v11.14.0 of Dada Mail comes with a few new features you’ll find useful, including:
Continue reading…Dada Mail’s Auto Image Resizing Features
Dada Mail will automatically resize images that are included in your HTML messages for you. This helps with keeping your overall mailing list message size smaller, which itself makes sending and receiving faster.
In your list control panel, look under Mass Mailing: Options – Images and Attachments:
This section allows you to enable/disable this feature, and set what size images should be resized to (anything narrower than the limit will be left alone).
Dada Mail usually does the resizing right before sending out your mass mailing, but there is an option to resize images you drag and drop into the rich text editor right away.
For more information on how to use the Images and Attachments options, as well as all the other options on this screen, check out the Dada Mail Manual, that comes with Pro Dada. This chapter has recently been revised and updated to include all the new options that have been added to Dada Mail 11.
Dada Mail v11.12.1 Released
This is mostly a bug-fix release for issues found in the v11.12.0 release of Dada Mail.
Bugfixes
Image resizing using Image::Scale does not work correctly
https://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/989
Recurring schedules that grab content from an outside source (webpage, feed) which fail during constructing and sending still update MD5
https://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/986
Content-Encoding never changed in messages received via Bridge
https://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/985
Recurring Schedules that end many decades into the future are slow to process
Dada Mail v11.12.0 Released
>>> Download Dada Mail here <<<
Focus
This is a major feature release.
Features
Auto-Image Resizing now available for all mailing list messages
Resizing images automatically allows you to skip the step of optimizing images for email. You may have on hand a high resolution image, but that image is most likely going to be too large in both file size and image dimensions to be realistic to be used in an email message. Sending it will no doubt blow out any layout/design you have, and force your subscribers to endure downloading such a large image. Sending out an message with large images will also take longer than you most likely would prefer as well.
Email resizing has been available in Dada Mail, but only for images that were dragged and dropped into the rich text editor, limiting it’s utility. For example, what if you have a discussion list using the Bridge plugin, and users are sending messages with too-large images that way? What if you’re grabbing the content of your mass mailing from a URL or a blog’s feed?
Starting with this release, all images that are embedded in a mailing list message will now be resized. Look for this and related options in the list control panel under, Mass Mailing: Options: Images and Attachments:
Embed images within HTML Messages
Check this option to embed images (default: checked). Embedded images have a better chance to be shown to your subscribers in their mail reader, rather than merely linking to the images – linked images are often times blocked to be shown by your mail reader. The more images you embed, the larger the total size of your message. Large messages will take longer to send, and longer for your subscribers to to download/view.
Enter auto-resizing these embedded images:
Resize embedded images
Check this option to resize embdedded images (default: checked). Resizing images can help keep message size low. There’s no reason to embed a two meg image, but it’s not always obvious how large an image is to some users (nor should it be). Dada Mail can now handle this chore for you.
Image Width Limit (pixels):
This is where you can set the image width limit. The default is, 580 pixels, which is how wide the main area for your message content is in the included mass mailing layouts are that come with Dada Mail. Any image wider will just be responsively shrunk anyways (well, sometimes the results looks way funky), so there’s just no reason to use an image that’s wider.
Resize drag-and-drop images
(default: checked). Check this option to resize drag and dropped images, as soon as they’re uploaded. Images added to your message in any other way will be resized (if needed) when a message is sent out, so you won’t see the resized image in the rich text editor. The original image you dragged/dropped will be saved in Dada Mail’s file upload directory, as well as the resized version, when you do this, just in case you want the original image for some reason.
More on image resizing
To accomplish image resizing, one of the following Perl CPAN modules will need to be available:
- Image::Scale
- Image::Resize
- Image::Magick
If you need to, you can install any (or all!) of these modules separately, or just install/upgrade the Bundle::DadaMail module.
Message Size
You can now set a limit on how large a mass mailing message can be. Setting a message size limit helps keep a practical and realistic size to messages, so you’re not try to send out enormous messages to thousands of people. Services like Amazon SES do have a limit on how large an email message can be (10 megabytes)
The default mass mailing size limit is 10 megabytes, which is very, very roomy. This limit is enabled by default, and covers both messages sent through the list control panel, as well as via Bridge. Bridge DOES have it’s own soft and max size limits for messages it receives. These limits could be higher than the max message size, and that’s OK, as transformations of the message received – like resizing of images, or stripping of attachments could lower the final file size.
Mass Mailing Schedules Enhancements
Week of the Month
You can now set which week of the month a recurring scheduled mailing will be sent on (first, second, third, fourth, or fifth week of the month). For example, you may now set a schedule to send your message on only the first Monday of each month – a message sent once a month, rather than 4/5 times a month.
Scheduled Mass Mailing Preview Calendar
To help understand when scheduled messages will be sent out, a calendar can now be access that shows when a mass mailing should go out. Click on the button labeled, Save + View Recurring Schedule in Calendar. The calendar will be shown in a separate window.
Mass Mailing from RSS/Atom feed enhancements
Dada Mail can create a mass mailing from a feed that is produced by something like a blog.
There may be content of the feed that you would rather not have part of the message, and now you may specific which parts you’d like to skip over. Check the option, Remove content found between the following id/class:
Then select either a class or id to look for, and the name of those id’s or classes.
