Newsletters

[HeadStand]

On 8/12/2018 at 6:08 AM, Gnuru said:

As I understand, I have to "publish the newsletter" before it gets send out automatically?

Definitely not. The whole point is that it's supposed to be automatic. A publish will do an immediate distribution, which is probably not what you want.

On 8/12/2018 at 6:08 AM, Gnuru said:

What I also noticed, is that if I add more then one content (in manage content) it will only show the last added content. The newsletter itselfs includes the other contents.

Is this still a problem? I'm not able to reproduce it.

On 8/12/2018 at 8:28 AM, AlexWebsites said:

@HeadStand for clubs block, recent content isn't really working. I'd like to be able to show latest clubs created, is there an easy way to do this? There are only 2 options, recent and popular and both output the same feed.

Looks like this is a bug with the way the content is sorted. I have fixed it locally and I will push a new version in another day or 2. I just want to see what these other few issues are first.

[Gnuru]

Hi @HeadStand,

the issue with the content is also fixed running the support tool. Maybe it was because I already installed an older version of the newsletter.

Everything is working now, but I get complains that the unsubscribe link doesn't work. Actually testing it myself it works. But when clicking on unsubscribe not beeing logged into the board, it will redirect to the main page.

Would it be possible to show a confirmation message or redirecting to a special page when clicking on unsubscribe?

Best regards and thank you for this great App

Ralph

[Gnuru]

Hi @HeadStand,

could you please help me concerning the problem with the unsubscribe link?

More and more people are complaining, that the unsubscribe link doesn't work because it doesn't show a results page.

Best regards

Ralph

[HeadStand]

New version is uploaded to the Marketplace. Changes include:

• Sorting issue with the "Recent Clubs" content. Fixed.
• Added confirmation page when unsubscribing from a newsletter
• Extended all member ID columns to allow for larger values

[Gnuru]

Hi @HeadStand,

thank you so much, the unsubscribe link works like a charm now.

Best regards

Ralph

[sound]

possible bug?
the page at url /newsletters/

not listing any newsletters? 

[HeadStand]

2 hours ago, sound said:

possible bug?
the page at url /newsletters/

not listing any newsletters? 

It should only list the newsletters you can see.... are they all enabled? Does your group have permission to it?

[John T Davis]

On 8/19/2018 at 1:47 PM, HeadStand said:

New version is uploaded to the Marketplace. Changes include:

• Sorting issue with the "Recent Clubs" content. Fixed.
• Added confirmation page when unsubscribing from a newsletter
• Extended all member ID columns to allow for larger values

Subscribing with my gigantic member ID values is now working perfectly. Thanks!

[sound]

22 hours ago, HeadStand said:

It should only list the newsletters you can see.... are they all enabled? Does your group have permission to it?

working before the upgrade not working after

 

[HeadStand]

7 hours ago, sound said:

working before the upgrade not working after

 

A new version has been uploaded to the Marketplace. It contains a fix for this issue.

[John T Davis]

@HeadStand,

Hello! When adding a "Forum" content block, what's the intended difference between "Recent Content" and "Recently Updated Content?"

I'm thinking if I want the newsletter to feature all content from the last 24 hours, including both new posts and replies to existing posts, I should be using Recently Updated Content, with a cutoff of 1 day.

Is that correct?

EDIT: Right now I'm just getting the first message from each thread with an indication of the number of replies displayed. I need to be able to pull in the actual full text of the replies.

Edited August 21, 2018 by John T Davis

[HeadStand]

1 hour ago, John T Davis said:

@HeadStand,

Hello! When adding a "Forum" content block, what's the intended difference between "Recent Content" and "Recently Updated Content?"

I'm thinking if I want the newsletter to feature all content from the last 24 hours, including both new posts and replies to existing posts, I should be using Recently Updated Content, with a cutoff of 1 day.

Is that correct?

EDIT: Right now I'm just getting the first message from each thread with an indication of the number of replies displayed. I need to be able to pull in the actual full text of the replies.

Recent Content sorts by start date, Recently Updated sorts by last updated date.

I don't think you're going to see the reply text. That would require a custom modification. You can see the text of the content item (the topic), but not replies.

[John T Davis]

@HeadStand,

 

Hello. Thanks for the clarifications. I wanted to confirm that the app can't display reply text. I think I may have misunderstood your reply to my original question back on August 3, included below with question highlighted.

