Status and Roadmap

Looking at the version in 1.9.rc3, the Newsletter feature seems to have all the key requirements for a simple broadcast mailing list:

• Optional verification
• Easy opt-out
• Subscribe entire user groups
• Admin can add and remove subscribers
• Web based message submission form

But there are many issues to be addressed:

• Terminology refinement
• Message encoding
• Groups integration
• Bounce handling
• Message archiving
• And general interace upgrades

There are also many wish list items that could be implemented.

The plan now is to decide on what modications are required to make the feature usable in 1.9 and what would make it optimal in version 1.10.

There is also discussion of replacing this feature with an external mailing list application either through syncronization or integration.

Required upgrades for 1.9 release

Upgrades aimed at 1.10

Wishlist

• If a message is sent to multiple lists, they will only receive one copy of the email and not as many as the number of lists they are subscribed to.)

tiki-send_newsletters.php:

• Should have one checkbox per newsletter, i.e. just use user's system email address for all lists.

• Full and automatic integration of content from the CMS (articles, comments, forum posts, blog posts, etc.) into newsletters via include statements
• Moderation option for all content, such that an admin can choose what pieces to send out via email.
• VERP (variable envelope return processing) to ensure good bounce handling
• Tracking of bounces (with bounce details) in user accounts (good for tracking mail delivery problems)
• Date tracking of when people subscribe and unsubscribe (useful for when someone leaves an account without unsubscribing, and a new person gets it and complains because they're receiving mail they didn't request)(This could be avoided if system email is used)
• Ability to track the number of e-mails opened
• Clickthrough tracking
• Capability to send html + text, with the user choosing which they receive on a global and per list basis
• custom field & personalized email capability

  
  

Outside Mailing List Integration

There has beed discussion about partnering with phplist to replace the current newsletter feature.

phplist was approched after careful analysis of all the PHP open source newsletter apps. phplist is a mature & stable with 40+ releases over than last 3.5 years. phplist has a great number of features. Michiel Dethmers, the PHPlist developer has discussed collaborating on a "connecting class" between the two.
But PHPlist is for broadcast only and the source is GPL, which can cause some issues about integration.

There has also been discussion about integration with a two mailing list system like Sympa or Mailman. But no concrete work has gone in this direction, yet.

Trackers

Bugs (SF links not working below?)

• {SF(aid=>802223)}{SF} This may be related to the evolution of newsletter subscription (which I don't know!) after the fix of 750708 - chealer.

RFEs

• {SF(aid=>749179,tag=>rfe)}{SF}
• {SF(aid=>816328,tag=>rfe)}{SF}
• {SF(aid=>654158,tag=>rfe)}{SF} (using RSS as a basis)
• Thread about newsletter feature

  
  
  

CVS Doc section

New for 1.8:
The following options can now be set on a per newsletter basis:

Users can subscribe/unsubscribe to this list

Determines whether users can subscribe themselves

Users can subscribe any email address

Determines whether the user can subscribe alternate addresses than the one they registered with

Add unsubscribe instructions to each newsletter

Determines whether to include an unsubscribe msg when a newsletter is sent

Validate email addresses

Determines whether the address must be validated with a test email