On Jan 19, 2010, at 5:15 AM, Alex Judd wrote:

1. Installer

It would be great to have it more like Wordpress or Piwik where it will notify you of updates and 'upgrade itself' quite happily (making database changes, downloading and installing new versions etc ) I know to start this process is probably a lot of work, but you might want to involve some of the rest of us with this to help with the burden as once it's done, it will work great

Like I said, It's a slippery slope with the, "updater" as well as, "installer"

Here's the thing about involvement in the program - do it! Now! :)

Get a github account, fork Dada Mail, ask me to pull from it (add tests to anything you make)

Everything is in place, but not many people do There's this myth, I think, that there's something stopping people Nothing's stopping no one No one wants to I'm really fine with it, but I could use the help Case in point is something like a installer It's a separate project - you could write it however you'd like, with whatever you'd like - even in a different language! No one has, no one will (except, maybe me)

Someone, anyone prove me wrong :) Honestly, it would be a delightful surprise

Here's the thing with Wordpress: there's more than one guy/gal working on it There's only one guy on Dada Mail I don't have much funding for Dada Mail Or dum any I certainly don't have it in the millions:

http://gigaom
com/2008/01/22/wordpresscom-creator-raises-29m/

Comparing Wordpress and what it can do with Dada Mail is a little laughable Wordpress is a part of a business I'm like a guy on a laptop, squeezing space in a coffee shop

1. Plugins

Wordpress (notice the theme here :-)) plugins are a great concept Anyone can write them, and they can be enabled/disabled and for example we could install our own Clicktracker we have written as a module rather than having to have it 'sit outside' of Dada Which brings me to

I think this falls into the, "It's something I don't want to write badly, that's half as slow, half as good as something already made" What needs to happen is to port Dada Mail to a framework, which sounds scary, but it's really a lot of drudge work An example of what could happen is if Dada Mail is ported to the CGI::Application Framework It already has the idea of, "plugins" We'd just have to work with its plugin architecture Which I'm pretty sure it has

1. Clickthrough Tracker

We've had to disable the Dada one as the open rate works fine (1 pixel transparent gif) however we need to track sales conversions so need to know 'where' on an email someone clicked and that they were part of our marketing list that generated the sale Sounds like you're having similar thoughts (we use MD5 hashes to anonymise any information etc )

I am - I'd love to hear any good ideas on this that you're allowed to share Even if Dada Mail doesn't get a pluginable interface, I'd like to at least also think of easy ways to switch out the clickthrough stuff for other systems to use Maybe even have it as easy as well, how there's different CAPTCHA backends - I can't see why it wouldn't be impossible to make an easy public API for the Clickthrough backend, so you just need to re-implement a few key methods

1. Tiny URL style links

We're MD5 hashing our links, but it would be great to have the ability in Dada to do similar We use this for double opt-ins and it works well

Gotcha That could be easy to make and program wide

1. Mail Chimp

Not sure if you've used this,

Nope,

but a number of our smaller clients have moved over to this, rather than 'take on' Dada as they find it much easier and simpler to use Yes you have to pay for it, which obviously is a disadvantage and it's not open source, so you can't change everything, but they all think the UI is pretty intuitive whereas many find Dada just 'too tough'

I'd love to learn what you like about it, and what you hate about Dada Mail Dada's interface surely isn't the end all, be all

If we could borrow some of the best bits from this for Dada then that would be good :-)

Most certainly

1. Widgits

Agree with your thoughts below and if you get a chance have a look at the way Piwik (http://piwik org/) works with its UI Pick up any window, drag it to a different place, it really is as easy as pie!

I promise to look at this, but I don't know if I can re-implement it! :)

1. Analytics integration

Getting Dada to talk to other programs is difficult - we tend to roll our own code and put it into the emails If we could, for example, have a call-out API where Dada could talk to Google Analytics and update that with Goal/Funnel conversions or something like that, that would be pretty cool

You officially have gone over my head, but I'd love to hear what you're trying to solve and how I can make that easier This sounds very much related to the clickthrough tracker Perhaps it's better to make this project called something than Clickthrough Tracker, as that's only one thingy this Thing is going to do: track opens, track click throughs, track unsubscribes, (etc, etc)

Hope this helps!

It does Thanks for giving more feedback

I don't mean to sound pessimistic on what I/we/tout le monde can accomplish, but I think the best thing to do to help everyone out is to leverage good ideas that are already out there - for me it's really going to be a good idea to get Dada Mail on some sort of contemporary Framework, as it would help attract other developers and hopefully make Dada Mail more pluginable, most especially for projects that are far-removed from simply sending lots of mail to many people, but still useful

Justin

On Jan 19, 2010, at 5:15 AM, Alex Judd wrote:

Hi Justin

Some good thoughts below and a few more from us which may help/help not!

