Newsletters

[NoGi]

The variable doesn't get passed until it's published. They will all look like that in preview mode. You can always do a test distribution to yourself to confirm.

[TheSkyLounge.tv]

3 minutes ago, NoGi said:

The variable doesn't get passed until it's published. They will all look like that in preview mode. You can always do a test distribution to yourself to confirm.

I tried that, sent to my email and got the same:

 

[HeadStand]

38 minutes ago, TheSkyLounge.tv said:

I tried that, sent to my email and got the same:

 

A test is not the same as a publish. The only way to see how that works (right now) is to do an actual publish. When you click on the unsubscribe link, one of the parameters is a hash that is unique to the issue ID and the member. An issue ID is not generated until a publish and does not exist in test mode. For this reason, I cannot put a functional unsubscribe link into a preview or a test.

If you want to see how this works, I suggest setting up a newsletter and distributing to Administrators only. 

I will add to my enhancement list to create a "dummy link" for testing purposes.

1 hour ago, TheSkyLounge.tv said:

Confirmed fixed, and 1st newsletter sent! WHOOOOO! 

 

On "IMAGES" Any chance we could maintain the correct image dimensions and get a clear preview vs fuzzy?

If you're referring to gallery images, I am pulling the thumbnails generated by the gallery itself. I am not making any changes to image dimensions or anything else, just pulling them from IPS. 

[TheSkyLounge.tv]

Thanks @HeadStand ! Confirmed that it does generate a URL when using the PUBLISH option to a limited set of folks. 

Is there any way to have it make an UNSUBSCRIBE link vs a long url ?

[TheSkyLounge.tv]

My newsletter seems to be sending out hourly (I'm receiving it, as well as the "Newsletter Distributed" notice)

 

My settings are set to where Ideally they will go out only Monday at noon...any ideas? After spamming the crap out of everyone, I set it now to just Administrators and it continues:

 

 

I just noticed a trend.... It's happening every time someone posts a new topic ! HELP!

Edited February 15, 2017 by TheSkyLounge.tv

[AlexWebsites]

What does your next distribution time say? 

The distribution settings are a bit confusing.

Daily should be every day and weekly should be once a week on the days you pick. I would just remove that daily choice all together and just have weekly and then pick every one of the days you want for the week. Picking all 7 would essentially make it daily.  

Actually I see it says next week. Do your tasks run via cron or community activity?

Edited February 15, 2017 by AlexWebsites

[TheSkyLounge.tv]

2 minutes ago, AlexWebsites said:

What does your next distribution time say? 

The distribution settings are a bit confusing.

Daily should be every day and weekly should be once a week on the days you pick. I would just remove that daily choice all together and just have weekly and then pick every one of the days you want for the week. Picking all 7 would essentially make it daily.  

Actually I see it says next week. Do your tasks run via cron or community activity?

I can set it to Weekly and just leave the monday checked, but I don't have an answer for you regarding "Do your tasks run via cron or community activity?"  I didn't see that option anywhere.

[HeadStand]

12 hours ago, TheSkyLounge.tv said:

My newsletter seems to be sending out hourly (I'm receiving it, as well as the "Newsletter Distributed" notice)

 

My settings are set to where Ideally they will go out only Monday at noon...any ideas? After spamming the crap out of everyone, I set it now to just Administrators and it continues:

 

 

I just noticed a trend.... It's happening every time someone posts a new topic ! HELP!

Strange that it should go out hourly. I'll look into it. For future reference, you can always just disable the newsletter, which would stop distribution. 

As to the newsletter going out every time a topic is posted, I'm sorry, but the chances of that happening are basically zero. The newsletter is not connected to the posting process and is not touching it in any way, shape, or form. It's likely the task being triggered by site activity, as was suggested. The newsletter task IS set to run hourly (only to check for newsletters waiting to go out), but IPS handles which tasks are executed when. 

So.... disable the newsletter, and I'll have a fix for you later. 

12 hours ago, AlexWebsites said:

Daily should be every day and weekly should be once a week on the days you pick. I would just remove that daily choice all together and just have weekly and then pick every one of the days you want for the week. Picking all 7 would essentially make it daily. 

You're right. I think the current settings were done that way specifically for a single customer back in IPB v3, and then I just ported it over. I'll change it.

