After finally going live with my webmail, I hoped GM would be bug free enough to satisfy all users. Then 12 hours after launch a user writes to me wanting to cancel their account, saying they tried to forward something but it didn't work. I thought user error, but sure enough there seems to be a problem. I've forwarded the users account details to Alex to take a proper look.

For some reason the forwarded email in the Sent folder has lost all its formatting and when you click on text/plain, you get nothing but "Error: Invalid variable name '$options_display_line_wrap' passed to function: GMail::format_type" :( GM 2.0.1 was a fresh install, so there are no problems with upgrades.

And why the hell is "This mail brought to you by Gossamer Mail" appended to the bottom of the forwarded email? Look, if I pay money for software I don't want it branded unless a) it's the companies policy, or b) I decide to.

GM is great, affordable software, but it's still rough round the edges to the point where I'm losing custom. How thorough is your testing department? There seems to be so many *obvious* errors reported in this forum, that surely most would have been picked up with just a quick test of each feature prior to releasing the software? I don't think being busy is a good enough excuse.

I may be dwelling on the negative points here, but after I wait next to a year till the software's at a suitable level before going live, I don't expect users to turn round within 24 hours and say "It's crap, give me my money back."


Regards

Jason

Helloo!

I am also equally upset and have had a hard time removing the logo and the word Gossamer mail from everywhere. The energy that I have spend is a lot of waste of time. There have been places where the globals does not work and its a pain to change everywhere.

Further, one notices the GMail logo in the welcome message. I had to completely deactivate the welcome message embedded through a MIME format.

On a demo, things like this are fine but in the real installation. If the name of the logo would be company.gif, that would be fine that there has been a place designed to help people for a kick start. Here, it is gmail.gif, GossamerMail.gif, GossamerMailLine.gif, etc.

It is the energy that gets involved by every admin to change all the places. If everyone needs about two hours each, calculate the number of hours that all the GT product users may be ending up changing all this. All this for nothing.

I do agree here.

I purchased the software before a year and after installing it, saw the problems and kept it aside. It needed lots of development and would suit a desperate admin to launch it. I had paitience.

After I started, right away, I noticed lots of problems and still do.

I fail to beleive that a programmer could design a bug free product. However, some *obvious* programming mistakes needed to be recitified before hand.

Its a real smart product but all I am saying is that a bit more sensitivity needs to be there to work togather with a community of the users.

-----
In reply to:
And why the hell is "This mail brought to you by Gossamer Mail" appended to the bottom of the forwarded email?
-----


If you have a good look through all the default setup options in the admin area - you'll see this is one of them.

You can change it to anything you like.


--------
In Reply To:
It is the energy that gets involved by every admin to change all the places. If everyone needs about two hours each, calculate the number of hours that all the GT product users may be ending up changing all this.
--------



BBEdit on the mac has a seach and replace feature that will change all of them in about 7 seconds - give that a go.

Cheers,

R.

We don't try to put hidden plugs into the program. All you have to do is go to: Setup->Outgoing Email->Headers and Footers and you can customize what you want appended to all outgoing mail.

We leave it as Gossamer Mail so you will change it. It lets you explore the program and see what it can do. Same thing for the Welcome Message. The program comes with the same welcome message you see in the demo. To change/customize it, simply go to Setup->Email Templates->Welcome Message. It defaults to a MIME message to show you that any of the emails can be formed as HTML possibly with attachments.

I really don't appreciate the tone if you haven't even looked in the admin. I just saw your admin and you hadn't changed the option.

This was a user error. The user hit forward, and selected "Send as HTML", but did not format the message using HTML. So the program properly displayed the message as is.

The prefs file for this one user was corrupt. I checked all your other users and they were fine. I can only guess that this user was imported somehow, or created differently then the others? I have never seen this on more then 100 other sites that are running GM2.

Cheers,

Alex

--
Gossamer Threads Inc.

wickedmoon - the Gossamer Mail title has to be there to show you how/where you can edit the headers/titles...etc...

If they didn't include "Gossamer Mail" anywhere then there would be just blank spaces and you wouldn't know that there was an option to put a logo or title in that particular place, so by having the product name there it allows you to see which bits you can customize...does that make sense?

Obviously they can't distribute the script with the name of each individual website already in place so obviously they are going to put the name of the product there instead, and then as Alex said, you can customize this within minutes or seconds even from your admin panel.

GT don't exactly need to add buried adverts into their script as they are almost a household name...hehe ...they are just simply trying to show how customizable the script is.


