PHPlist integration

[Alfa1]

<a href="http://www.phplist.com" target="_blank">PHPlist</a> is a very nice newsletter manager. More importantly it allows advanced bounced handling. Since vbulletin itself does not have this and bouncing emails can lead to blacklisting of your site as a spam domain, advanced bounced email handling is not a luxury, but a vital function.

A search for phplist on vb.org will show that many others have requested integration between phplist and vb. Even though phplist is not very well known under vb admins.

[fulviods]

In fact...it s a very very useful tool and sad that we can't use it with vbulletin.
It would be nice that subscriber to the forum can subscribe easily to one or more newsletter and also that the webmaster could send newsletter depending of the users....

[fulviods]

It's a pity that something so important could not be done... i write again, maybe someone will have an idea

[fulviods]

me again ;) I discovered that they built a bridge between joomla and phplist.here (http://www.joomlart.com/addons/components_and_modules/phplist_bridge.html)

No one use a mailing list? I thought there would be more interest :(

[imedic]

I am interested too in using vb with phplist. I will probably export emails in phplist and find a way to put the subscribing code somewhere in the forum.
Unfortunately I have no coding experience.

[fulviods]

I think that like me many persons could pay to have a bridge between vb and phplist.
Amazing that no one needs a good mailing list...

[Alfa1]

I think that not many people are aware of the possibilities.

[fulviods]

still no interest by a coder? ... :(

[Robert Waanders]

I'm also looking for an intergration-mod...

Robert

[FreshFroot]

I'm sure someone would be up for it, but not for free.

This hack would take quite a bit of time and work to get it going.

[Alfa1]

Any idea how much work? ...

[MarceloS]

We could pay the developer in group.

[Alfa1]

Yes, we could. But that is not allowed to discuss here.

What we can discuss here is which functions are wanted by people. After that we could post a project in the paid mod requests forum.

[shadowdancer36]

Someone I've spoke to has a hack for it installed on their site.

http://www.feelinggood24.de/

I think her ex-husband coded for her. Maybe if we gather up a donation she will release the code to us?

[Alfa1]

Please check which features have been integrated.

[SoftDux]

I'd like to see this feature / addon / hack as well, it would be great to make use of a proper mailing list script

[larina]

Someone I've spoke to has a hack for it installed on their site.

http://www.feelinggood24.de/

I think her ex-husband coded for her. Maybe if we gather up a donation she will release the code to us?

Well, that's my website.

Basically it is a simple installation of phplist. So it has all features phplist offers.

What I did at my website: i took a subscription-page which comes with phplist, and edited the outfit so that I can load it via iframe into a vbadvanced module. You also can load it via iframe into every other page at your website, if you don't use vbadvanced. And you also can leave all subscription-pages totally outside your website, if you only need to import your existing vbulletin-users into it and don't need further people to do a subscription themselfes.

The other part is the import-script you need, to import vbulletin-users into your list. I have one running every night via cronjob, so that I don't need to care about it. These are 3 files. They are not programmed to be something "official" and give away. It would probably be to difficult to explain anway, as they need database access and paths must be changed.

Anyway, it someone really needs it, pm me. You also can test at my site the subscription-process for non-vbulletin-users by subscribing through the box at my homepage. Actually I don't send newsletters out, as my site is very new. But anyway, don't forget to unsubscribe later. And ... everything is in german at my page, so I also use phplist with german phrases.

larina

[Alfa1]

Many thanks for your explanation!

One of the main important things with php list, is that it handles bounced email. This prevents your site from becoming blacklisted as a spammer. (See my article in my signature)

So importing vb members into PHPlist would work for mailing, but it does not solve the problem of vbulletin email that bounces. Or is there a way to list all inactive email addresses and turn the subscriptions of the related members off?

[vithorius]

It would be a VERY GOOD idea to have such a Mod...!

has anyone started such work?

[leginag]

Having to come up with a mass-mailing solution, I came across this thread, and I also would like to see a mod for phplist and vbulletin!

[hollosch]

What's the status about phplist integration ?

[Alfa1]

There is none. It is still on the want list of many people.

[TigerC10]

Why not use vBouncer (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=83486)? I think there's an addon mod for it that will delete the users instead of just unsubscribing them.

[Alfa1]

Becaue I need it to work on vb 3.8
Plus PHPlist does lots more.

[TigerC10]

What else does PHPlist do that vBouncer doesn't?

