Here's a compilation of what I'm hearing from you guys:

John:

• Faster

I'm guess I'll ask what exactly you want faster! :)

• One central login for all lists

I guess I'm not sure again what this is - the login currently available is for all the lists - do you mean login, somehow, to every list at once?

• Irregularity and instability after starting a mass mailing:

I'll tag on this Most of the problems I've had happen when the blast starts sending It seems to take a while to assemble the email and start the process, meanwhile the Monitor page is taking up precious resources Sometimes it will take a minute or two for the messages to start to flow For a while I was getting 500 server errors and only solved them by starting over with a whole new list and migrating only the addresses to it (which may point to a separate problem, but the old list was several years old and the database had a lot of what appeared to extraneous entries compared to a new list)

I'm sort of interested in what you're currently using for a version and a backend as well,

Michael

I have had a couple of clients complain that emails were not getting to the entire list I tried to find the reason in the backend but could not

I'm going to start out by saying the 99 99% of the reason this happens is that you're actually sending too fast If you send faster than what you're allowed to send, messages get dropped out to nothing This is the exact opposite of what you think the problem is:

What I believe caused the problem was the length of time it took Dada to complete the sending task My host (Hostmonster/Bluehost) only allows limited continuous access to the processor for one process If something takes longer than that, the system kills it

This does happen - a long running process gets terminated, but this is exactly why there's an auto pick and sending monitor Exactly why:

In the case of Dada, I believe this caused Dada to force the mail into a stale state, which locked the completion of the send process Compounded were the many backed up emails that never got to the list unless I cleared the stale mail out

OK, "stale" mailouts happen, when the mass mailing stops - say for a day, but you want to send another message out - this is what the auto_pickup pl extension is for THAT's what will solve that problem

You may also want to upgrade to version 4, since stale mailouts don't get in the way of messages you want to send out, anymore

You're other comments:

1. I don't know if the host caused this or if it was Dada Not much was found in the logs
2. I played with the sending queue, sleep function and everything I though would speed this up

(again, the problem may have been you trying to send too fast

1. I noticed sending occurred as expected if I stayed logged into the backend and manually watched the sending process If I left it to cron, it inevitably failed to complete the task

I'm a little confused at what the cron could be - it's hard to debug these types of things after they've happened months ago ;/

1. I tried to figure out how to have Dada sending more than one mail out at a time, but could not find the code

It was this:

http://dadamailproject com/support/documentation-4_0_2/Config pm html#mailoutat_once_limit

But again - sending more mail out at once won't work - you'll hit Bluehost's hourly limit and any messages sent out over that limit will just be lost

1. I have not played with any of the version 4 iterations, so I don't know if anything has been improved upon as far as speed

Again - on a site like Bluehost, speed is the least concern is, except from trying to send slower

Adam:

Functionality wise dada is great but I'd love to see the interface move towards something like that of campaign monitor for the sake of our clients would be a great edge I would be happy to help working on the front-end templates

What is it that you like, exactly about Campaign Monitor? You know, I've never used it! :)

Frans:

Profile Fields Make it possible to define other profile fields like a checkbox, radio buttons, text area and select list Besides public and hidden fields (those starting with an underscore) add another category "read-only": these are showed publicly but cannot be changed by a subscriber, e g by adding attribute "disabled" to the corresponding tag

I'm for all of these

API to login from other software Currently I am using the following code in main cgi (sub login) to login from a CMS, enter a specific admin screen (f=send_url_email) and pass another parameter (url=http://dadamailproject com/ used by my modified "send_url_email"):

[snip/]

Would be nice if this kind of functionality can become part of the official dada code

Gotcha

Language files To make it easier to translate at least the public part of dada If we can can agree about how to do this I am willing to do the coding like putting the english texts into language file(s) and replace them with variables So when somebody wants to use a different language he "only" needs to translate these language files, besides the (public) templates of course Currently we have to translate inside the Perl source code in main cgi, error pm etc

