Serendipity Forums

Hello

I did a quick search but didn't find anything

Is there a newsletter subscribe feature for s9y?

I'm aware that rss feeds could do something similar, but as mentioned on other threads, many ordinary users don't know how to use these

I was thinking that a plugin(?) for a newsletter would be rather nice.

Basically, you could set for weekly/monthly or whenever. Users could subscribe (independent of whether they register on your site) and receive a html newsletter via email.

It could contain something like:
- text by site admin
- title/links for the latest enteries
- title/links for most popular enteries based on comments
- number of new members
- latest poll
etc

And most of this info would be pulled automatically from the site, so generating the newsletter would be a very quick.
The newsletter would be for those members who don't visit the site regularly or subscribe to rss feeds, or don't want frequent email notifications

I'd like to code something like this, though I'm a php-idiot ...(but going to learn)

regards

Hi!

No, a newsletter option is not there. And probably never will be, as PHP is not suitable for sending out mass emails. Also scheduled automatic posting is not really possible for PHP/HTTP, as it can only be synchronized via crontab+wget, which is not available or feasible for most users.

Instead go this route: Create a free mailinglist on yahoogroups or whatever. Install the mailentry bundled plugin. Set it up to send emails to your yahoogroups newsletter account. Then tell your people to subscribe to your yahoogroup newsletter, or even offer them a HTML nugget plugin for subscribing there.

Then yahoogroups sends the mails for you, which is the freaking part you don't want your PHP server to make.

An alternate route is to search for services that make RSS -> Newsletter conversion. I know that out there there are services like these, but I have no precise URLs.

Best regards,
Garvin