On 8/3/2018 at 12:54 PM, John T Davis said:

@HeadStand,

* * *

I'm looking to purchase this for a ~300-400 member private community (professional organization) that just migrated from Yahoo Groups. Most of our members were set up to get daily digests from Yahoo that contained a table of contents at the top with every single post for Time Period X (daily or weekly). Clicking the link would get you a full text copy of the post inside the email, so you never had to go to the website if you didn't want to.

Can I replicate that with Newsletters? This is the one thing people miss from Yahoo--the ability to see all content without ever leaving the daily/weekly digest email.

You replied on August 3:

On 8/3/2018 at 2:38 PM, HeadStand said:

You should be able to replicate this.

When you set up your newsletter you have the option to include the post content in the email. You can choose to truncate it or include the full text. 

The "click to show" will be slightly tricky, but you can add some JavaScript to your newsletter template to accomplish this... though it may not work with all email clients.

Unfortunately, I really need the ability to include replies in full text--that was motivation for my purchase of this module. My users want to be able to see all the messages in a given topic thread for the last 24 hours in their daily email.

Is the custom modification technically feasible, or does the API not allow access to full threads?

Thanks again.

[AlexWebsites]

I seem to have an issue when using an advertisement in a newsletter. I'm using only one image (without turning on smaller image versions) and a url. It displays the ad 3 times in the newsletter with a bullet next to each ad. 

Edited October 7, 2018 by AlexWebsites

[HeadStand]

On 10/7/2018 at 5:22 PM, AlexWebsites said:

I seem to have an issue when using an advertisement in a newsletter. I'm using only one image (without turning on smaller image versions) and a url. It displays the ad 3 times in the newsletter with a bullet next to each ad. 

Can you list for me (or take a screenshot) of all the content types in your newsletter? I don't need details, just a screenshot of the "Manage Content" screen. I'd like to set up the same configuration that you have so that I can try to replicate it.

[John T Davis]

On 8/21/2018 at 4:27 PM, John T Davis said:

@HeadStand,

 

Hello. Thanks for the clarifications. I wanted to confirm that the app can't display reply text. I think I may have misunderstood your reply to my original question back on August 3, included below with question highlighted.

You replied on August 3:

Unfortunately, I really need the ability to include replies in full text--that was motivation for my purchase of this module. My users want to be able to see all the messages in a given topic thread for the last 24 hours in their daily email.

Is the custom modification technically feasible, or does the API not allow access to full threads?

Thanks again.

@HeadStand,

Hello. I hope you are doing well. I'm not sure if a notification properly fired off for the above message, so I decided to quote it again.

Have a great evening.

[HeadStand]

1 hour ago, John T Davis said:

@HeadStand,

Hello. I hope you are doing well. I'm not sure if a notification properly fired off for the above message, so I decided to quote it again.

Have a great evening.

The problem with including the full text of every post is that you may hit some limits with regard to storage (of the issue content) and, if you're using an API like SendGrid, with the request size. How much activity are we talking about? How many posts, on average?

[John T Davis]

35 minutes ago, HeadStand said:

The problem with including the full text of every post is that you may hit some limits with regard to storage (of the issue content) and, if you're using an API like SendGrid, with the request size. How much activity are we talking about? How many posts, on average?

Thank you for your reply. 🙂

I'm just using the default mail sending features built into IPS right now. I'm not really familiar with SendGrid.

I would be extremely surprised if the entire forum ever routinely broke 50 posts a day--though that might happen a few times a year during events. We've got almost 400 members, and in the 4 months the forum has been open our busiest day saw 27 posts. 

So, about 15 posts a day on average?

Edited October 11, 2018 by John T Davis

[JTrollerb123]

Interested in purchasing this, but some questions first:

1. Am I able to auto-opt in all existing members to the newsletter upon installation?
2. Do I get to see a preview of the auto-created messages so I can adjust certain links/text before distribution? (i.e. If I dont want certain recent topics to be sent, can I remove?)
3. Is there an online working demo I can view/test out?

Thanks!

[Andy_M]

@HeadStand - many thanks for this app, it works great and I can see it helping our community engagement. A few questions:

1. Is it possible to pull through posts rather than topics? Or otherwise, is it possible to put the date of the latest post against a topic rather than it's start date?
2. Is it possible to customise the plain text template for the dynamic content? For some reason my plain text newsletter looks terrible, plus I'd like to add URLs
3. Do you have plans to enable selection of "Our Picks" as a content inclusion criteria? I'm experimenting with this functionality and that would be a good way to exert editorial control over what goes out.