I'm for this as well, but most, if not all the HTML, except, say the titles of the page screens should be almost all templated out Every release, more HTML gets removed from the program itself

How to have languages in Dada Mail - THAT is the question, though A lot of people just tell me about programs that simply have a language file, with the strings of words used, and "all" (like you said) you have to do is translate every string I'm always perplexed that, if all you want to do is to translate text strings, why the, 'template' directory (already) doesn't work out

The problem I have with something like this is, every program I'm shown where this idea is put into place is a lot - a whole lot smaller than Dada Mail The current 'templates' directory in Dada Mail has over 185 files in it, already That's a lot of strings to have to translate

To be honest, I'd rather use something way more robust like, gettext:

http://en wikipedia org/wiki/GNU_gettext

a clone of it:

http://rassie org/archives/247

or, something like it's alternatives, like Maketext:

http://interglacial com/~sburke/tpj/as_html/tpj13 html

This in particular:

http://search cpan org/dist/libintl-perl/

Is really really attractive, as it has no dependencies A lot of the above tools need an outside library, and that means, Dada Mail's portability for Mere Mortals would go out the window

I think I'm absolutely alone in the idea of using some sort of outside library/API/Idea for internationalization, but I also know that I don't want to re-implement yet another idea, half as well and twice as slow as something else that's already out that To be honest

Timestamps Add time stamps when somebody (un)subscribes and when the subscription is confirmed, to make it possible to clean up the list automatically E g to remove email addresses who are subscribed but not confirmed after xx days

I'm 100% for this as well, it just would take a quick change to the schema of one the tables, but making changes to the schema of one of the tables is a big headache, but it's still not a bad idea

Moshe

Code Optimization There are some things, such as the Sending Monitor screen, that load very slowly and I'd like to see some speed gains

Looks like another vote for the sending monitor stuff ;)

API As Frans said, it is very useful to be able to use Dada Mail from other programs Maybe it could even get to the point that the Administration pages use the same API, instead of actually having code in them, so that we have built in API documentation

Another vote for some sort of API :)

In regards to the API, I'd rather have some sort of web services way to send a mass mailing out No one really was too stoked on the SOAP idea, I don't quite know what a better alternative would be Ideas?

Thanks everyone!

I'll whip up the things I want to see as well

Keep the conversation flowin'

Justin

On Jan 14, 2010, at 7:11 PM, Justin J wrote:

On Jan 12, 2010, at 1:35 PM, Justin J wrote:

I want to start thinking about future developments of Dada Mail

Not all at once, now! :)

Any ideas you guys/gals have?

-- Justin J

Dada Mail - Write Once: Distribute Everywhere Software url: http://dadamailproject com

The Dada Mail Demo: http://demo dadamailproject com

On Jan 12, 2010, at 1:35 PM, Justin J wrote:

Hey Everyone,

Happy New Year! If I haven't yet said that, to this list -

I want to start thinking about future developments of Dada Mail - where to take the program - the small features and the Big Features As times and trends change, so does my development focus Before I give you my laundry list of my own priorities, I sort of want to hear from everyone else first, since you guys are most likely more active in actually using the program than I am!

Also, just to recap some things, ver 4 0 2 was recently released - bugfix only, but with one nasty problem in Dada Bridge fixed ish:

http://dadamailproject com/support/documentation-4_0_2/changes_4_x pod html#changes_4_0_2

I'm starting to use the github "Issues" system, over the sourceforge bug tracker It's a lot neater, I think:

http://github com/justingit/dada-mail/issues

Feel free - please, to add any issue you encounter to this tracker Or, better yet, if you're versed at github (even I got the swing of things), go register an account, fork the project, patch and ask for me to pull from it I'll do the best I can If it's a bugfix, it's always nice to get a test file that confirms the bug is fixed

So, what are all your ideas?

-- Justin J

Dada Mail - Write Once: Distribute Everywhere Software url: http://dadamailproject com

The Dada Mail Demo: http://demo dadamailproject com

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