Newsletters..

Back in the old MLS days, I had a custom script that I used to send out my newsletter. It wasn't necessarily efficient, but it got the job done. There was no error handling, if an email failed it just went away. I had set up an easy way for people unsubscribe etc.. It was all a hack on the old snitz stuff. When I upgraded to DNN, I decided to just use the built in newsletter module. I figured that it would work well enough.. I suppose it was somewhat of a step back. I know that a lot of folks have complained about the built in newletter sending capabilities. To be honest, I don't know if I was having any problems or not. I knew at least some of my emails were going out because I was getting a traffic spike and I'd been tagging my links for Google Analytics and could see the results there. But aside from that, I had zero visibility into my email campaigns. I also thought that the sending mechanism was a tad tedious, and allowing people to unsubscribe was very painful. I had to tell people how to log into their accounts and go to their profile and unjoin the role to which the newsletter was sent. That made for some unhappy people. Also, I had a list of approximately 7600 email addresses, and I was sure that a good number of them were no longer valid (the list is 9 years old). I needed to scrub the list. I looked at building my own solution, but knew that I just didn't have the time to mess with it. I looked around for a solution. I came across Bulk Emailer from Interactivewebs.com.au a while ago. I had just purchased their feedback form module and liked how it worked. At the time, I didn't want to spend that kind of money on an email sending module. I went back and took a look again and they now have a demo that you can download. I decided to give it a test run in my real environment.

I dowloaded and installed the module following along in the PDF manual that is included. Configuring everything took a little time, but I persisted. I set up the bounce email address, pointed the module to it and had at it. A really nice feature of this module is the ability to write and HTML page and the module will then convert it to the correct format, replace tokens, and send it on its way. Much the same way my old system did. I took one of my old templates, reformatted it a bit, and sent a couple test emails. Things looked good, so I sent the email out to everyone. It took longer to send out all the emails than I thought it should. My understanding is this can be adjusted, and I will do that. It took about 7 hours to send all 7600 emails. Overall, I'm impressed. I now know that nearly 1800 of the addresses in my list were bad, I know approximately how many people have read my emails, and I've had about 30 people be removed from my list. Not bad.

There are definitely some things that I would like to see changed. The opt-out page blocks users from getting any emails at all through the system. Since I don't currently run multiple lists, it's not an issue.. But if I did, there's no way to allow the users to opt out of only one list. That could be a problem. I think that the structure of the mailing lists could use some refinement. Right now, you can send an email to either a list, or a dnn role. I think that instead of sending directly to a list, you should have to create a list and then assign the DNN role to the list. A little better integration with DNN roles as far as unregistering would be nice.

In the end, this is a "buy" module. I'm very happy with it. I'll be placing my order soon.

New features...

Since I last blogged, (way too long ago I know) I left the company I was working for. I now work for the leader in web analytics and online business optimization. It was a very good move, one that I'm glad I made. With that move came a little less time after hours working on work. I've been able to spend a little quality time with MLS and dotnetnuke.

To be honest, I don't remember everything that I've done to the site since then.. Most of it pretty minor. But here is what I'm working on right now:

1. Upgrade active forums to version 4.x - with that upgrade comes the loss of support for banner ads in the way that I am using them.
2. Implement active social - i really think this is the future for my site
3. Implement new banner ad system - still debating between smokeranch and a new player. I've been wanting a better banner system for a while since the built in one sucks. The loss of support in the new forums just made it that much more needed. So it will be done in conjuction.
4. Revamp the skin using as much css as possible. I've done a pretty good job with this one. Right now I've cut the skin file size in less than half. I still have a little more work to go on this one. I'm also including a couple skin objects to cut back on modules.
   
5. Implement new email newsletter module. I'm using the default DNN functionality and it's confusing to the end user, and not very easy for me.. so I'll be upgrading this.
6. Implement snapsis' css menu system to replace the solpartmenu
7. Upgrade the cutesoft editor to the latest version.
   

In conjunction with the skin, I've been working on the templates for active social and active forums. I've also revamped the menu. I've got things looking pretty close to the way I want them. I still have a little work left to do, but it's coming along nicely. Right now, my three big hold ups are waiting on a new build of active forums, waiting on a new build of active social, and needing the cash to buy the banner rotating module. Everything else is pretty much in place.

So there's a quick update of where I'm at now.