Creating or Editing Newsletters
Now we come to the core piece of BwPostman, the newsletters.
A newsletter can be created by copying an already created newsletter. Either unsent and sent newsletters may be copied.
To copy a newsletter check the checkbox at the list of newsletters in front of the desired newsletter and click at the button Copy in the toolbar. The copy appears in the tab Unsent newsletters in the overview, even if you copied a sent newsletter.
A click on the subject of the newsletter or select the checkbox in front of the row and a click to Edit on top opens the newsletter.
Creating newsletters will be processed in five steps. This will be symbolized with five tabs. Creating a new newsletter or modifying an existing newsletter always begins at tab General information. Within a Joomla!® session BwPostman reminds the last used tab of each edited newsletter. When editing this newsletter again in this session, BwPostman opens the newsletter with the last used tab.
Tab General Information
Sender's name, Sender's email and Reply to email were taken automatically from options entries of BwPostman, but they may be overwritten, too. Then you enter the subject for the newsletter. There is nothing without subject. Since version 1.0.8 the subject needs not to be unique. You may use one subject several times. But to keep newsletters apart there is a new field description, that you find right-hand.
Next you may select an attachment to send with the newsletter. The dialogue to select the attachment is the same one Joomla!® uses. This means, that you may upload the desired attachment to the server if it is not there.
Since version 2.2.0 of BwPostman the appearance for the attachment has changed, because now it is possible to attach up to 20 attachments to the newsletter .Now You don't see a selection dialogue directly but a button +. A click to this button opens a selection dialogue for the attachment with a frame. The selection dialogue has not changed at all.
If You want to add another attachment, click to the green + button at bottom right of this frame. Another frame for attachment appears.
If You want to delete an attachment, click to the red x button at right top of the frame.
The ordering of the attachments can be changed with the three dots superimposed upon each other. Simply click and hold with the left mouse button and move to the desired position.
Take note:
At the database attachments of a newsletter are stored at a single character field with the length of 1000 characters. The attachments are stringed together including the (relative) path, separated by semicolon. The relative path is what You see at the dialogue field.
The sum of all characters for all names and paths of the attachments including needed separators should not exceed 1000 characters. If that happens, the remaining characters are cut off while saving. That means, that all that exceeds the 1000 characters will not be sent as attachment.
Since version 3.0.0 of BwPostman attachments are no longer stored as simple character strings with a semicolon as divider, but as a string of the format JSON. That simplifies the internal processing, but causes, that the usable all-over length of this string is reduced, because JSON needs some more characters to separate the attachments.
If you already have created campaigns, then you can select whether and – if yes – to which campaign the newsletter belongs to.
Below you can set whether a newsletter shall be set published at a specific time and when publishing ends. This only meets the visibility in front-end. These dates work exactly like the dates at the articles of Joomla!®. With the publishing date you do not set, when the newsletter will be sent! For this there is the charged plugin BwPostman TimeControl.
Right-hand you find further information to the newsletter. Here you may enter a description for the newsletter. This is very helpful to keep newsletters apart, that use the same subject. The description is only for internal use. A subscriber does not see the description.
Since version 2.2.0 thee You find the possibility to define the newsletter as content template. This is really useful, if You have to send nearly the same newsletter again and again, in example a circular note, that a service is offline for a maintenance period. Here You can define the optical template for the newsletter, the recipients and also fixed content. Then You mark content template at tab Generals and save the newsletter .
Okay, that would also be possible by copying and changing a previously sent newsletter. But changing needs increased attention. A content template contains only the fixed part. I find that really useful.
A newsletter marked at content template cannot be sent, for that the content template will not be "lost" by sending. The tab for sending disappears while storing as template of content and also does not appear, if You edit such a newsletter. That would not make sense for a template of content. Instead a message appears, that You are working with a content template. The tab for sending disappears after saving of a new content template newsletter and is not visible while editing such newsletter. Instead You get a message, that You are editing a content template newsletter.
Next you select the template the newsletter shall use. This will be done separately for HTML newsletters at the left and text newsletters at the right. A tool-tip for the template shows a preview of the template if there is any created at the template. More informations you will find in chapter Templates – Adjusting the appearance of a newsletter.
Subsequently you select to whom the newsletter shall be sent: To one or more certain mailing lists and/or to one or more user groups of Joomla!®. You may select multiple entries from the select lists. It also is possible to select entries from the select list for the mailing lists and for the user groups of Joomla!® contemporary.
Here, too, the mailing lists are divided into three sections: At the left the mailing lists, that may be selected in front-end ever, in the middle the mailing lists, that only may be selected by designated subscribers and beside at right are the mailing lists, that only can be assigned in back-end. At the far right the user groups created in Joomla!® are selectable.
