I just finished installing PHPList and just started reading the documentation to get a feeling for the basics, etc. I have a few questions though:

-I want to get a feel for the program and want to start by entering a message to send as a test. I see that it has a nice editor and I can also view the source HTML but are most people using this to create messages? Shoudl I use some other HTML editor such as Dreamweaver or even creating a document in Word and saving as HTML?

-I plan to send a weekly email from my ecommerce website. If I'm correct the best way to do this is to create a Template since this is a weekly newsletter and on a weekly basis modify the content. Is this correct?

-Can I schedule a message to be sent weekly or do I just create a new one each week?

-The newsletter that I'm sending will be a newsletter mentioning any news such as upcoming products, sales, store changes and other news but I also want for it to mention products added in the last week.
I have an RSS feed that is created by my store and in reading about the program initially it mentioned how you can add RSS feeds to email but I have not seen this in the documentation. Is it possible to set it up that weekly it would look for changes in my RSS feed (new products) and list it in the email or would I have to do this manually?

-Documentation: I have been looking at the documentation on the PHPList website but I prefer to read in paper form. is there a way to print it out as a book instead of printing out by each link? Also, is there any documentation on other websites that I should look at or even videos or other learning tools?

Thank you for your help with the above questions.

I can't speak for most but I use Photoshop and slice it up which will create the html and image map. I then edit the html to pull images from the web. I have about 30 templates saved and mix them up each week. I have spotlight templates that target one item and new arrivals that will usually target about 15 items.

Phplist is a cumbersome beast to learn and modify (I remove all the references of phplist they force on emails you send) but once you get it set up it works nicely.

Mass mailing is a whole beast in itself and if you don't have a large list then I'd probably use one of the other services before tackling this beast. My lists are 30k-50K so I was kinda forced to learn it and how to keep off blacklists. I have a dedicated server just for emails to keep pressure and problems off my other servers and affecting my sites or client's sites. It's a constant battle regardless of what you do but send mails slowly (for comcast customers I send 1 email every 2 mins) will avoid many problems. I used to let people use mine but it got out of hand quickly. Lastly you might consider using different domains just for sending email. With newer WHM you can specify sending mail on the domain IP rather than the server IP. That way if you get tagged on a RBL you don't take down the whole server. Another advantage is you can split your lists up. Each ISP has different tricks to avoid RBLs like Comcast but you don't need to set up your whole list to send 30 emails an hour. We move comcast customers to another server running phplist to send slow. Most of our emails are sent at 500 an hour. Verizon nailed us at 700 an hour so we throttled back and changed the IP address. We'll see how 500 an hour work. First time they tagged us so looks like they changed something.

Do your due diligence and make sure rDNS is set, install Domain Keys (cpanel - email authentication) and install senderID with SPF. Rumor has it and I've confirmed on some ISPs that leaving "powered by phplist" in your email body as the standard version does will send you straight to the RBL for some services. Reason I worked to remove it all. I don't mind crediting the creators but defeats the effort to end up on RBLs all the time. Add check-auth@verifier.port25.com to your user list on each list you make. They'll bounce you back a review of your email with a score and let you know whether you score as SPAM or HAM.

The phplist forum is good but make sure you search first and do your due diligence before asking questions. They're not as tolerant as this forum for newbies just wanting answers in 5 mins because they're too lazy to search.