[Alfa1]

Here is a list of features:
phplist Features

phplist is a one-way email announcement delivery system. It is great for newsletters, publicity lists, notifications, and many other uses. (It is different from group mailing list systems like mailman (http://www.phplist.com/t/%7Ehttp://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/index.html).)
The Web Interface lets you write and send messages, and manage phplist over the internet.
phplist keeps sending messages from your web server, even after you shut down your computer.
100 000 + subscribers. phplist is designed to manage mailing lists with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. phplist is excellent with smaller lists too!
No duplicate messages. No 'forgotten' messages. phplist manages message delivery with a message queue, ensuring that every subscriber gets the email message, and that no subscribers receive two copies, even if they're subscribed to more than one list!
Open/View Tracking tells you how many users opened your email message. This provides a minimum statistic, as many email clients with privacy or security policies block images (gmail, thunderbird, and others).
Click Tracking tracks links and URLs. Statistics can be viewed by message, URL or subscriber.
Multiple Subscribe Pages allow you to choose many different combinations of templates, languages, user attributes and lists.
Templates are completely customizable, and make site integration a breeze.
Multiple Templates on different subscribe pages can integrate phplist with several different web sites.
Subscriber Attributes like 'name', 'country', and other personal information, are completely customizable. You can specify what information you need to get from users when they subscribe.
User Specific Content. You can use Subscriber Attributes in message content to make each and every email message personalized with the subscribers name, country, or any other attribute.
HTML email messages. Subscribers can be given the choice between text or html email messages. You decide whether subscribers can choose, what the default choice is, and what format a message is sent in: text only, html only, or both!
The HTML Editor allows you to edit html messages from phplist using FCKeditor (http://www.phplist.com/t/%7Ehttp://www.fckeditor.net/). TinyMCE (http://www.phplist.com/t/%7Ehttp://tinymce.moxiecode.com/) is also available.
Internationalization. phplist is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Traditional Chinese, Dutch, Vietname and Japanese and translation work is in progress for other languages.
Easy Install via Fantastico (http://www.phplist.com/t/%7E/fantastico), FTP upload, or SSH.
Multiple List Administrators. The super-admin can assign lists to List Managers, who can manage their users and lists. The super-admin user can 'prepare' messages that can be sent by list managers to their lists.
Subscriber Preferences. Every email message contains personalized URLs for subscribers to update their preferences or unsubscribe. Subscribers can update their own information and keep your database up to date. Unlike most other mailing list managers, in phplist subscribers can change their email address.
The User Management tools are excellent to manage and maintain large databases of subscribers.
Bounce Processing keeps your database clean of unused and non-existent email addresses.
Advanced Bounce handling let's you teach phplist to distinguish between permanent and temporary message-delivery errors. You can define automated actions on receipt of bounce messages according to matches with your regular expressions.
CSV Import and Export. Use CSV and tab delimited files to import your existing list of users or to export the users on the phplist system for use in your in-house database. phplist's database has a 'foreign key' to help keep multiple copies of databases synchronized without duplicating users.
Attachments can be uploaded and included in messages for download.
Send a Web page. Tell phplist the URL of a web page you want to send to your users, and phplist will fetch it and send it. You can even put subscriber-specific parameters in the URL.
RSS feeds can be automatically sent to a mailing list weekly, daily, or monthly.
PDF messages can be automatically created and sent as attachments to ensure that your message is seen the way it was designed by all your subscribers, regardless of their email message reader.
Batch Processing is useful in shared hosting environments. Set the maximum number of sent messages in a given time period.
Throttling can limit the load on your server so it doesn't overload.
Domain Throttling limits the number of emails to specific domains to keep on the friendly side of their system administrators.
Scheduled Sending let's you tell phplist when the message is to be sent.
Repetition. A message can be repeated automatically to send updated dynamic content and attachments.
Text from HTML. Text email messages are managed fluently in phplist. phplist will automatically create a text version of an html message. Optionally the message composer can create it manually.
PGP signing and encrypting (soon).
Send your message digitally signed or encrypted, or both.
Email to Fax (soon).
Configure the details of your favourite email 2 fax gateway and phplist will send the HTML version of the message as a PDF attachment to your fax gateway. The fax will include the images in the HTML.
Integration with other tools. Several systems exist on the internet that integrate phplist with your favourite CMS or blogging tool. Check out the Documentation (http://docs.phplist.com/IntegratingPhpListWithOtherPackages) for a list.

[TigerC10]

Wow... At first I was going to offer to lend a hand with updating vBouncer to be more like PHPlist, but that's a lot more than I thought it was going to be. Might just be easier to start from scratch. You could post the request in the paid mod section.

