Newsletter Issues

Hi Perch, 

>1) The Newsletters do not get sent. 

Make sure you have a "Background Tasks" cronjob setup under: Admin > General > Background Tasks
admin.php?menu=admin&action=general#background-tasks

>2) I'm a bit concerned that any links I put into the Newsletter content are being routed through the subscription.php page? 

That's for tracking links, but you can turn if off at the top of the plugin.  See the comments below for more details: 

$GLOBALS['NLB_TRACK_OPENS'] = true; // track email "opens" by adding a transparent 1x1 image to outgoing messages (industry standard method)
$GLOBALS['NLB_TRACK_LINKS'] = true; // track email link "clicks" by rewriting email urls and redirecting them through manage script (industry standard method)

Hope that helps!  Let me know any other questions.

>That's for tracking links...

And by "links" I mean clicks.  It shows the number of clicks you had on links in your newsletter on the messages page.

Hi, Dave -

I think I found the cause of the problem. The newsletters aren't being sent because another plugin higher up the chain is throwing an error. When I remove the offending plugin and use the run now>> link the newsletter are sent as expected.

I'll pm you with details of the plugin. It was a custom job.

:0)

Perch

Dave -

Thanks for the tracking info. That's a bit of an Easter egg!

Just one other thing...

During testing we are able to send to an email "test list" - which is set-up in the NLB settings.

Is there an easy way to comment out some of the emails (without actually removing them)?

Some of the people on the current test list should only see the final version of the Newsletter just prior to sending it out. It would be nice if I could prevent them from receiving each and every test copy.

:0)

Perch

Hey Perch,

Just FYI, I'm now implementing this always with http://mandrill.com/ - very simple to do, 12000 emails per month before you pay - and great stats / analysis.  Also lets you set up DKIM and SPF records which I've found to be pretty much mandatory if you don't want half your emails going to SPAM.

Hey Perch,

There isn't currently a way you can comment out certain e-mails from the test list.

You could add a new textarea field to the nlb_settings section, and use that to store email addresses that you don't currently want to send to, then copy the addresses back to the Test E-mails field when the e-mail is ready for the final testing. 

Cheers,

Greg

Also, ideally you don't need to send too many test newsletters! ;-)  But I do what Greg suggests and copy and paste the list somewhere else until I've approved a few myself.

Right! I've just fired off my first mail shot. It was sent to 1848 recipients who are registered to receive it.

The cron job was triggered at 6am this morning.

When I looked at CMSB, however, it reported the status of the newsletter was "Sending (500 of 1,848)".

The next cron job will not trigger again until 6am tomorrow morning.

So, how do I interpret this information:

Did NLB intentionally stop in the middle of the process - or was it forced to do so by the server/host?

Will it continue with the send tomorrow at 6am - sending only to those recipients who have not yet received the newsletter?

Thanks,

:0)

Perchpole

Hey Perch,

Normally the number of emails sent per day should be much higher than that. 

Have you got the scheduled task on your server set so that it runs cron.php every minute? This is the recommended setting for CMSB. I'd also check what you've got set in the settings at the top of the newsletterBuilder.php file in your plugins directory. These should be the default settings:

// Mail limits - If your server or host requires it, you can limit mail sending speed below
$GLOBALS['BACKGROUND_SEND_MAX']     = 500; // max messages to send in each batch, eg: If a cronjob runs the script every minute and this is set to 60, you'll send approx 1800 emails an hour
$GLOBALS['BACKGROUND_SEND_WEB_MAX'] = 25;  // max messages to send when calling mailer through web interface, browser sessions can timeout so set this low (example: 25)
$GLOBALS['BACKGROUND_SEND_DELAY']   = 0;   // second to wait after sending each message

Thanks!

Greg