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Newsletter Mod Sought $$$

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Newsletter Mod Sought $$$
Hi, I'm running Links SQL 2.7, using the PHP front-end (I thought everybody was going to do that!) and send out newsletters almost daily. Long story, I use Links as a kind of library management software and add new books to my site's own collection... almost daily.

Anyway, a lot of people want to look at the older newsletters--I've got around 180 of them, they include the basic links, plus news, such as, you know, "Microsoft Reader's DRM has been hacked," etc.

So... anybody out there want to write a little Mod/Template page that I can link people to, saying "Newsletter Archive"? Offering actual money, though I'm guessing this could be a popular plug-in. Would like quotes, etc....

http://www.blackmask.com/page.php is my site... I also have gossamer forum, but haven't yet installed the Community Plugin, so the two user databases are separate for now.

David.
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Re: [dmoynihan] Newsletter Mod Sought $$$ In reply to
I don't think you need a plugin for this. I think you just need a global and a new template as all the information should be in a table which you can just pull the results out of. Should be pretty straightforward. I'll have a quick go now and see what I come up with.
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Re: [afinlr] Newsletter Mod Sought $$$ In reply to
Thanks!
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Re: [dmoynihan] Newsletter Mod Sought $$$ In reply to
This is the global (i've called it newsletters):

Code:
sub {
my ($output,$sth);
my $id = shift;
my $maildb = $DB->table('MailingIndex');
if ($id =~ /\d+/) {
$sth = $maildb->select({Mailing => $id});
} else {
$sth = $maildb->select({extra => 'Users'});
}
while (my $mail = $sth->fetchrow_hashref) {
if ($id =~ /\d+/) {
if ($mail->{'messageformat'} eq 'text'){$mail->{'message'} =~ s/\n/<br>/g;}
$output .= qq~<b>$mail->{'subject'}</b><br><br>$mail->{'message'}~;
} else {
$output.= qq~<li><a href="$CFG->{db_cgi_url}/page.cgi?p=newsletters&mail=$mail->{'Mailing'}">$mail->{'subject'}</a>~;
}
}
return $output;
}


Then you need to create a template newsletters.html. Use your normal page layout and in the body of the page add

<%if mail%>
<%newsletters($mail)%>
<%endif%>


To call the page with the list of newsletters use <%db_cgi_url%>/page.cgi?p=newsletters&mail=index

You'll probably need to edit the html in the global to get it looking how you want.
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Re: [afinlr] Newsletter Mod Sought $$$ In reply to
OK, I'll give that a try tonight. Thanks so much!Smile
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Re: [dmoynihan] Newsletter Mod Sought $$$ In reply to
>>>Links SQL 2.7, <<<

I very much doubt that Wink The latest dev version that is around is 2.1.3.

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk
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Re: [dmoynihan] Newsletter Mod Sought $$$ In reply to
I mentioned this in a forum (forget which) a few weeks ago.

It's on my to-do list. I want to manage newsletters from Links SQL, and have them archived, and/or inserted into Gforum as a message.

I haven't tried to get into the newsletter code yet, but it may very well be the weakest part of the whole Links system <G>

What sort of features are you looking for?

I'm also looking at centralizing this in "Community". Until that comes out, though, I won't know what features/hooks are available.

The concept for that is, within a "community" there will be several newsletters, from various sites. or apps. Those should be able to be managed from a central area. Right now, only "Links" has a newsletter feature, though GForum has a "Mail to" feature. Centralizing that, means a Community user will sign up for the various newsletters. The newsletters would be sent from community, and draw on the various features that can be written in to include in the newsletters.

Right now, I see the need to:

1) allow inclusion of "new messages" in selected Gforums, perhaps listing "hot" threads.
2) include "announcements" from the last mailing, or dated in the past 1 or 2 weeks.
3) New Links (currently the Links SQL default)
4) "HOT" Links (popular, rated, voted, most active new downloads, etc) (BTW.... I've got code that tracks daily searches, daily hits, etc, hopefully for a new plugin at some point)
5) And, from a "community" point of view, perhaps new members, most active members, most viewed member profiles, etc.

Obviously, there is a lot of code to be written to do all that, but the basic join/unjoin, features are fairly simple.

Auto-removal for bounced mail. If the mail is sent from, say NewsLetters@yoursite.com, bounces should go to that mail box. The messages could be parsed for email addresses, and those addresses removed from the "active" list, and flagged as "bounced".

This should be possible, right??

If so, community users who's email bounces, can be flagged as "potential problems" and their accounts set to a lower access level until they re-validate a valid email address.

Comments?


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Re: [pugdog] Newsletter Mod Sought $$$ In reply to
Actually, what you're offering there quite a lotWink.

I'm just into "NewLinks" from SQL, but anything from Gforum might be nice (I have it; only about 500 people have ever signed up for it... my site's weird!)

Maybe the only thing would grouping archived newsletters by week (since I send out mostly daily).

Could be worth waiting for community; I'm trying to get that global to work now... thanks everybody!