If a newsletter belongs to a campaign, the recipients are selected at the campaign and this section does not occur.
Finally you select if you want to use articles from Joomla!®. To do so make a double click at the desired article of Joomla!® in the select list Available website contents at right or mark the desired article in the select list and click the button with the left arrow between the two select lists. The selected article moves from the right to the left select list Selected website contents and disappears in the right list, so you can't select him twice accidentally. Double content isn't very pretty.
Articles of categories, which are listed at excluded article categories at the Basic settings of BwPostman, are not shown!
Since version 3.2.1 of BwPostman there is the possibility to select an article of Joomla!® by a pop-up like for the attachments. This possibility appears before the list of selectable articles.
Click to the Select button at right. A pop-up opens. Here You may filter the list. The filter options are the same as Joomla!® offers at the list of articles. To select the desired Joomla! article from the list, click to its title. The pop-up disappears, the title of the Joomla!® article is displayed at the input field. If this is not the correct Joomla!® article, You can clear this input by clicking the Clear button at right. Click to the button left arrow directly beside left of the title. The selected Joomla!® article appears in the left selection box of the selected content at the bottom of the already selected Joomla!® articles and is deleted from the box below of the available content.
If you were in error and you don't want a specific article already selected for your newsletter, then select it in the left select list and click at the right arrow. It moves back to the right select list and will be shown afterwards at the bottom of the select list. A double-click to the unwanted article does the same.
Since version 3.2.1 of BwPostman it is possible to sort the selected articles. To do so, You select an article to move and click to the button arrow up or arrow down at the right side of the select list.
You can crate a newsletter only based on articles from Joomla!®, you can enter a free text or mix both.
The current working state always can be saved by clicking the button Save, if the mandatory fields are filled.
Hint:
If content exists in one of the tabs HTML Newsletter or Text Newsletter and then there were made changes to Selected website contents in the tab General Information, then a confirmation question occurs while clicking on another tab to check if the already selected contents in the HTML and Text version shall be overwritten. OK takes the changes, Cancel discards them. These changes only are finally saved, if the newsletter is stored by clicking to Save or Save & Close. Close or Cancel discards the changes.
The same confirmation question appears, if you select another template and the behavior is just the same.
These changes only will be stored, if the newsletter is saved by Save or Save & Close. Close or Cancel discards the changes.
At the bottom one find the section Newsletter permissions. Here the permissions or exactly this newsletter may be edited.
Tab HTML newsletter
In the second step you now are able to edit the content of the newsletter in the HTML format. For that the editor selected as default in Joomla!® is used to let you work in your familiar environment.
Have I to write much about here? I think no. Everyone knows best at himself/herself, what he/she wants to communicate in the newsletter.
Before the newsletter you may give it a heading and an intro text. The fields are predefined with the settings of the newsletter template, but may be overwritten here. These two fields will not be shown in the editor, for showing this you use the preview.
The personalisation will be integrated at this step. If you want to address your reader personally, then this will be made at this tab. To do so we asked for last name and/or first name at registration, didn't we?
Personalisation
For the first name you take the code [FIRSTNAME], the last name will be coded with [LASTNAME] and the full name containing first name and last name with [FULLNAME]. You don't have to memorize this because this will be shown left to the editor. Marking code here, copy and paste works well with Firefox.
Upper cases and square brackets belongs to the code!
Tab Text newsletter
Like you are able to adapt the content of the HTML newsletter, you may do this for the text newsletter. As you know it is not possible to embed images e.g. to the text version of the newsletter, which the article of Joomla!® may contain. Such things should be controlled.
Heading, intro text and personalisation works exactly like described in the chapter before.
Tab Preview
In the preview you get a first impression of how the newsletter will look like to the receiver. But you can't see personalized data at this step, because they will be applied just before sending. (Which name of a mailing list, that possibly contains thousands of entries, should the preview show?)
At the top you see the data, with that the newsletter will be sent. Below you find the newsletter in the HTML version and at bottom there is the newsletter in the text version.
The preview is by the way a bit of browser-dependent. At some CSS styles you could see some differences in the HTML newsletter (like they may occur at websites and mail clients in general).
Tab Send
The tab Send newsletter again is divided into two parts. The upper part is for the real sending of newsletters, the lower part for sending test newsletters.
Personally, I prefer first to send my newsletters to the test recipients to be sure that all looks like I want to and there slipped in no orthographic mistakes.
At test sending the links in the newsletter to unsubscribe or edit the subscription doesn't work!
It is suggested to create different test recipients for the most usual mail clients, particularly if you use some special CSS styles.