Installs:http://wiredon.net/gt
FAQ:http://www.perlmad.com

re prefs file corrupt.

This user signed up like any other, there was nothing unusual about her account until she sent the complaint. If you were able to fix the prefs file from admin, how is this done?

Am I right in thinking you will include an option in the next update to easily change all occurances of "Gossamer Mail" in the program? Like someone else has already noted, it can be a time consuming job to change this all by hand, even with search and replace. I know the templates inside and out, but as you correctly pointed out, it is easy to miss something with the number of files that need to be updated.


Regards

Jason

Hi,

You can replace the prefs file by copying data/templates/default/prefs.cfg to users/u/Username/.prefs.

As for the powered by Gossamer Mail, that didn't have anything to do with editing files. It was an admin option.

We are working on new templates that will be easier to modify and customize, however, yes, you will still be required to click on Setup->Email Options->Headers and Footers, and replace "This email brought to you by Gossamer Mail" with whatever advertisement you like. And yes, you will need to edit your welcome message that new users get and replace "Welcome to Gossamer Mail", with Welcome to your own site.

Cheers,

Alex

--
Gossamer Threads Inc.

Paul, the point people are making is ease of use, not whether or not "Gossamer Mail" is used by default. There is already a global title tag that can be changed from Gossamer Mail to whatever you like, but this needs to be expanded so all occurances of GM in the program are updated at once from this one spot.

Believe me, it is not a 2 minute job updating each occurance of Gossamer Mail. If it is not straight forward to update then people will naturally feel it is more akin to an ad than a helpful reminder of what you can customise.


Regards

Jason

Well I do actually have access to a copy of Gossamer Mail and it didn't seem to take me that long....but anyway that isn't the point.

It isn't practical to do what you are suggesting. ie update all occurances at "Gossamer Mail" at once, mainly because "Gossamer Mail" appears in different formats, from images to titles to email headers/footers etc...so you will need to update each application of "Gossamer Mail" seperately. You are getting literally an enterprise email application so you have to be prepared to spend time customizing the script. I would be on your side if you had paid $5000 for a custom script but it is only about $450 USD and so you aren't going to receive that level of customization "out of the box".

Installs:http://wiredon.net/gt
FAQ:http://www.perlmad.com

Hello!

For $5000,00 custom script you will not be able to get a beautiful script like Gmail and Links SQL. However you paid less simply because there are 650 sites purchased Links SQL ($650 x 650) and are running. Thats what the counter says and there may be many more unlisted. So instead of $450.000,00 you paid $450! A thousand times less and a thousand times more beautiful script a thousand times worth a value.

The point is that if there is a web interface listing or giving options as to where all the changes needs to be made that is the central point. I started many years ago and knowing Alex, he needs to draw attention to the efforts that everyone needs to undergo. Feedback is extremely important and as a result Links SQL is what it is now because of this.

If it is only one name to be replaced everywhere, it should not be difficult through a web interface in different formats. Alex has done more complicated things and to achieve such things are not difficult at all.

So the word appearance could be simply reflected like that of globals. The image could be named like Email_top_left.gif instead of GossamerMail.gif and small_email.gif instead of gmail.gif! One could simply use ones own gif at the same place by using the anchores pre-programmed. Then I would not have to hunt around extra to change the GossamerMail names also in the gifs too.

I was one of the first in the batch to purchase Links SQL when it came out and also have known GT years before. Hence I had to undergo lot of difficulties of the scripts which as a complete program did not serve as good as v2.0! Hence I have had mind blowing experience to do always search and replace!!!

I use windows and Alex suggested me years before a beautiful program called UltraEdit. I do prefer Windows Commander from www.Ghisler.com that does comparision by content with a lot of built in features and I am quicker. Hotdog from sausage software also has a builtin features and moreover, it could save projects.

To calculate the time of search and replace I would total to about a 100 hours! Beleive me, but its just not search and replace but all the related associated activity one needs to do. Check, update, verify, install, etc, etc, etc.

Had the Links SQL come out directly as version 2.0, my god, how many hours I would have had saved my life span!!! Thats the point. It is only the ease of changes everywhere that is under debate and not the word itself. Earlier I could not install because the headers of every script contained #/xx/xx/perl and Alex had installed several years ago for me. I could not do it on my own because the path was not perl but perl5!!! The total time I lost with Links SQL I could calculate of about 300 hours wasted, had the version 2.0 available!!! This applies to everyone.

Everyone may customize. However, the concet is ease to change.