Hello Everyone, it is time! A new major release of Dada Mail is upon us This release is composed of 151 changed files with 11,489 additions and 5,306 deletions, with work starting around Thanksgiving (Nov 27th) 2013

Download and install:

http://dadamailproject
com/support/documentation-7_0_0-alpha1/install_dada_mail
pod
html

Changelog:

7 0 0 Alpha 1

Features

Private Mailing Lists

Previous versions of Dada Mail were specifically designed to run Public Mailing Lists: mailing lists where usually anyone can subscribe to, and most definitely everyone can remove themselves from (unsubscribe)

For public mailing lists and marketing purposes, this works just great, but many users want to utilize the app for a different purpose: utilizing Dada Mail's mailing list organizational and mass mailing features for a private list of contacts: a group of colleagues, or an internal company mailing list In this role, Dada Mail hasn't fared very well, as List Owners are frustrated, having to constantly deal with list member removing themselves (often by accident) The tools to run a private mailing list just weren't there

Dada Mail now has support for Private Mailing Lists A private mailing list is a mailing list used in a closed, internal setting; not one used publically for marketing purposes

When a mailing list is set to, Private, unsubscription links are not required (as they are in a public mailing list), but any unsubscription links will be turned into a link to Request Removal This request will go to the List Owner, who will have the final say on who is removed from the mailing list

All other options for a mailing list are still available for a Private List

To Do

Options on how a mailing list is operated are already complex, and this feature just makes things more complex Options need to be organized better, and more self-explanitory, or users will get confused and ultimately use the features incorreclty

Abuse Reporting

Dada Mail now has the ability to allow users to report abuse of your mailing list These abuse reports will be emailed to the List Owner, logged, and reported through the Tracker plugin

Subscriber Subscription Date saved in a Timestamp

Subscriber information now includes the Date of Subscription in a the Timestamp column

To Do

Since the date of subscription wasn't recorded before support was added, any subscriber added before this release will not have this data available There's currently no easy way to add in this data, except to edit the SQL table directly (Question is then, is there an easy way to add this type of information in bulk?)

Default order for Membership >> View Screen, Show/Hide Timestamp Column

New options in the, Membership > View> screen in the list control panel allow you to set which column to sort subscribers by default, as well as if the Subscription Date/timestamp column should be shown

Advanced Search/Partial Sending List Options

The View List screen in Dada Mail's list control panel already has a simple search to find what you're looking for withing your various mailing list members This releae of Dada Mail also includes an Advanced Search, allowing you to search more specifically for exactly what you're looking for You may now search by email address, any profile field independently, as well as between subscription date ranges

Parital sending works the same way and the ability to send to members who have been subscribed between a range of two dates is also available

Todo

There should be an easy way to go from searching through your subscribers, to sending a mass mailing out to the results of your search Searching should also be saveable, basically creating dynamic lists

Required Profile Fields

Profile Fields can now be marked as, Required Form field validation is done on the subscription form, both client and server side The experimental JSON web service API also supports required Profile Fields

More Powerful List Control Panel Address Importing, Mass Updating

The List Control Panel Add/Subscribe/Invite screen now comes with a ton of new, and useful options and utilities:

Preserve or Update Profile Field Information

In previous versions of Dada Mail, any Profile field information you try to import could potentially be discarded, if the address you're import already has profile field information This is because profile field information is shared between mailing lists, and importing a subscriber into another list, may inadvertantly wipe out already saved information

Dada Mail now has the option to either preserve any already-existing profile field information, or update information that already exists - this choice on what to do can be made during the Verification step

Profile Field data validation

Since Profile fields can now be required, Dada Mail also checks for any required Profile Fields and will present the List Owner with the addresses that are missing these Profile Fields, in the verification step The List Owner can optionally subscribe addresses that are missing the required Profile Fields

Dada Mail now has the option to allow you to mass update the Profile Fields data of subscribers who are already subscribed

Profiles and Profile Passwords

Along with Profile Fields, Dada Mail can now allow you to set a Profile Password, when importing subscribers This Profile Password allows your user to log into their own Profile, and make changes to their mailing list subscriptions Profiles are only made, if a Profile Password is created

Changes 7 0 0

Config pm default variables with HTML have been removed, templated out

HTML that can be edited in the Appearance and Templates > HTML Screen Templates> list control panel had their default values stored in the Config pm file

This hinders customization and internationalization, testing, as well as adding extra bulk to the already-too large Config pm file The values of these variables have now been templated out into their own files located in the, dada/templates/list directory

TODO

Create a way to edit the default, global templates, as well as a way to keep these changes between versions

Config pm default variables of email messages have been removed, templated out

Email messages, that can be edited in the, Appearance and Templates > Email Message Templates> screen (as well as other email messages, that can be customized in various other places) had their default values stored in the Config pm file

This hinders customization and internationalization, testing, as well as adding extra bulk to the already-too large Config pm file The values of these variables have now been templated out into their own files located in the, dada/templates/email directory

The removal of these variables (as well as HTML screens) has removed over 1,100 lines from the Config pm file

TODO

Create a way to edit the default, global templates, as well as a way to keep these changes between versions

Database Schema Changes

There are slight changes to the database schema for Dada Mail Both the, dada_subscribers and, dada_profile_fields_attributes have new columns Dada Mail should be able to modify your tables to the correct schema, but we do suggest backing up your database before upgrading

PlainText Backend Removed (Probably)

The stable release of v7 0 0 will most likely see the removal of the PlainText backend This will help make the app more streamlined by removing a good chunk of the codebase that's rarely used Most new features of Dada Mail cannot be utilized when using the PlainText backend anyways, which leads to confusion with users, as well as complicating the codebase, as checks have to make on what exactly the backend supports

New Deprecated Plugins/Extensions

None!

Even Beatitude (Scheduled Mailer) will still be around for v7 0 0, and should be able to support the new partial mailing list features (timestamp date range!) Beatitude is still listed as deprecated, but will not be removed (or rewritten), until its features (or similar) are available in another form