[consulting] Current state of newsletter systems

[Rob Barreca]

I'm currently working on a complete audit of simplenews as the code is 
pretty hairy. FAPI wasn't being properly used, there was no clean API, 
lots of code style errors, namespace conflicts ("sn_"), convoluted 
variable names/logic, etc. (Sorry if I'm offending anyone here, don't 
mean to be.)

I'm also working on a complete rewrite of the simplenews_roles module 
which will allow syncing a mailing list with users in particular roles. 
I've already spent about 8 hours on this and it's going to take quite a 
bit more, but I will post a huge patch when I'm done so DriesK and 
anyone else can take a look.

After this is done, extending simplenews to do more complex tasks will 
be much, much easier as we'll actually be able to use hook_form_alter() 
and some other goodies. And, the port to D5 will be way easier as well!

And if anyone is interested in contributing to this effort, please 
contact me off the list. :)

Rob Roy Barreca
Founder and COO
Electronic Insight Corporation
http://www.electronicinsight.com
rob at electronicinsight.com



Mark Hope wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Just wondering what the current state of the various newsletter mailing 
> systems are?
>
> I've looked at simplenews but it is what it says - Simple. I'm sure 
> that's what the author intended, however I'm sure there must be a wider 
> demand for a more feature rich mailing system?
>
> The features and issues queue that would make Simplenews more complete 
> doesn't seem to be moving very quickly.
> I think the UI for simplenews is good, but the outgoing mail and 
> formatting I find quite poor.
>
> What I'm looking for:
>
> - plain text/html sending options or possibility to send multi-part mail
> - Tracking mail/bounces
> - Header and footer templates, templates by newsletter type
> - embed separate stylesheet for sending with outgoing mail (I suppose 
> this could be done within the templates).
> - double optin for anonymous/sign up via account page
> - ability to host images on server/absolute links to images
>
>
> I notice there is also a project at:
> http://drupal.org/project/enewsletter
> that consists of several dependent modules. It would look to have more 
> of the features expected for a 'professional' email newsletter system 
> but isn't released under 4.7??
>
> Can anybody offer any advice or share experience?
>
> Thanks
> Mark
>
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