Best regards,

Thank you for your help Jody,
I had around 1000 subscribers in my newsletter on CRE but then I never once used the newsletter module. About a year ago I switched to using Feedblitz and put a checkbox to subscribe in a infobox on my website. Unfortunately I got very few subscribers using it that way.
I am working hard now to retain customers that we are getting so that's why I looked into phplist. I have posted multiple times on the forums but never received a response and from what you said now I see probably why I didn't get a response.
I had a company install phplist for me and integrate it into CRE. By integrate they put the text in a infobox for someone to subscribe to the newsletter and also they put a checkbox in the create account screen, basically the same as CRE, but it subscribes them to phplist.
I have begun testing it but one problem I'm running into is I saw that there is no double opt-in email sent out. I thought I must have something wrong in the config but see how it is always and there's no way to turn it off. I've talked to the installer and they said the reason is that the links they placed automatically add the subscribers directly into the database so there's no opt-in but they will check if there is a way to have the phplist opt-in sent. I want to make sure I stay totally legal with this. I realize that once a newsletter is sent that a customer can choose to unsubscribe at any time but if I don't have this double opt-in email sent after am I violating any laws?
When you mention Verizon and Comcast are you meaning the email service or isp? My isp is comcast and I have their business class service. For my web hosting I'm using one of HostGator's shared plans. I know as our website has grown we are on the verge or outgrowing it. There are limits on email and our website is running slower now. They offer dedicated hosting but we're considering upgrading to their VPS hosting which has many levels as we grow. With something like that would we still hit limits with emails? From what I have read phplist has options to throttle emails so that we don't reach those limits.
As I've worked with phplist I have found it's a beast to learn and more than I was ready for but yet we are getting a lot of new customers and they give us great feedback but yet it seems later they forget about us so we are doing a lot now with newsletters to be able to retain these customers for future purchases. I will look into the advice you gave since I wasn't familiar with some of the changes such as removing phplist, the change in cpanel, etc. Thank you again for your help.

phpList supports double opt-in. I'm not sure why it isn't working for you. I have it on many sites and rather than an infobox I use a dhtml slide window. You can see a working model here

http://tinyurl.com/yklhw5h

You enter the info and click send and it sends you the opt-in email. If you ignore it, you're not added to the list. If you click the link in the email you're included.

As far as double opt-in legalities, I'm not aware it's illegal to not require it. I adhere closely to the CAN-SPAM Act

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/busines ... bus61.shtm

it's not mentioned that I can see. I further doubt it's a law because 90% of major shopping carts would be violating the law. Most carts you use for purchases will have a newsletter box checked or unchecked and if you click to add you to their mailings they rarely send you an opt-in email. Most of the time you're on their list without any emails being sent. I design my carts to have the checkbox checked, they can uncheck it if they want. I know mailing services require this double opt but I think they do it to CYA in agreement with their white-listing services.

I have a contrib somewhere on osC for importing CRE customers to phpList that you can run on a CRON job. That is how I keep the lists updated so the customers are entered nightly into my phplist dbs.

Thank you again for your help. I was under the impression that the double opt-in is required. Like I said somehow the way my installer installed it it doesn't send it. Their explanation is the way they did it it automatically inserts their email into the database directly when they subscribe. I don't know how they did it but I also know that they are basically using the newsletter part of CRE's Create Account screen and that newsletter automatically inserts it into PHPlist's database. They must have redirected it somehow. Also, I did have them default to whenever an account is created it is check marked by default.
I was concerned with the double opt-in but read the Can-Spam act and it seems it is not a problem. I have spent some time on the screencasts for phplist and documentation so I am learning. It seems it's hard at first but is coming together and I think as you stated it's a beast at first but once set up is nice. It will just take time but should be well worth it.
I thank you again for your help and have saved the posts since I'm sure it'll help me as I get this program set up.

Sure no problem. I see you're in Denver. I'm from Denver, left an ex and a couple grown children there. As the song says, there's life after Denver.

Just a little more advice, don't use the Domain throttling or domain auto throttle - they're broken and/or unreliable.

Mailqueue batch period is misquoted as batch length. It's really time between batch runs. I'm not sure if your version is corrected but default is 3600 seconds and that means it will wait an hour between runs, not that the runs are an hour long.