[Alfa1]

well, i would be very happy if vbouncer works for vb 3.8. It would safe me a lot of work.

[mykkal]

In the phplist forums there are many that have integrated with PHPlist. http://www.phplist.com
It's easy to do these things with a simple SQL hook. But I haven't any Idea how to write an xml vBulletin plugin to do that.

[wouta]

I'm bussy whit a phplist intregation whit vb. Its my first that i make so it takes a well to make. Because i have to discover how the mod system works. But what i on the moment have:
- when a visitor creates a account the he can say yes / no to 1 mailing list (later more lists). I add the mail adress to phplist before they confirm they're account if conformation needed.
- In the usercp the user can set yes / no to the mailing list. I both cases PHPlist knows if the users is on or not on the mialing list

Todo:
- If a user change his email adres PHPlist also know the new email adres.
- testing and testing and more testing :eek:

P.S.
Sorry for my bad english

[mykkal]

There should also be an administrative list that the users can't unsubscribe from. This is legal, if you make it so deactivating their account removes them from this list.

Administrators have to be able to communicate security risks and major maintenance tasks... to users.

--------------- Added 1237728652 at 1237728652 ---------------

FYI, I can donate but I need to see a working beta, etc... first.

[wouta]

There should also be an administrative list that the users can't unsubscribe from. This is legal, if you make it so deactivating their account removes them from this list.

Yes, thats a good piont.


FYI, I can donate but I need to see a working beta, etc... first.
[/QUOTE]

Let we see if i have enough time to finsh it and after thatwe can talk about donation...

[mykkal]

ok.
awesome. just happy to to see someone capable creating a mod that will help the community become more effective. especially during these times.

Yes, thats a good piont.




Let we see if i have enough time to finsh it and after thatwe can talk about donation...[/quote]

[amjadz4]

Nice! Whats the progress so far? Anyone still doing it?

[vithorius]

Just what an excellent idea!!!

I would also like to know something more about the status about this phplist integration...!

[StonePilot]

I'm a big fan of PHPlist, but getting the mailing list out of vb and into PHPlist is a major headache...

[mykkal]

why? Phplist has a set of APIs built in. its that difficult?

[realchaos1]

I would like to see this project pick up again, wouta, can you release the alpha script under The GNU General Public License? Let it be open source, I'm sure more developers would be interested. I'd help with the project, I just need a starting point with an advanced developer.

[mykkal]

I would like to see this project pick up again, wouta, can you release the alpha script under The GNU General Public License? Let it be open source, I'm sure more developers would be interested. I'd help with the project, I just need a starting point with an advanced developer.

he worked on it... but it didn't work out. i think the project is over.

[StonePilot]

I would pay for an integration between vB and PHPlist. The end result would include me doing a minimal amount of work. I simply don't have time to figure out how to make the PHPlist API work properly, I need someone to do this and I will start a thread on the paid modification forum.

[Carnage]

I've done work with php list before; i'll take a look at what might be involved.

[ewelin]

I am also interested in such a mod and may assist with contributing to development depeding on the feature set.

[SHalliday]

I am very interested in seeing an integration mod developed for phplist and vbulletin. It is something I have wanted to add to my sites for a long time. This would be a great addon for vBulletin and will or donate to someone to develop it, if anyone is interested.

[Alfa1]

People seem to have different expectations of what such an integration should be. This ranges from merely a member integration (i.e. you can send emails to your members) to a complete integration including bounced email management.

I am interested in the bounced email management function as well.

[Carnage]

I'll give an idea of what I had in mind for this - I've not assessed how easy this would be to do but...


Use vbulletin user database for auth in phplist This has turned out to be a lot more work than its worth due to functions in phplist not working as documented This is back on the list due to a brainwave...
Allow users to subscribe to lists via usercp
Keep user data synced between the two programs
Pass information about bounced emails back to vbulletin


The last item is something i'm interested on views over - My instinct would be to unsubscribe the user from all lists after a certain number of bounces; however what to do on the vbulletin side of things is more tricky - should they be unsubscribed from everything there as well? should a flag be set on the user account? should they be set into the users awaiting email confirmation group?

Perhaps just call a script/function on the vbulletin side that will allow developers to write their own behaviours for this...

[Alfa1]

It depends on the bounce. If it is a permanent error, then move the user into the 'users awaiting email confirmation' usergroup. Otherwise it will only lead to more bounces and email providers banning your website.
Non-permantent errors, should only affect users if there are a number of bounces.

