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Working on EasyMail 2…

alo — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 09:56:17 +0000

Now I’m working on EasyMail v.2, my newsletter plugin for WordPress.
Here you are the structural changes about which we talked some months ago.

Newsletters stored as custom post type: so developers will can make own work easily.
New way (based on a COMET model) to generate and store newsletter recipients: so you can send newsletters safely to a huge number of recipients (I hope).
For developers: action and filter hooks (eg. add custom tags/placeholders into newsletter content, make something when new subscriptions…)

I’d like to release a first beta as soon as possible, but I need time to spent on it, coding and testing…
If I receive some donations I’ll steal more time from my daily work and I’ll spend it on EasyMail. I’d like it very much.
Yes, it’s almost a fundraising…
However, many thanks to everyone who supported me till now.

Here you can see a screencast with a preview about version 2. A quick video from my desktop where you can see how to add and send newsletters.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=juglGC28T2g

More screenshots…

The recipient selector in Add new/Edit newsletter screen:

The list of newsletters in Newsletters screen:

You can add recipients to queue or send newsletter to them immediatly:

The ajax generation of recipients’ queue:

2011… EasyMail v.2

alo — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 22:51:32 +0000

I think to have found a structural issue that could be a cause of several problems (eg. multiple messages to same recipient, no progress on sending, staying at 0%), first of all when sending to a large number of recipients. And I’ll fix it in version 2 that I hope to release soon…
I will have to rewrite the generation of recipients’ list. For now, the entire list is an array serialized in a single field of database. (Remember that at the beginning the plugin was designed for small blogs…) If the list is quite large (80? 100? 200?… it depends on server capacity of course) the system could have timeout and efficiency problems to do all required operations: open (unserialize) the entire list, extract the single recipient (name, language, email) to send to, send newsletter, update the “already sent” attribute, repeat for every recipient of the the batch, finally save (serialize) the entire list. I think the multiple mails to a same recipient could be caused by an error during updating the “already sent” recipient attribute and/or saving the list.
In next version, each recipient info will be stored in a single row of a database table. So, each operation is made only on a very short amount of data.
I think that this update can solve a lot of problem. Please share and post your remarks in the forum.

UPDATE: for now a hack that seems to work is to modify the cron timeout from 0.01 to 20 seconds (read how). There you can read about other tips maybe could help you. Please let us know about your tests and feedbacks.

I’ll do it!

alo — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 20:17:48 +0000

When I have more time, I’ll work hard on EasyMail next release. I have some good ideas for new features and, of course, a lot of good ideas are coming from all plugin users. Many thanks.
In the meantime, today I have uploaded some new translation files (thanks to all translators!).
The download page is always wordpress.org/extend/plugins/alo-easymail.

New EasyMail version is coming soon…

alo — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:43:51 +0000

Sorry, I’m very busy, but in a very few days I’ll release it.
Be patient…

NEW FEATURES

mailing lists
subscription choice on registration form
tracking system when subscribers open newsletter
subscribers importation from existing members or from a csv file
use capabilities and not user_level, so better permission managing

MINOR CHANGES

Added: an option to show subscription page
Added: dashboard widget and favorite menu link
Updated: a better formatting in admin side
Fixed: now admin can modify subscription on user profile page
Fixed: now easymail page and its option are properly deleted on deactivation
Fixed: encode entities in newsletter header and subject
Fixed: removed a lot of php warnings and wp notice

EasyMail successfully tested on WP 3.0 RC3

alo — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:36:20 +0000

Today I’ve tested EasyMail v.1.7 on WP 3.0 RC3 and the test has gone well. The WP cron seems to continue working well.

In these days I’m working on next EasyMail version. I hope to release it soon (it depends on time left over my work commitments….).

ALO EasyMail v.1.5: Newsletter!

alo — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:28:53 +0000

Ho rilasciato la nuova versione del plugin per WordPress. Dalla versione 0.9.x sono passato direttamente alla numero 1.5, proprio per sottolineare l’importanza dell’upgrade. Ora può essere usato proficuamente per l’invio di newsletter dal momento che è fornito di un widget per l’iscrizione dei visitatori e di una pagina amministrativa per la gestione deigli iscritti.
Vi rimando al post del plugin per i dettagli e per scaricarlo.

Alo EasyMail Newsletter: plugin per WordPress per inviare newsletter

alo — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:58:35 +0000