How to set up mailing lists?

This article explains how to add mailing lists to different sections in your Saurus CMS website. Mailing list allows to automatically send one or more articles to registered users simply by publishing an article. Setting up a mailing list is explained in detail below. At first a short overview of what to look for and who can change it:

  • registered user must have a valid email address (admin / user)
  • mailing list must be enabled in configuration (admin)
  • section must be designated as mailing list (editor / admin)
  • user must be subscribed to mailing list (admin / user)
  • article must be published (editor / admin)

 

Step 1. Enable mailing list in configuration

Enabling mailing list is done through website admin section: open up the "System > Configuration" page and locate the "Mailing list" section. Set the option "Enable mailing lists" to "Yes".

 

It's a good idea to also fill "Sender address" with a valid email address, enabling recipients to reply. It can be left blank, in which case the default value is used - "your@yourdomain.com".

 

Step 2. Add section to mailing list

Adding particular section to mailing list is done through the section editor. Set the option "Add mailinglist" to checked. You might have to click "Advanced" first if you have Saurus CMS version 4.5.2 or newer.

 

 

Step 3. Subscribing to mailing list

Adding user to a mailing list can be done either by registered user himself by subscribing or in the website admin section by administrator.

Subscribing to mailing list as registered user:

Log in with your registered user credentials, open up registration page (usually via link ?op=register) and check in the appropriate check boxes:

 

Subscribing users to mailing list as administrator:

Open up the "Tools > People" page, select a person you wish to add to a mailing list and click "Change" on toolbar. Navigate to tab "Mailing list" and select mailing list(s) for this user.

 

Step 4. How articles are included in mailing list

When you create a new article under a section that is part of a mailing list then it will be automatically part of the mailing list, so there is no actual need to add the articles to mailing list manually. But in some cases you may need to remove an article from mailing list before sending it out or re-send it.

Write an article as usual, but make sure the option "Add mailinglist" is checked in article editor. It's best to keep an article in "unpublished" state until you are certain that it's ready for publishing. An article can only be sent to mailing list once upon publishing. Later changes to same article will not go out to mailing list.

 

Final step is to publish the article. Depending on configuration options, it will either be sent out immediately or after a certain period.

 

Configuration options

There is a variety of configuration options for mailing lists.

 

While most options are self-explanatory, the custom header and footer can be used in couple of different ways. Both these fields can contain a plaintext message, which will be added to emails that are sent out using mailing list. But these fields can also contain HTML. Following example shows one way:

Custom header : <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/css/newsletter.css"><div id=MainContainer><div id=MailHeader></div><a href="http://www.yourdomain.com" target=_blank id=HomeUrl>www.yourdomain.com</a><div id=Content>

Cusom footer: </div><div id=Footer>This e-mail was sent to you by Yourdomains web site. To unsubscribe, please click this <a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/something">link</a>.</div></div>