[Carnage]

I guess i'll have to confer more with you once i've got more progress on this.

Currently i've got phplists using vbulletin for authentification; however you have to login to the admin cp first otherwise you can't login. (just an issue with relative paths on the admincp login form)

Were there any other things in addition to what was on my list that you'd consider important?

[Alfa1]

Being able to select members based upon the same criteria, that vb's currently allows for sending email.

A supplementary feature that would be very nice is being able to include dynamic content from vbulletin into email messages. i.e. latest threads from forum x, y, z, blogs, group messages, etc.

[Carnage]

Bit of progress made; i have phplist seemingly happy to use vbulletin admin data instead of its own.

I've also got some level of syncronisation between vbulletin users and the phplist users

Newly registered users are added (but not subscribed)
Data is updated if a user changes email (currently left as confirmed thou)
User is deleted if the vbulletin user is deleted.


Matching is based on email address.

i'm working on bounce handling atm; i'm thinking that the best way would be to stick a cron job in vbulletin to just pull data from phplists and deal with it if need be. It would be very helpful if someone could give me some data from their bounce and user_message_bounce tables so that i've got some real data i can use to create test data from.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Thread cleaned. Please do not use this thread to advertise commercial modifications.

[Carnage]

mmmk, i've implemented bounce handling; however not having a live phplist installation i've nothing to test it on.

I've probably got enough code to release something soonish; however quite a bit of the code is still a mess.

[amjadz4]

mmmk, i've implemented bounce handling; however not having a live phplist installation i've nothing to test it on.

I've probably got enough code to release something soonish; however quite a bit of the code is still a mess.
Nice to hear that! I hope you will release it here in vb.org :) free ofcourse!

[akanevsky]

I have developed a phplist bridge.

[Carnage]

Difference being, your script is commercial, when i'm done It'll be released here for free.

[amjadz4]

Difference being, your script is commercial, when i'm done It'll be released here for free.
*thumbs up* way to go Carnage! "Believer of open source" :) just like everyone else...including me! hehe. I will surely donate you for this work!

[Carnage]

Its not so much open source (although open source is something I support), but the fact that software can't really be valued; read this for my outlook on things: http://www.giveupalready.com/blog.php?b=135

Better than a donation right now would be a little assistance with testing; I'll give you more information on this once i've got a little more work done.

[amjadz4]

Its not so much open source (although open source is something I support), but the fact that software can't really be valued; read this for my outlook on things: http://www.giveupalready.com/blog.php?b=135

Better than a donation right now would be a little assistance with testing; I'll give you more information on this once i've got a little more work done.
No problem, I will help you in testing and debugging. Just PM me. :)

[Carnage]

I've got a package ready to be alpha tested, If you are interested in helping out pm me.

[amjadz4]

Thanks, I will check it out and let you know!

[Hornstar]

I've got a package ready to be alpha tested, If you are interested in helping out pm me.

Of this list from Vision Scripts which can yours do currently:

General:
Automatically performs database synchronization from vBulletin to PHPlist.
Detects and handles excessive bounces, and moves these users to "Users Awaiting Email Confirmation," thereby disabling them from receiving mailing lists.
Allows to specify which usergroups can subscribe to and receive mailing lists.
Allows users to control their subscriptions from vBulletin.
Allows users to control whether they receive HTML or Plain Text from vBulletin.
Allows users to unsubscribe their e-mail from vBulletin.
Settings:
PHPlist Bridge Table Prefix (the prefix for PHPlist tables)
PHPlist Bridge Bounce Limit (bounce limit)
PHPlist Bridge Purge Contacts (whether to remove contacts who are not vBulletin users)

[Carnage]

The first two, technically the third as well.

I had a different aproach to the integration: letting phplist do most of the work.

General:

Provides single admin login to phplist/vb admincp ( i'll control this with vb admin perms before the mod goes 'gold')
Syncs DB with phplist when a user registers, changes email or is deleted. Also updates confirmed status if user is moved into/outof vb email confirmation group.
Provides mass import for users that already exist in vbulletin
Provides admin mass subscribe to list with options the same as the create mailing list page in vb.


The only settings are settings for table prefixes.

My bounce handling i think is more inteligant as well; it lets phplist decide what to do with a bounce then unconfirms the user vb side that way you dont need to duplicate settings between vb and phplist. I expect this could be expanded to ban/delete users send them a pm or many other options. I'm awaiting feedback from the alpha testers.