Just to give you a head start. This is my basic setup

"MAILQUEUE_BATCH_SIZE",0
"MAILQUEUE_BATCH_PERIOD",10
'MAILQUEUE_THROTTLE',7

'MAILQUEUE_AUTOTHROTTLE',0
'USE_DOMAIN_THROTTLE',0
'DOMAIN_BATCH_SIZE',3
'DOMAIN_BATCH_PERIOD',120
'DOMAIN_AUTO_THROTTLE',0

That is the most reliable I've found for scheduling and throttling. I use only mailqueue throttle to control the send rate. Set at 7 it sends a message once every 7 seconds. This works out to 514 an hour (3600 seconds / message every 7 seconds = 514 hr). Check with your host to make sure you stay under. Many like 500 max an hour so I'd set phplist to 400 (one every 9 seconds) so if you get and send other mail you don't hit a block. The 10 for batch periods is 10 seconds waiting period so if the batch stops for some odd reason, it'll restart in 10 seconds. I used to send as fast as possible (4000 emails an hour) and realized quickly why that was a bad idea. Slow and sure is better than fast and fight.

Best regards,

Glad to hear you are having a good life there in Indiana. I looked at the website you posted earlier as an example and it's definitely a great website! i like the DHTML menu you have for the subscription.
Thank you for the additional information. It should help a lot as I develop this. I'm still learning how to put unsubscribe notices in it, etc. It's a lot to setting it up but I know it'll be well worth it.

-Earlier you mentioned about limits on Verizon and Comcast. Were you talking about if I use them for email, an isp, or if I'm emailing to customers using those services? I use comcast for internet service and have their business plan but for hosting and email I use Hostgator. I'm currently on one of their shared plans for $7.95 but I know it won't last me long now that I'm developing this email newsletter and also launching a 2nd website (with a 2nd newsletter) this spring. They offer dedicated hosting for $179/month but I may go to one of their new VPS plans which I can get for $49.95 with cpanel. They have a variety of plans depending on how much memory and CPU usage I want. Currently they say there's a limit of 500 emails per hour, 2500 per day, none with VPS. Of course I'm sure I still don't want to push the limits with VPS since it would slow down my system plus could cause problems as my subscriber list gets larger.

-We have continued testing the program and we noticed two items in the phplist screen that have red x's. The others all have green checkmarks. Both are in the admin screen for phplist and both are under the System Functions and the first is under Setup. There's a Red X next to Create Subscribe Pages but I think this is something that will be done as we set up the program.
The other one is under DBCheck. There is a red X next to user_blacklist_data.

I posted about this on the PHP List forums and received a response today. There was no response about the first issue but was a response about the 2nd issue, user_blacklist_data.
It appears it was a bug in the program related to when this is installed on web servers using mysql 5 and newer.

This is the response to the post I received on the phplist forums:

Probably related to issue "1c. Database Error 1146 Database error 1146 while doing query Table 'database.phplist_user_blacklist_data' doesn't exist " addressed in:
A quick guide to installing phpList

The link for "A quick guide to installing phpList" is below:

http://forums.phplist.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=24748

I copied the information below that relates to the error:


1c. Database Error 1146 Database error 1146 while doing query Table 'database.phplist_user_blacklist_data' doesn't exist.
This occurs AFTER you have initialised the database (as at item 1 above).
A user fix is available here, thanks to AlexDimitrov and Heritage. Believed to be due to your host using MySQL5 and upwards. Apply the code below to your phpList database using phpMyAdmin via your webspace control panel.
CODE: SELECT ALL
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `phplist_user_blacklist_data`;
CREATE TABLE `phplist_user_blacklist_data` (
`email` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
`name` varchar(100) default NULL,
`data` text,
UNIQUE KEY `email` (`email`)
) TYPE=MyISAM;

I don't know if anyone else here is experiencing this but I thought I'd post the information about the 2nd error since it could help others on this forum that is using phplist. In reference to the first, do you know if that is a problem?

I am continueing to read through the documentation and get this set up and hope to have it running very soon. Already as practice I'm saving newsletter emails I get from companies i buy from to use as reference as I develop my own newsletter. This will be exciting once I get it going.

