What's new in Dada Mail v6.8.0:
Dada Mail is a Contemporary Mailing List Manager, enabling you to easily run a verified mailing list that your subscribers can trust, right on your own website.
Rich Text Editors and Web-Based File Browsers
Dada Mail supports multiple rich text editors, allowing you to easily author email messages with formatted text, images and simple layouts. Dada Mail also supports uploading images from your own computer, to your web server and placing those images into your mailing list messages, using one of the included web-based file browsers.
Authoring our own newsletter, with Dada Mail!
CKEditor Upgraded to v4.3, TinyMCE Upgraded to v4.0.11, FCKeditor retired
This release of Dada Mail upgrades two of the included rich text editors: CKEditor has been upgraded to v4.3 (from v3.x), and TinyMCE has been upgraded to v4.0.11 (from v3.x). This release also retires FCKeditor, which has been superseded by CKEditor.
These new rich text editors visually look much better than their predecessors and should provide additional functionality to help you author beautiful messages.
One of the features we really enjoy is allowing you to toggle between seeing visible blocks showing the underlying structure of your message, without having to delve into the source code of the message itself.
Another feature that can prove useful and time-saving is the ability to simply drag an image into the rich text editor window to place the image into your message. Both CKEditor and TinyMCE support this. We've tested this with Firefox on the Mac, but other browser may also be supported.
We've also set up these rich text editors to have full page support, meaning you can now edit both the body of the message, as well as the head. This is important, if you want to use more advanced HTML email authoring techniques, like responsive designs and images.
Full page support allows you to view the head of your email message, and utilize advanced responsive email design techniques.
CKEditor: Template Tag Dropdown Menu
Also look for the new Tags drop down menu in CKeditor (not currently available in TinyMCE). This drop down menu allows you to easily select and place one of Dada Mail's template tags. Template Tags are an advanced feature of Dada Mail, allowing to create dynamic messages based on subscriber profile information (First Name, Last Name, etc).
Creating a simple, dynamic message using Dada Mail's Template Tags.
Core5 Labs FileManager Support
We're also shipping an additional web-based file browser called, FileManager. These file browsers are what allows you to view files on your server to either select an image to add to your message, or to select an attachment to go along with your message.
Uploading and selecting images with FileManager
Dada Mail has shipped with the KCFinder file browser (and still will), but some users have had problems with it working correctly. With the addition of FileManager, we should now have a great alternative to utilize.
- More information on FileManager:
- Learn more about the rich text editors and web-based file browser support in Dada Mail
Bridge
The Bridge plugin transforms a Dada Mail mailing list from an announce-only mailing list, where you send message through Dada Mail's own List Control panel, to a full-blown discussion list, where members can send a message from their own mail reader (whichever one they'd like!) and have it sent to the entire mailing list, creating group discussions. Bridge can also be used for an announce-only mailing list, allowing the List Owner, and/or a seperate list of addresses, called Authorized Senders, to send messages to your mailing list, without allowing your Subscribers to do the same.
This version of Dada Mail supports many difference enhancements:
Moderators and Authorized Senders
Moderators, a separate list of addresses from your Subscribers, can now be created. They're only job is to view incoming messages, and moderate them: choosing what gets allowed to be posted, and what doesn't.
Moderation options in Bridge
This job used to be the job of the Authorized Senders sublist, but to make things easier and more flexible, we've made split these tasks into two separate sublists.
Authorized Senders are still around: a separate list of addresses who' members are allowed to send messages to a mailing list, without having to be a member of the Subscribers, themselves. Say you have an announce-only mailing list, where you'd like to give permission of just a few people in an organization to send messages to the mailing list. All you need to do is add them to your Authorized Senders and give them the List Address to send to. No need to give them login access to the List Control Panel.
In discussion lists, you now also have the option to moderate incoming messages, except for those messages from an address that's a member of your Authorized Senders.
On Behalf Of (p.p. Mode)
Bridge also has a new discussion list option called, On Behalf Of (p.p. Mode). We're big fans of the Amazon SES email sending service, but the service is set up to allow accept messages from addresses you've verified using their own system. This is fine for a few addresses, but can be unrealistic for an entire discussion list, whose members may number in the hundreds, or even thousands. When p.p. Mode is enabled, messages will be sent out on behalf of the List Owner, allowing you to set up a discussion list with Amazon SES.
Message Received Notification Message
Bridge also now allows you the option to send out a, "Message Received" message, telling the original poster that their message was delivered correctly, and will be sent out as soon as it can.
Sometimes, large or busy mailing lists will have the scenario, where messages take longer than possibly expected to be delivered. This may lead to the original poster assuming the message was never actually delivered - so they'll send the message again - perhaps more than twice! This leads to multiple postings of the same message, not something you'd want. The, "message received" notification message helps to confirm the original poster that their message has been received without a problem.
Amazon SES Auto-Adjust Batch Sending Rates
Dada Mail supports sending email using a variety of methods: one of these methods is using the Amazon Simple Email Service. Amazon SES allows you to a large amount of messages, fast, with great deliverability for a low cost.
Dada Mail already self-adjusts its batch sending rates, to work with Amazon SES's set limits. As SES's limits grows, so will your sending speed.
In this release, we've optimized the auto batch sending rates, so that mass sending speeds in Dada Mail start out faster, and then ease back slowly, so that you never go over the limit imposed by SES.
For mailing lists whose membership is smaller than the daily limit you have with SES, this gives you a much fast sending rate. For example: say you have a list of only 500 members. The default sending rate for SES is up to 5 messages/second, and 10,000 messages a day.
Prior versions of Dada Mail would send at a rate of around 375 messages/hour - fast enough that you won't go over your daily limit, and giving a little wiggle room to allow you to send other messages (subscription confirmation, other transactional messages, etc) Your mass mailing would still take around an hour and a half to complete, even though your SES limits would allow you to send well above this limit: remember, you can send up to 5 messages/second!
In this version of Dada Mail, that same mailing list of 500 members would send in minutes, rather than hours, as Dada Mail will start sending messages at 5 messages/second, rather than 1 message every ~10 seconds. Big improvement!
Sending via Amazon SES, at a nice rate of sending indeed.
This faster sending rate will also help signal Amazon SES's system that you're using your resources to their maximum allowed usage. This in turn will signal SES to actually give you more resources to use, raising your limit, and allowing your to send more messages/day with a higher per-second limit. All this will happen, automatically, as you send out your messages.
Mass Mailing Logs: save-able and viewable in the Log Viewer plugin
When sending out a mass mailing, Dada Mail creates a log of the activity of the mass mailing. This is a separate log for the usage log, and the error log, since it only pertains to one specific mass mailing, and also this log could be very, very large!
In past versions of Dada Mail, this log was simply deleted, when a mass mailing was finished. To help with understanding more complex issues with your mass mailing, this log can now be optionally saved, after the mass mailing is completed, and easily viewed using Dada Mail's included Log Viewer.
Highlighting in the list control panel's menu
Dada Mail's List Control Panel let's you do a LOT of things, and there's many different screens to work with. To help you remember where you are, and what you've clicked on, we now highlight the screen's title of where you're currently at, on the left-hand menu.