen Frequency. Options: Monday to Sunday.
- Limit The maximum number of items of the same type to include in newsletter (Articles, EDC listings or Hotels).
- Articles Include latest articles in newsletter?
- EDC listings Include latest EDC listings in newsletter? Requires component EDC.
- Hotels Include latest hotels in newsletter? Requires IOS Reservations component with extension IOSR Hotels.
- Subtitle Include item sub-title in newsletter?
- Description The number of characters of item's description to include in newsletter. Set 0 to disable including the description text.
In Automatic mode module Newsletter sends e-mails containing the latest articles, hotels and EDC listings added on site. Based on the chosen Frequency the following items will be collected.
Daily: Previous day items
Weekly: Last 7 days items
Monthly: Last month items
If no items have been added during the check period no newsletter will be send.
Configuration parameters for Manual mode.
- Text Custom text to send as newsletter in manual mode. You can write HTML!
When writing custom text prefer to write all text in one line. As this text is saved in column parameters, new lines in custom text might generate problems parsing the parameters. To avoid this write all of your text in one line and use HTML break tag (<br>) as line separator.
Subscribe
In public view the module displays a subscription form. To subscribe users write their email address and click subscribe. That's all.
Unsubscribe
Below the subscription button in public view there is a small Unsubscribe link, if you click it the unsubscriptin form is being displayed. In order for a user to unsubscribe he must write there his unique Removal Code as shown in the bottom of the newsletter he got and click Unsubscribe. The Removal Code is used instead of the e-mail for the unsubscription process in order to avoid the case someone removes someone else. Only administrators can remove others by providing the e-mail address, but we will discuss this later.
Administrator tasks
The module displays some usefull information to site administrators. Login as administrator and view the module in front-end section. The module will show you a Statistics box with the total number of subscribers, the last subscriber (e-mail and registration date) and the datetime of last newsletter dispatch. Below the newsletter statistics there is a link to mail the current subscribers list to your e-mail address. If you click Send me subscribers list link you will get at your e-mail the list of subscribers e-mails. Administrators are also able to unsubscribe someone by providing the e-mail address instead of the Removal Code.
Important things to note
- Check Elxis configuration and make sure your site is able to send emails properly. It is strongly recommended to set SMTP as the method of sending emails. This way the site e-mails will not look like anonymous SPAM.
- Newletters are send using the account set in Elxis configuration.
- During subscription module Newsletter saves the current site language as user's preferable language and sends the newletters to him in that language.
- Newsletter is not a SPAM tool. You should use it as an information tool and let users register by themselves. Dont register subscribers by yourself!
- if in Elxis configuration you have excluded domains for users registration these domains will also be excluded in newsletter registration.
- The module has a responsive CSS design, it is mobile compatible ad also compatible to RTL languages.
License, author, support and download
Module Newsletter is provided for free under the Elxis Public License license. The author of the module is Ioannis Sannos who grants you the right to use this module for any purpose you like. For support please post your question at Elxis forums.
Download module Newsletter from Elxis Downlaods Centre.