The real sending of the newsletters will be launched at this tab, too. Again here you can set, how many mails will be send per step. e.g., if you have 500 subscribers for this mailing list and the value entered is at the (default) value 100, then BwPostman creates 5 queues with each 100 receivers, that will be processed subsequently with the entered delay time. This time You have to wait at the screen. The pop-up don't disappear until the last subscriber is processed.
You also may set, if the sending of the newsletter shall take place to unconfirmed subscribers, too.
With a click to one of the buttons Send newsletter, Send newsletter and publish or Send test newsletter (or also to Send in the list of newsletters), the newsletter will be personalized for each recipient, delivered to a queue and processed in the queue. While doing this, a pop-up occurs, where you can see, how the single recipients will be processed. A progress bar shows the execution. The pop-up disappears after a few seconds automatically.
Since version 3.0.0 the sending of a newsletter no longer is processed with a pop-up but by Ajax. A new view appears. At the left You see a progress bar at Status. Below there are some further information like to how many recipients has to be sent or if the entered waiting time is processed. At the right part Sending details You see, to which recipients the newsletter will be sent actually. You can leave this view only if the sending has finished to not interrupt the sending.
Newsletters are not published automatically, if they are sent by the button Send newsletter. Published means that they may occur in the front-end. But there may be the desire to publish newsletters for front-end by sending the newsletter, therefore there is the button Send newsletter and publish. If you select a start date for publishing at first tab General Information, then you should use the button Send newsletter and publish, because only published newsletters will be shown in front-end.
Tab Queue
Once the queue is built, the open pop-up will close and you touch down at the overview of the newsletters. Since version 3.0.0 this view is not closed automatically, You have to leave it by clicking the back button. While the queues are not completely processed, you will see a third tab named Queue beside the tabs Unsent newsletters and Sent newsletters.
Normally the queue will be handled within seconds. But that also depends on the number of recipients, the set number of emails to be sent simultaneously and the entered waiting time.
Thus the tab Queue only occurs, if the newsletter can't be sent because of technical reasons. May be, the configuration for mailing in Joomla!® is improper (System → Configuration → Server, section Mailing) or the server, that is responsible for sending newsletters – more precisely sending mails within Joomla!® - is not reachable. In this case the newsletter for all subscribers should appear in the queue and the length of the queue is appropriate to the number of subscribers.
But it also could be, that the server for sending the newsletter has a limit. That means, that a specific number of newsletters can be sent, the rest moves to the queue. This You can recognize by the number of entries in the queue. This number should be lesser than the number of recipients. In this case You should contact Your provider to get knowledge of the specific conditions. Best case would be to raise or remove this limit.
If there are other reasons responsible, that a newsletter can not be delivered, then it doesn't matter BwPostman or Joomla!® but the mail server, that is entered in the configuration of Joomla!®. If the mailbox quota exceeds or the recipient may not be found, then you won't see this in the queue!
Delivering a newsletter will be tried twice for a recipient, then BwPostman tries the next recipient. A higher number of trials doesn't make sense, because if there are technical problems, they won't be corrected as shortly, that a higher number of trials will help.
When the technical problems are removed, then the queue can be executed anew with a click to the button Continue sending. Before doing so, you have to reset sending attempts with the button Reset sending attempts.
If there are entries in the queue and you send another newsletter, these entries also will be processed, if the sending attempts are reset.
Also you may empty the queue with the button Clear queue.
A newsletter, that once reached the queue, considers as sent for BwPostman, even delivering war not possible due to technical reasons!
Button Send
Newsletters may be sent directly from the list of unsent newsletters. To do so, only select the desired newsletter by clicking to the checkbox in front of the subject and click to the button Send in the toolbar. But it is not possible to send more than one newsletter at once. If there are selected multiple newsletters to send, BwPostman only take the first selected newsletter to send, because:
After the click to Send the newsletter will be opened to edit and BwPostman immediately shows the tab Send newsletter. Further procedure is like described in previous chapter Tab Send newsletter.
Sent newsletters
If the newsletter is sent it moves from the list of unsent newsletters to the list of the sent newsletters. In this list you may take a look at the newsletter, but changes to content and other data concerning sending are no longer possible. A click to HTML Newsletter opens the HTML version in a pop-up, a click to Text Newsletter a pop-up for the text version.
A click to the subject of the newsletter opens a view to change publish-up and publish-down, state and the description afterwards.
In the list of sent newsletters you also can publish the sent newsletters to be able to show them in the front-end. An unpublished newsletter will not be shown in the front-end.
Default status after sending is unpublished unless you have sent the newsletter using the button Send newsletter and publish or the option Publish newsletters at sending at the Basic settings of BwPostman is activated.