"or if I'm emailing to customers using those services"

Correct. I was referring to how to avoid the infamous BL001 you're blocked from Comcast code.

I haven't seen that error with the missing table. I checked my installations and all are correct.

Thanks,

I realized I forgot to ask this, how do I remove the powered by phplist signature from the bottom of the mailings?
I looked at the documentation and see in the config.php how I can change a setting that removes the powered by phplist logo. I did this but as the docs stated it would do it replaced it by the text which I assume may even be picked up easier than the logo for blocking.
Thank you again for your help. I hope to have a newsletter developed and to be ready to start sending newsletters within a week or so.

I have had one issue with my PHPlist CRE Loaded integration. I have posted about it on the phplist forums and received a response but it may have to do with CRE Loaded so I figured I'd ask if you have experienced this. Here is what I posted on the phplist forums:

I just recently installed PHPlist and have integrated it into a CRE Loaded website but have a couple questions.First, if I manually add a user in the PHPlist admin that user has a Unique ID for their email address. Yet I have two ways a user subscribes via CRE Loaded, either by clicking a link for a subscribe page in a side box on the website or by a checkbox when they create an account. Either way when a user subscribes that way there is no unique ID created in their account, that part of the screen is blank.

The problem with this is none of the links work at the bottom of the screen such as unsubscribe, forward message, and change preferences since there is nothing behind the uid in the URL.
Unfortunately I have been unable to correct this problem but I know a way around this is to go to the phplist admin screen, select manage users and then reconcile users. I have selected to make sure all users have a unique ID and then I see it creates a unique ID to the users who signed up on my website.

I want to make sure there is no issue with these links since I want to make sure phplist blacklists all users who choose to unsubscribe. I want to make sure I work out this problem before I start sending newsletters. I hope to be able to solve the issue with my website signup not creating unique ID's.
Before I do that though, i want to check to make sure that I don't run a risk of users not having their unsubscribe working. I have a newsletter ready to send out but I have a lot of subscribers and will be throttling it to send out an email approximately every 7 seconds but it may take 2-3 hours to send out all of them.
If someone signs up for my newsletter in the middle of the sending will they get the newsletter?
Or does it only send to the users that are signed up when I select to send the newsletter? I just want to make sure that I can do the 'make sure all users have a unique ID' and then immediately start sending the newsletter without being concerned about a user not having a unique ID.


I received the below response to my post:

I agree, this would seem related to having the phpList subscribe page integrated in the CRE Loaded application. My guess (which really is nothing more than a guess) is that this could be related to CRE Loaded not allowing phpList to create a session id, on which the user's unique ID would be based. You might check the CRE Loaded forum to see if you can find out more on session related issues and possible fixes.

Yes, the 'make sure that all users have a uniqid' option on the 'reconcile users' page (llists/admin/?page=reconcileusers&option=adduniqid) would be a workaround for users that are imported or manually added by the admin.

I wonder, did you not have any problem with the confirmation url contained in the confirmation request email? I would expect that users that subscribe, cannot confirm their subscription if there isn't a uid attached to the confirmation url. Did you check that?

The interesting thing is whether I sign up through the link on the infobox or through the create account (newsletter checked) option I received a email each way asking me to confirm my subscription. Once I confirm the subscription it does show up as confirmed in my phplist admin screen. Both ways I have this unique ID issue though.
I think the reason the confirm subscription may work is the company that integrated it does not seem to be using the subscribe pages in the admin. There are none created and I think they created their own subscription confirm. Maybe that is a good thing since that works fine and I don't think that would be the problem with the uniqueID.