[ranz]

I'm also interested in this because I want something for my forum that enables users to unsubscribe to things like our mail-outs (newsletters, updates, etc) but not to the forum emails.

What stage are you up to Carnage? What an awesome thing you're doing!

Do you need any help? I can php/mysql and have some servers to test this on.

[Hornstar]

hows things going with this?

do you think I could hop on board with the testing?

[Carnage]

As i've not really gotten any feedback from testers, i'm going to post this here:

http://www.imhotek.net/phplist integration 0.1.zip

Installation instructions are in the package.

Once I get some indication as to how well its working, i'll fix bugs and release properly as a beta

[Alfa1]

Please provide a working link.

[Hornstar]

The link works, you just need to copy the link and paste it in since only half the link became a url. here is the full link

http://www.imhotek.net/phplist integration 0.1.zip

I'm installing this now. thanks.

[ranz]

A few important pointers to testers:

When you test this, it is STRONGLY recommended that you test this on a backup copy of your vbulletin site and database. Do not test this on a live system (yet).

If you download the integration script - you will need to also install phplist which you can download from their site (http://www.phplist.com/download).

http://www.phplist.com/download

[Hornstar]

I've finally had a chance to install it.

The auth part, is it meant to look like:

$vbadmindir = 'forums/admincp/';
$phplistadmindir = 'forums/lists/admin/';

or like:

$vbadmindir = '/home/buyhost/public_html/forums/admincp/';
$phplistadmindir = '/home/buyhost/public_html/forums/lists/admin/';

I tried the import and I got this database error:

MySQL Error : Table 'buyhost_forumdb.user' doesn't exist
Error Number : 1146

[ranz]

is the PHPList database in the same database as your VB?

this could be a little "wayward" - but looks as if the script only works with the phplist installed in the same database as vb? Is this correct Carnage?

[Hornstar]

I had installed it on a new database. I'll try again on the same database now.

[Carnage]

provided your vbulletin user has sufficient privs, specifying the prefix as 'otherdbname.' should allow it to work over two databases, i've not tested this thou.

For the auth part, i'd recomend absolute paths, however test it with relative ones and see if it still works.

[Hornstar]

Alright I will try and give this another go today (not sure I will have time tho) but I had to disable it yesterday because certain aspects in vbulletin were having database errors. (I was testing this on my low traffic site so I didn't mind.)

[Carnage]

How well is this working for people?

[Hornstar]

not to well because of my above problem, and then I was getting database errors around the site so I disabled it completely.

When I get time I will attempt to install it again.

[JWL]

Very Interested

Subscribed

Is this ready to be at least Trialed for Beta?

[LCN2007]

Im interested any updates?

[imedic]

Intrested too on the subject :)
I keep an eye on this, unfortunately I cannot help as my knowledge on programming is limited. :(

[Carnage]

JLW: its currently an alpha release; i've not had much time to work on it recently due to other work taking up my time. Once i get some feedback on it, i'll fix/tidy things up and release a beta. Alpha code is linked to in post #64

[LCN2007]

JLW: its currently an alpha release; i've not had much time to work on it recently due to other work taking up my time. Once i get some feedback on it, i'll fix/tidy things up and release a beta. Alpha code is linked to in post #64

Ill try and install this some time this week and give you some feed back.

--------------- Added 1249893905 at 1249893905 ---------------

Carnage-

Can you check the zip file, i am having a hard time unzipping it.

Its saying there is duplicate files and wont extract.

thanks

[Marco van Herwaarden]

If you have a product you want to share, please post it as a modification, please do not link to external sites. If the modification is still unfinsihed, you can always release it as a beta product.

[delmarva]

Looking forward to this!

[LCN2007]

We will be waiting for a while seems to have been abandoned :(

[Carnage]

Its not been abandoned, i've been busy.

With that in mind; see the hatchery in about 5 mins.

[KenDude]

Its not been abandoned, i've been busy.

With that in mind; see the hatchery in about 5 mins.

Whatever happened with this? I'm looking for a GAZ replacement so I'm looking at PHPList as a possibility but would need/want a bridge, and of course one that works. :)

[Hornstar]

Overall I just really hope that IB implement a better emailing system into the core of vbulletin so we do not have to rely on such bridges and other products.

I know Carnage did a great start on this one, but it looks like he has been busy with his knew Vb4 mods that he just released.

[Carnage]

<a href="https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=224963" target="_blank">https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=224963</a>

Code is attached; works on 3.7+ might work on 4 but its untested. As its not something i need for my own forums; at least not now, its a fairly low priority.