Newsletter
Plug-in that manages your website's internal mailing.
Description
This is a plug-in that manages your website's internal mailing. Newsletter is a form on your site, where your visitor can leave its e-mail address – subscribe a newsletter. This way they will sign up to receive an occasional newsletter with important announcements. Send an email newsletter to inform subscribers about new releases or just keep in touch.
Basically, the administrator is able to send out a 'newsletter' (via email) to anyone who is a member of the community. As all users need to have a valid email address, you could simply get a set of addresses through a single database call.
For general install and uninstall instructions, please refer to Manage plug-ins section of user guide.
Access
The path to the Newsletter plug-in:
Choose Plug-ins from the secondary administrative menu located at the top right side in your web browser right above the main administrative menu.
Choose Newsletter plug-in from the list of all installed plug-in (on the left side of the screen).
User level
This plug-in can be accessed only by users belonging to groups that are allowed to manage Newsletter plug-in.
Actions
When you access this plug-in you'll see a menu with three tabs on the left hand side of the screen. It contains shortcuts for adding newsletter, viewing and editing existing newsletters then shortcuts to subscriber lists and also plug-in's preferences.
Quick link
This is where you'll choose appropriate link if you want to create a new mail template or to edit an old one and resend it.
- + Add new newsletter - This link will load the form so you can easily create a new newsletter.
- Old Newsletters - This is an archive that lets you view, edit or delete old newsletters you've sent or even reuse them simply by clicking on them.
To edit a newsletter choose one from a list and click on its name. After you’ve modified the newsletter click on Edit button to apply changes. To remove a newsletter from the system just choose Delete icon. You may also delete a newsletter when you open editing window and press Delete button at the bottom of the page.
- Import/Export Subscribers - Import file option will import 3rd party existing lists of subscribers in .csv format (comma separated value). Only email addresses will be imported, while other (optional) fields will be discarded during import procedure.
To import subscribers:
- Browse to find the file to be imported or type the location and name directly.
- Select Import by clicking the button.
Export subscribers to use them in other programs, or to save the list of your subscribers on your hard drive. Export creates a .csv (comma separated value) file for you to download, containing e-mail addresses of your subscribers.
To export subscribers:
- Select Export by clicking the button.
- Click Download to download the exported file.
Subscribers
Choosing one of the following options, the plug-in will fetch all subscribers or only the subscribers with the specific status.
- All - Here you can see members from all mailing groups. You are able to confirm or delete subscribers.
- Unconfirmed - If you offer email subscription, you will probably have some subscribers that did not confirm their subscription.
- Confirmed - This will load a list of all members that conformed their subscription via conformation e-mail.
Preferences
Preferences section contains basic newsletter options for sending out emails and subscriber messages.
- Number of emails in a batch - Use this field to define the number of emails dispatched per batch. The Newsletter plug-in will send the next batch after it sends the first number of set emails.
- Unsubscribe message - Unsubscribing a user from a mailing list can be done either by the administrator or unsubscribing user himself. The subscriber receives an unsubscribe message that you may create by editing this field.
- Subscribe subject - Enter whatever you would like to appear as the "Subject" of these confirmation messages.
After a visitor leaves its e-mail address, the notification message with brief information will appear and soon after the visitor should receive a conformation email.
In the form bellow, you are able to create a brand-new template but please notice that you should leave the activation link:
<vte:value select=”{activation_url}” />
You get an advantage from this option because it allows you to create your message in the way that you find the most appropriate.
Click the Save button once you finished.
Add new newsletter
This will load the form where you can easily add the newsletter.
- Test only - This option, if selected, will send out the newsletter only to the email address specified in "Test e-mail" field.
- Test e-mail - Fill this text box with the test e-mail address.
- Subject - Use the subject line to inform the subscriber of exactly what the email is about in a few well-chosen words.
- Use VTE in email body - If you need to create a custom e-mail template, select this option after you paste the VTE code in the email body.
- Send to groups - This list helps you send newsletters to a group(s) of subscribers. Note that you can filter users, to whom the newsletters will be sent. Use Ctrl to select multiple groups.
When you've created/edited the newsletter, hit Send and the plug-in will send away this mail you’ve created.
When you create a newsletter you may also use Save button to archive the newsletter and it will be available for later use.