I have contacted them about resolving this unique ID issue but they have not been able to do that yet. Also, as part of the subscribe screen they don't have it where a person can choose text or html for their subscription. I know that can be changed in preferences later but I would assume with most readers using HTML these days that will work for most. For now everyone subscribing it puts as using text. I will either have them put a checkbox or if necessary maybe just have it default to HTML. I know I will have changes made to this subscribe screen later because I'm launching a 2nd website this spring and as part of that will have a newsletter for that website so will have both newsletters listed if possible.

Either way if the unique ID issue can't be fixed I can make it part of my standard newsletter mailing to reconcile and make sure all users have a uniqueID before sending an email. My only concern is I don't want an issue of if I do this and start a email that may send out over 5 hours I don't want it to happen that if someone creates an account during that time that they get that email newsletter. The reason is that the unsubscribe, preferences, and forward to a friend URL won't work and of course it's important to have the unsubscribe working. As long as that's not an issue at least I have a workaround for it now until it's fixed if possible.

I am coming along and mostly have my template created and am working on the message part now. I know I have a few other things to set up for the email but hope to be able to send within a week. Thank you for all the help you have offered me.

I have the unique id process set up on a cron job running daily

The less I have to remember the better life is. I set up a cron job to make sure all users accept html and all have a unique ID. I also have another cron to process bounces although I recently disabled it so I can spot check bounces to see if I've hit another RBL. If you just process them all the time you'll remove users that never received your emails if someone like Comcast blocked you. I work too hard for contacts to remove them all in one swoop because some ISP has their thumb up their butt. I never send an email that rates more than a 5% as SPAM (95% chance not spam) and all my emails are CAN-SPAM compliant. Doesn't matter to the big dogs. While we're bound to RFC regulations large ISPs like Hotmail, Gmail don't listen to those regulations. They will report emails as delivered when they dropped them into the black hole. RFC regulations say if you aren't going to deliver email then you must return it to the sender with one of their return codes. Hotmail is notorious for not bouncing messages and not delivering them. They just disappear.

Make sure you have at least one test list in your phplist for hotmail, yahoo, aol, gmail, comcast, verizon and charter if you know that many people on different ISPs. I have a test list that I use first before sending out a mass mailing. I fire to my 10 member test list and make sure all deliver. That is how I monitor which ones have problems if I don't catch them on a bounce message.

Anyhow that is how I deal with unique ids. Your observations about their importance is correct. All users must have a unique ID.

The code for powered by is hidden all over the place. They have it in the code that resides on your server, they have it scattered in the database on your server and they even call it from their site and paste it in your emails.

Much like CRE's footer process I don't think this is something to discuss in public. I'm sure phplist users will flock here if I explain the whole process. If you're savvy with comparison programs (beyond compare, Winmerge, etc) then send me an email from my site in my sig and I'll zip up my files and send them to you. You can do a comparison and quickly see the edits. The database is simple enough, just do a few searches in phpMyAdmin and it'll show you where the credits are hidden. You'll also see edits for cleaning up the email header. I don't see a need to have phplist in the header and having my email identified as bulk. I took the liberty to clean out all that junk.

Best regards,

From what you said it seems like a cron job is the way to go. For now I will manually select to make sure all users have a uniqueID and HTML email. I don't think text is really that important anymore and seems most are using HTML. Either way for now I will do it manually just before an email. I have heard of cron jobs but know nothing about them but that is a topic I will research and learn how to set up.
I'm kind of familiar with those comparison programs and to some degree using phpmyadmin so I will check if I'm able to remove the references. Like you said it's better not to discuss in public here.
The idea of the test list is good and definitely something I'll do. Once blacklisted is it easy to be removed or a way to be removed?

Once blacklisted is it easy to be removed or a way to be removed?

Sure, most have a form you submit and they remove you within 24 hrs. Just make changes to avoid repeat blacklists. Slow down send rates, remove invalid emails (no longer members with that ISP), etc.

Best regards,

That is good news. Of course I know it's best to avoid being blacklisted in the first place. I want to thank you again for all of your help. I'm almost done with my first newsletter and expect to be sending it out later this week.