1. Installer

It would be great to have it more like Wordpress or Piwik where it will notify you of updates and 'upgrade itself' quite happily (making database changes, downloading and installing new versions etc ) I know to start this process is probably a lot of work, but you might want to involve some of the rest of us with this to help with the burden as once it's done, it will work great

1. Plugins

Wordpress (notice the theme here :-)) plugins are a great concept Anyone can write them, and they can be enabled/disabled and for example we could install our own Clicktracker we have written as a module rather than having to have it 'sit outside' of Dada Which brings me to

1. Clickthrough Tracker

We've had to disable the Dada one as the open rate works fine (1 pixel transparent gif) however we need to track sales conversions so need to know 'where' on an email someone clicked and that they were part of our marketing list that generated the sale Sounds like you're having similar thoughts (we use MD5 hashes to anonymise any information etc )

1. Tiny URL style links

We're MD5 hashing our links, but it would be great to have the ability in Dada to do similar We use this for double opt-ins and it works well

1. Mail Chimp

Not sure if you've used this, but a number of our smaller clients have moved over to this, rather than 'take on' Dada as they find it much easier and simpler to use Yes you have to pay for it, which obviously is a disadvantage and it's not open source, so you can't change everything, but they all think the UI is pretty intuitive whereas many find Dada just 'too tough'

If we could borrow some of the best bits from this for Dada then that would be good :-)

1. Widgits

Agree with your thoughts below and if you get a chance have a look at the way Piwik (http://piwik org/) works with its UI Pick up any window, drag it to a different place, it really is as easy as pie!

1. Analytics integration

Getting Dada to talk to other programs is difficult - we tend to roll our own code and put it into the emails If we could, for example, have a call-out API where Dada could talk to Google Analytics and update that with Goal/Funnel conversions or something like that, that would be pretty cool

Hope this helps!

Alex

Skywire

-----Original Message----- From: Justin J [mailto:justin@dadamailproject com] Sent: 19 January 2010 01:45 To: Dada Mail Developers Subscriber Subject: [dadadev] Re: Dada Mail Development Focus

Here's some of the projects for Dada Mail I'd be interested in working on:

Installer

--

I'd like to see an installer for Dada Mail - something like what Movable Type (or whatever blog system) has - just visit, "install cgi" and you get a little wizard-thing that guides you and makes the necessary directory structure, SQL tables - that sort of stuff

This opens a big can-o-worms, since, after you make an installer, eventually someone wants an, "upgrader" and that's a headache

No installer exists - even for the gobs of installs I do What's nice is I can at least test the installer, why doing my own installations I see a lot of different setups, so it's great to know I can see how it works for all these different setups

Profile Fields Widgets

--

I would also like to see the Dada Profiles be a little more sugary - not just plain textboxes, but the option to have a popup menu, checkboxes, radio buttons - as well as more fancier widgets, like a "date", City, State, Country, Zip as well as a way to have a way to validate this information, as well as a way to add your own widget types to what I could ship

I'd also like to see an easy way to make a field hidden, required (and I like this idea) "Read Only"

Partial Sending Flexibility

--

If I have a few fields: Name, City, State, Country, Favorite Color,

It would be nice to say:

"Hey, send to everyone living in Denver, Boulder, or Colorado Springs, who likes red and blue and who's age is under 25"

Right now you can't And I hate it

PSGI Compatibility

--

This:

http://plackperl org/

Probably by porting Dada Mail to something like this:

http://cgi-app org/

This is my answer to the, "but performance on Dada Mail, sucks!" problem Always compiled in memory and persistent database handle is what's needed

New Clickthrough Tracker

--

With fancy graphs

I'd like to move the log to some sort of SQL table and I'd like to be able to do a lot more, neater analysis on what's going on Automatic Clickthrough Generation for all URLs I want to see a graph that shows also how many subscribers my list has had in a time frame I want to see a pretty graph that shows how many messages are sent in a time frame That sort of stuff

ONLY closed loop opt in subscription

--

I'd like to add an option during list creation that says something like, "Don't allow me to mass subscribe subsribers myself - only allow subscribers to subscribe themselves"

I get reports of people using Dada Mail to send Spam messages This is stupid I don't like it and the people who do this, I dislike even more Morons I'd like closed-loop opt in be the only option for subscription and no way, in the future, to change this!

One can dream

And probably still, everything listed on this doc:

http://dadamailproject com/support/documentation-4_0_2/projects pod html

That hasn't been implemented

-- Justin J

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

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

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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