[AlexWebsites]

Does this app use the built in internal mail send? see this post:

I'm thinking of using that plugin in conjunction to stop sending newsletters and other mail to old members who's emails are no good and just kill the ISP mail ratings.

[HeadStand]

21 hours ago, AlexWebsites said:

Does this app use the built in internal mail send? see this post:

I'm thinking of using that plugin in conjunction to stop sending newsletters and other mail to old members who's emails are no good and just kill the ISP mail ratings.

I'm not sure what you mean by built in send. It doesn't use the bulk mailer, but it does usethe IPS email functions. 

[AlexWebsites]

58 minutes ago, HeadStand said:

I'm not sure what you mean by built in send. It doesn't use the bulk mailer, but it does use the IPS email functions. 

I'm not sure either, I'm just using their terminology from the post. Sounds like it'll work for what I need then in preventing bad emails from going out f you are using the built in mail functions. Continuously sending to bad emails reduces deliver-ability with ISPs. I have a few older sites with members that have changed or deleted their emails.

[prupdated]

Hi. Overall it looks pretty good except that I have 70,000 members and the script times out if I publish (60 second php timeout). It works on smaller groups. I haven't tried but it might work if I don't publish but wait for cron to pick it up. Although, I'm concerned what could happen if it is already timing out on the front end publish.

Also, I'm not sure how long it would take using sparkpost since I don't see a settable sending rate with sparkpost. SMTP has a rate option but I run into some problems with SMTP on spark post from time to time.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[HeadStand]

On 2/28/2017 at 11:17 PM, prupdated said:

Hi. Overall it looks pretty good except that I have 70,000 members and the script times out if I publish (60 second php timeout). It works on smaller groups. I haven't tried but it might work if I don't publish but wait for cron to pick it up. Although, I'm concerned what could happen if it is already timing out on the front end publish.

Also, I'm not sure how long it would take using sparkpost since I don't see a settable sending rate with sparkpost. SMTP has a rate option but I run into some problems with SMTP on spark post from time to time.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

I completely missed this post, I apologize. 

It's interesting that it's timing out, I have clients running this mod and distributing to a couple hundred thousand members without a timeout. I will look into it and see if there is a way to improve this. 

Sparkpost's rate is hard-coded into IPS code and I cannot override it. I think it's 1500 emails per cycle.

[Draffi]

Plz, where is the old 3.4.6 topic? i need to read something there...

[AlexWebsites]

Is there any way under Manage Newsletter Subscriptions to spread out the text and stretch it out a bit? looks like its using .ipsFieldRow_title

Also, if using *|member_name|* in the email subject, is there a way to display the member name under Manage Newsletter Subscriptions? So if I have a newsletter title *|member_name|*, Weekly Newsletter, it would show the actual member name like the email topic. Or just hide *|member_name|* if used on that settings page.

[AlexWebsites]

How does the publish link work for the newsletter vs enabled/disabled. Is the publish link to "activate" it or is it a "send now". 

I created a newsletter and it's "active" but I did not hit the publish link I never got a pre-distribution email to any of the 3 admin users I have set up. Just wondering if it needs to be published. I don't recall if I hit that link and I don't want to click it again and send out.

[Adam_S]

Firstly, awesome app!  This looks like it'll do exactly what i need.  But i might need a bit of guidance if thats ok when it comes to customising the custom templates.   

On 21/12/2016 at 0:18 AM, HeadStand said:

It's not an array, it's an object. The elements will differ depending on the object you're working with. I would suggest looking at some of the templates in the gallery application - the object you're working with would be an image.

Does anyone have any customised template for the Gallery section (or can point me in the direction of one) that I could use which is similar to what exists by default, but lists the photos horizontally instead of vertically?

Thanks

[Adam_S]

I ended up just copying the template from the actual app and using that   But now for some reason, i can't seem to get it to display the images horizontally.  Anyone have any idea what i'm doing wrong?

