[consulting] the Ultimate forum based Malinglist Manager

[Allie Micka]

On Dec 30, 2005, at 4:02 PM, David Geilhufe wrote:
> As folks who were in early CiviMail discussion know, list handling  
> is (was?) on our future roadmap.
>
> As you guys build a solution(s), please try to imagine how CiviCRM  
> might be able to handle list member management via our groups  
> functionality (subscribe/unsubscribe, write pointers back to their  
> posts through activities, etc.).
>
> And when anyone is ready to work on that functionality, we'd be  
> interested in seeing how we can contribute.

CiviCRM/CiviMail solves a slightly different problem than the one I'm  
discussing.  The MLM-backed solution I described is ideal for lists  
that do not require any message customization.  This includes forum/ 
og remailing and "big dumb announcement drops".

I don't think that either my proposal or Gerhard's directly addresses  
clickthru tracking or token replacement.  Mine definitely doesn't,  
because the cases I've described are based on handing 1 copy of a  
message to a MLM for re-distribution.

Gerhard's queue/de-queue proposal has a chance at being "smarter", as  
each copy of a message can be manipulated.  I haven't seen a clear  
enough description of the mailqueue proposal to understand how it  
would work:  You would either have to put a lot of logic into your  
dequeuing script to handle token replacement on some kind of join; or  
you would have to queue thousands of instances of a message when you  
create it, and then turn around and de-queue them all.  If you went  
the latter route, you'd induce the same timeouts that hamper existing  
strategies.  Gerhard, can you clarify?

I'll reiterate my point that list membership should be independent  
from Drupal, because there's not necessarily a 1:1 relationship  
between a mailing and a Drupal site.  CiviMail is ideally suited for  
this work, because that's how CiviCRM is already architected.

Drupal is unlikely to have the information it needs for token  
replacement in a consistent format (first name, last name, address,  
and so-on).  Again, this makes CiviMail ideally suited for "smart  
mailings".


Allie Micka
pajunas interactive, inc.
http://www.pajunas.com

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