Phplist manual - A/I Newsletter Howto

A/I servers use PHPlist to manage Newsletters.
Login to your PHPList admin web page (https://noise.autistici.org/admin) with any web browser, using the user/password you have received after requesting a newsletter from https://services.autistici.org

You will see a menu with four sections in the center:

• Configuration functions - most users can ignore this
• List and user functions - set up new lists and administer emails on your list(s)
• Administrator functions - most users can ignore this
• Message Functions - send messages and see past messages you've sent

You'll also see a small menu in the upper right with these options.

• logout - obvious usage
• main page - returns you to this page
• help - phplist software help documentation (or call us at VWeb)
• about - about PHPList software
• lists - same as "list" under List and user functions
• send a message - same as "send" under Message functions
• manage users - click on "users" on this page to go to the same page as users under List and user functions
• subscribe pages - same as "spage" under Configuration functions
• messages - same as "messages" under Message functions
• templates - to create a standard Template for emails

Set subscribe page

Click on "Subscribe pages" in the upper right box

Click on "add a new one",

and configure at least the "Title" and "Intro" fields (that will compare in the main page https://noise.autistici.org), and at the bottom of the page, select the checkbox for your newsletter and click on "Save and Activate".

Send an email message

Go to Messages under Message Functions (or messages in the upper right box) You'll see a tabbed screen.

Content

Compose your email - enter a subject line, enter the email message. We advise keeping any graphics VERY small

Format

Select to send your message as HTML, Text or Text and HTML (we recommend Text).
You can send a test message now using the button here.

Scheduling

Set a date and time that you want your message to go out. This can be hours or days from now, or leave it as is to send on the next mail queue. Tip: every 15 minutes the list will look for messages that are ready to go and will send them

Misc.

You can have the page send you an email when it starts and stops sending the email you prepared by putting your email address in the boxes provided under this tab.

Lists

Select the checkbox for your list and click on "Send Message to the Selected Mailing List".

DO NOT CLICK "process queue", queue is automatically processed every 15 minutes.

Manage Users

Add users to your mailing list(s)

Just click on the "manage users" link in the upper right corner and then click on "users" or from the main page, click on "users" under List and user functions. Click on Add user and fill out the short form. Note that you can leave most everything blank - just put in the email address and set the HTML email thing to 0 or 1 (which is "false" or "true") and you should be set.

See users on the list

Clicking on the "users" link under List and Users Function will show you a list of all users on your mailing list. Tip: if you have a very large list, you'll need to do a Search to see the list of users.

Delete users from the list

On the same users page above, click on "del" next to the usernames and confirm that you want to delete to remove them from your list.

Edit the emails users get when they are added to the list or removed from the list

Go to the "spage" link on your administrative page above (under Configuration Functions). You can change these messages any time. Tip: users added from the web site are usually automatically confirmed and don't get an email from the list.

Import emails

Sometimes we have an email list from some other mailing list, excel file, etc. and want to put that list of emails into PHP list. You can import a tab or comma-delimited text file, or a file with one address per line. Go to manage users and click on "import users".

• First option: import emails with different values for attributes
• Second option: import emails with the same values for attributes (use this one)

Click on "Browse..." to load the file containing the email addresses, remember to check "send notification email" so that users will receive a message to accept subscribing the newsletter. Select "Make confirmed immediately" ONLY if you are SURE that users want to receive the newsletter.

Manage Lists

On the "lists" page, you'll see the existing lists you have set up in PHPList.

For existing lists, you can edit the name or description of it, you can view members of the list and you can delete the list. Note that deleting a list doesn't delete users from your PHPList database.

On the view members page, you can see the status of each member of the list and how many messages they have received. You can even move users from one list to another or copy users from one list to another here.

Review Messages

Go to "messages" on the upper right menu to see your "sent", "draft" and "queued" messages. Messages are in one of these three states.

• draft - this means you created a message using the "send a message" area and you saved that message to the system, but you have not queued it up for sending yet
• queued - your saved message has been queued to be sent out at a future time (in the next 15 minutes or whenever you set it to go
• sent - the message was sent to the list(s) you selected

Tip: messages only go out every 15 minutes, if you queue a message with a send time that is BEFORE the next 15 minute sending, the message will not go out (but you can "requeue" it with a new time)

Tip: each message you create has a number in PHP (15, 16, 17, etc.). If message 16 is sent to user 3, then if you resend message 16, it will not go to user 3 again. This is a built-in protection PHPList has to keep you from sending the same message to the same user. If you really want to - you need to copy and paste the message into a new "message" with a new PHPList number (using the send a message pages) and then send it to the same list. This doesn't come up often, but if your "test" list has some users that are also on the "regular" list, this can come up.

Templates

Go to "templates" on the upper right menu to be able to create or edit a template. The first page you'll see will list some brief instructions for you to use when creating and using a template. From there, you can click on "add new template" at the bottom of the page.

How to set up a template

First, you should give your template a title that you'd like to use to be able to choose the template for use later. Then, there is a blank space where you can format your template as you'd like. You'll see on this page the option of either creating a new template with the WYSIWYG editor or importing an html file you've already created.

Instructions for using the WYSIWYG editor

A simple template may just have an image you choose to place in the header. To do so, click on the image icon (see location in image below) and it will ask you to enter a URL to an image you'd like to use.

NOTE: You must first have an image on your site that you'd like to use for the template, a good example would be the logo for your web site.

To find the URL of an image you'd like to use, navigate to your web site with another browser page and then right click on the image you'd like to use from your site. Select "Copy Image Location" from the menu and then paste that into PHPlist.

Below the header image, make sure to include the following:

[CONTENT]

This is where you'll be able to later compose your message in the email within.

Then you may like to include an image or text below this as your footer. Text can be added simply by typing it as you'd like it to appear in the email. An image can be added as well following the same steps for the image in the header.

Once you have the layout as you'd like to see for your email template, it is recommended that you check all of the boxes at the bottom of the page and then click "Save Changes."

After saving the template, it may ask you to upload the image that you used for the template. To do so, make sure to first save the image to your computer, then browse to it in PHPlist and upload.

You are now ready to begin using your template!

Using a template

When sending a message, you can select what template to use by going to the "Format" tab and then selecting the one you created. The content of your message then goes where you put the [CONTENT] tag in your template.

If you don't have a template, PHPList uses it's default one, which has the orange look. You can create a Plain template, with nothing in it basically that will override the orange look.