My code is:

<HR>
<div>
    <h3>{$params['title']}</h3>
    {{foreach $items as $item}}
        {{$image = \IPS\File::get( 'gallery_Images', $item->thumb_file_name );}}
        <a href="{$item->url()}">
            <img src="{$image->url}" style="width:100px;height:100px;" alt="{$item->mapped( 'title' )}" title="{$item->mapped( 'title' )}">
        </a>
            {{if $params['show_author']}}
            {$item->author()->name} {datetime="$item->mapped( 'date' )"} <br>
            {{endif}}
            {{if $params['show_content']}}
                {{if $params['max_chars'] > 0}}
                {{$content = \strip_tags( $item->content() );}}
                {truncate="$content" length="$params['max_chars']"}
                {{else}}
                {$item->content()|raw}
                {{endif}}
            {{endif}}
            {{if isset( $params['show_views'] ) && $params['show_views']}}
            {$item->mapped( 'views' )} views
            {{endif}}
            {{if isset( $params['show_comments'] ) && $params['show_comments']}}
            {$item->mapped( 'num_comments' )} comments
            {{endif}}
    {{endforeach}}
</div>

But it appears like the attached image in the newsletter preview.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!  

Thanks

Adam

[AlexWebsites]

This is what I use for images, you can adjust the style elements. Displaying them in an inline-block should work in most email clients.

<div>
    <h3>{$params['title']}</h3>
     {{foreach $items as $item}}
 <div style="display: inline-block;">      
        {{$image = \IPS\File::get( 'gallery_Images', $item->thumb_file_name );}}
        <a href="{$item->url()}">
            <img src="{$image->url}" style="width:100px; height:100px; margin:4px; padding:4px; border:1px solid #333;" alt="{$item->mapped( 'title' )}" title="{$item->mapped( 'title' )}">
        </a>
         </div> 
   {{endforeach}}
</div>

 

[VR6Pete]

Hi. 

Lots of unhappy members today!

plugin has sent 16 copies of the same email to everyone. 

 

x

 

i have disabled the newsletter for now. 

What could cause this to happen?

Thanks

Pete

[VR6Pete]

This is backed up by SparkPost which has sent over 32,000 mails today!

 

[HeadStand]

27 minutes ago, VR6Pete said:

Hi. 

Lots of unhappy members today!

plugin has sent 16 copies of the same email to everyone. 

 

x

 

i have disabled the newsletter for now. 

What could cause this to happen?

Thanks

Pete

Yikes! Obviously that shouldn't happen. Please PM me with ACP credentials so that I can troubleshoot. 

On 3/26/2017 at 11:34 AM, AlexWebsites said:

How does the publish link work for the newsletter vs enabled/disabled. Is the publish link to "activate" it or is it a "send now". 

I created a newsletter and it's "active" but I did not hit the publish link I never got a pre-distribution email to any of the 3 admin users I have set up. Just wondering if it needs to be published. I don't recall if I hit that link and I don't want to click it again and send out.

Publish means "send now". 

If the newsletter is active and scheduled, it should go out, providing that

1) you have newsletter content

2) you have recipients (sounds like you do)

3) you have scheduled tasks running more or less regularly. That would be either via cron job or with sufficient site activity. Check your tasks in the ACP and see when the newsletter one was last triggered.

[AlexWebsites]

23 hours ago, HeadStand said:

Publish means "send now". 

If the newsletter is active and scheduled, it should go out, providing that

1) you have newsletter content

2) you have recipients (sounds like you do)

3) you have scheduled tasks running more or less regularly. That would be either via cron job or with sufficient site activity. Check your tasks in the ACP and see when the newsletter one was last triggered.

Thanks, I got it to send a pre-distribution now. Might have been a cron issue or time/date. I'm still confused on the time setting in the newsletter setting vs my actual and server time. I get that the Distribution times are calculated according to GMT. 

For instance, I have 6 pm in my settings for the newsletter but it tells me the next distribution time is 7 pm. Is that 7 pm per GMT or 7 pm per my server time? My server is EST and its 4 hours behind GMT. Just would be good if in settings everything just followed server time or there was a setting to + or - GMT time.

[Simon Woods]

GMT just went forward by 1 hour, maybe that's connected?

[AlexWebsites]

I just tested and had 1 pm set for today's date in settings. It just sent at 1:02 pm EST (my server is on EST). So, it seems that the settings time is following my server time (EST) on this one and the GMT distribution time was irrelevant. In settings:

Distribution times are calculated according to GMT. Time now is 04/01/2017 05:02 PM  (4 hours ahead of EST). Technically if that's the case, my 1 pm in settings should have sent 4 hours ago if it was following GMT but it sent according to EST from what I can tell. This is why its a bit confusing 

I actually prefer it like this where it follows my time.

Edited April 1, 2017 by AlexWebsites