Thanks in advance!

[AlexWebsites]

On 10/9/2018 at 9:34 AM, HeadStand said:

Can you list for me (or take a screenshot) of all the content types in your newsletter? I don't need details, just a screenshot of the "Manage Content" screen. I'd like to set up the same configuration that you have so that I can try to replicate it.

Forum Topics
Forum Topics - (popular topic feed)
Ad #1
Clubs
Downloads
Ad #2 
Articles
Photos

Also have an issue where I'm using 2 ad slots and manually selected the ad for each out of 2 choices. However, even though I manually selected, it doesn't show the correct ad, it shows the other one of the two instead...very odd behavior. Basically, it's not selecting the correct ad under manual. I tested a few times sending and it's random even though manual is selected.

[HeadStand]

On 10/10/2018 at 10:49 PM, JTrollerb123 said:

Interested in purchasing this, but some questions first:

1. Am I able to auto-opt in all existing members to the newsletter upon installation?
2. Do I get to see a preview of the auto-created messages so I can adjust certain links/text before distribution? (i.e. If I dont want certain recent topics to be sent, can I remove?)
3. Is there an online working demo I can view/test out?

Thanks!

1. Yes.
2. You can see a preview, but you can't edit it (unless it's manually written content). You can exclude specific forums from the list, but you can't exclude individual topics.
3. No.

On 10/11/2018 at 12:10 PM, Andy_M said:

@HeadStand - many thanks for this app, it works great and I can see it helping our community engagement. A few questions:

1. Is it possible to pull through posts rather than topics? Or otherwise, is it possible to put the date of the latest post against a topic rather than it's start date?
2. Is it possible to customise the plain text template for the dynamic content? For some reason my plain text newsletter looks terrible, plus I'd like to add URLs
3. Do you have plans to enable selection of "Our Picks" as a content inclusion criteria? I'm experimenting with this functionality and that would be a good way to exert editorial control over what goes out.

Thanks in advance!

1. I'm working on this, but no ETA yet.
2. No. The plain text template IS going to look terrible, and it will be used in a very small number of situations. Most email clients by now are able to read and format HTML... in fact, I may remove plain-text altogether (since it's so obsolete). And no, you can't add URLs, that's the point of plain text. 😉
3. Not at this time.

On 10/10/2018 at 10:03 PM, John T Davis said:

Thank you for your reply. 🙂

I'm just using the default mail sending features built into IPS right now. I'm not really familiar with SendGrid.

I would be extremely surprised if the entire forum ever routinely broke 50 posts a day--though that might happen a few times a year during events. We've got almost 400 members, and in the 4 months the forum has been open our busiest day saw 27 posts. 

So, about 15 posts a day on average?

I am going to work on this, but no ETA. If you don't hear from me by end of this week, please PM me to remind me. Thanks.

On 10/12/2018 at 8:09 AM, AlexWebsites said:

Forum Topics
Forum Topics - (popular topic feed)
Ad #1
Clubs
Downloads
Ad #2 
Articles
Photos

Also have an issue where I'm using 2 ad slots and manually selected the ad for each out of 2 choices. However, even though I manually selected, it doesn't show the correct ad, it shows the other one of the two instead...very odd behavior. Basically, it's not selecting the correct ad under manual. I tested a few times sending and it's random even though manual is selected.

A new version has been uploaded to the Marketplace. It contains a fix for these issues.

[JTrollerb123]

Thanks for the info.  If #'s 2 and 3 can be made possible, I would purchase it immediately.

[andrewbiggs]

I want to retroactive enable the Newsletter for all my members. Due to a database issue members who subscribed was deactiavted somehow. Database is now fixed

Question: How can I activate the Newsletter for ALL existing members of my community? Any hack in the database, but what field?

Edited October 17, 2018 by andrewbiggs
spelling

[HeadStand]

10 hours ago, andrewbiggs said:

I want to retroactive enable the Newsletter for all my members. Due to a database issue members who subscribed was deactiavted somehow. Database is now fixed

Question: How can I activate the Newsletter for ALL existing members of my community? Any hack in the database, but what field?

That's... weird. I'm not sure how that could happen, but... OK. Anyway, all you have to do is set the default groups on the newsletter properties, and everyone will be subscribed - unless they actively unsubscribed.

Can you elaborate on the database issue? What table(s) were affected? If the newsletters_subscriptions table was not affected, you should be fine with just editing that property.