Letterman Newsletter




NOTE: As at 14/06/2007 a security release of the module has been made available. All users are advised to use mod_lettermansubscribe 1.2.5.
The older versions do work better as the 100 email spam is not present but I'm sure there are a lot of fixes and improvements in the newer versions - hopefully this bug will be fixed.
since jears people are using this component.
the reason why i am rating it with good, is that some new features would be very nice.
this software is working. it has the standard functionallities for a newsletter but some new, fresh things would be very nice.
The newsletters have to be created and sent manually. One great feature is you can add articles to the newsletter by clicking in a list.
However, I could not get it to actually send any newsletters. Development has recently been taken over by some other guys, and they seem to be working on version 2 rather than fixing version 1.
In the meantime, I recommend Communicator, which is exactly the same component - but it worked right away.
http://www.tritonlente.nlhttp://www.tritonlente.nl/index.php.....
Apart from the customization for the front-end appearance; I had to modify some PHP code as well as the language library file; in order to get it work the way I needed. But once all that is done - it works perfect!
It's a great component for anyone who wants to have a simple newsletter subscribe feature on his or her web site. I have to check and see how it works when sending out a newsletter email to a big group, like 500 people or so.
If anyone is having difficulties getting this component work, I'm willing to give a helping hand. Let me know.
Thanks,
-Sid
The problem (for me at least) was that my Joomla! created the database tables as collation: latin1_swedish_ci. When letterman tries to join one of its tables to a core joomla one, it gives:
#1267 - Illegal mix of collations (latin1_swedish_ci,IMPLICIT) and (latin1_general_ci,IMPLICIT) for operation '='
The fix is to go into your database using phpMyAdmin, and change the _letterman_* tables to the same collation as your joomla ones.
Hope that saves you trouble!
However, code hasn't been updated in a while. Not sure if that means the code is perfect or if the developer has quit this project.
I tried Acajoom and wasn't able to work through the wizard set-up and the logic behind that component. It wouldn't allow me to send a test mailing and edit the mailing prior to sending it.
Letterman on the other hand lets me do this in only a few straightforward steps. Download was easy enough, although it wasn't quite clear if the fix is a full version, or if one needs to first use the installer, and then the fix. Setting it up (configuration) is very straightforward and doesn't need any explanation. Building a recipient list is also very easy. Finally, creating a mailing is as easy as making an article.
Within a few minutes, your first mailing is sent out.
However: you don't have any influence in whether or not you wish your mailing to carry the unsubscribe footer. You can't define a text only mailing, you always have an HTML mailing with a text only alternative. It lacks the long list of features and very nice GUI of Acajoom, but it does exactly what it says it does.
Expect to get no support. The forums on the developers website are overrun with spammers so you can hardly look through them to find answers.
If you don't need all the bells and whistles and don't mind the project being dead then it's still a great component. I use it one two sites that I run, one sending out to 450+ and the other is in the works but it will be up to 2000 within a year.
-Grant
Project isn't dead although I can understand the comments in regards to the forum. Changes are afoot, version 2 is well underway and a new site is about t be launched.