Moderation Enhancements
Discussion messages in Dada Mail can be optionally moderated by a sublist of moderators. In this version, the moderator who took action towards the message, either approve the message, or deny the message is noted in the logs. This can help answer the question of, “who confirmed/denied this message?!” and hopefully stop any fires that started if the decision was critical to some of the other moderators.
Changes
CKEditor Upgraded to, v4.15
Timezone show in the UI
Setting a time zone shown in the list control panel will be added in a future release, but for now, the server’s time zone is now exposed to the user via the UI to help them understand what time of day the app is running (and help the user compare that time to local time)
Dada Mail v11.11.3 Released
Focus
This is mostly a bug-fix release for issues found in the v11.11.2 release of Dada Mail.
Bugfixes
Former subscriber always receives, “unsubscription successful” email notifications when unsubscriptions are approved
https://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/974
Selecting, “Send to Testers sublist (n address(es)) ” for Drafts, etc does not ever work – tests only go to List Owner
https://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/973
Comma on the end of line 2462 of Guts.pm is a SQL syntax error
https://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/970
Saving Settings w/password for multiple lists at once breaks the password
v11.11.x Features: Using the new Landing Page Subscription Form Options
Dada Mail supports a variety of ways to add a subscription form to your site. From having simple HTML code blocks to copy and then paste into your own page’s HTML, to Javascript-backed forms that show the results in a modal window, to RESTful API’s to roll your own subscription schemes – there’s a lot of options.
We’re going to talk about one of the easiest ways to integrate a subscription form into your site: using one of the landing pages.
Dada Mail has the ability to just show the subscription form in a web browser and nothing else. Using these landing pages just means creating a link to the page and having your visitors visit it.
Advantages of linking to the subscription page include never having to update the subscription form itself when you change the list settings. As long as the list exists, the subscription form on this outside page should always work.
Another advantage is that you could embed/include this subscription landing page into a modal window that pops up using Javascript, and know that everything that needs to be there, will already be there with no additional coding.
If you’re using a platform like WordPress, there’s a variety of plugins that’ll allow you to create a modal window, and add the subscription form into it just by giving the plugin the landing page’s URL. Dada Mail also comes with the ability to set up its own modal window,and below we’ll show you how that works.
Log into the list control panel of the list you want to work with. Navigate to, Appearance: Subscription Form HTML. The first tab is what we want, labeled: Landing Page. From here, there’s two options. The first, Full Landing Page, will show the subscription form with the full layout/design of the screen, as well as the subscription form itself. Here’s an example from our own mailing list:
https://dadamailproject.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/subscribe_landing/dada_announce/
The second option is what we’re more interested in: Just The Subscription Form:
https://dadamailproject.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/modal_subscribe_landing/dada_announce/
This will show well: just the subscription form, and nothing else. This is what can then be easily added to a modal window that you then pop out using an outside JavaScript library or platform plugin (among other options that may be available to you).
Dada Mail comes with just such a Javascript library called, lity. We chose to include it in our distribution of Dada Mail, because it was small, lightweight, and didn’t come with too many prerequisites, which makes it easier for you to utilize it yourself.
Dada Mail presents you with all the code you’ll need to wrangle both lity’s popup modal window and Dada Mail’s subscription form in the landing page. It’ll also show you a working preview. (click, View Working Preview…). Use as-is, or adjust to taste.
You can see this being used on our own website (as of this writing – we may redesign soon!) – go to: https://dadamailproject.com/ and click on the image labeled, Subscribe and Receive Dada Mail News and Updates.
When you do, the modal window provided by lity will pop up, with the subscription form created by Dada Mail!
But of course, you can use this landing page however you’d like. Let’s use a WordPress plugin, called WP Post Popup. Once installed and activated, you can turn any link into a modal window. In this example, we just have to add the CSS class, “modal-link” into the link tag that’s pointed to our landing page URL:
<a href="https://dadamailproject.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/modal_subscribe_landing/dada_announce/" class="modal-link" >
Here's an example
</a>And here’s that HTML code working in our own WordPress blog:
Here’s the working example.
And that’s all there is to it! Of course there are other plugins that may do more sophisticated jobs, but may need a bit more setup to do so. We encourage you to see what plugin options are there for you to take advantage of.
v11.11.x Features: Scheduled Mailings Enhancements
Dada Mail v11.11.x is packed with new features. In this blog post, we’re going to look at the enhancements to scheduled mailings.
Scheduled Mailings allows you to author a mass mailing to be sent out at a later date – either as a one-time mass mailing, or a mass mailing that’s repeated on a ongoing schedule.
There’s a few ways you can create a scheduled mass mailing, including turning any draft message into a scheduled mass mailing. When your authoring your draft message, look for the button on the top of the screen labeled, Save as: Schedule.
You can also create a Schedule Mailing from anew. Under, Mass Mailing All Drafts/Stationery/Schedules, click on the tab labeled, Schedules, then click on the button labeled, + New Schedule,
Whichever way you create a scheduled mailing, the scheduled mailing authoring screen looks a lot like the screen to create and then send a draft message, except for the additional options above:
In this blog post, we’re going to talk about the last three (new!) options and what they do.
Test Mode: only send a schedule mailing to test recipients
Dada Mail already allows you to test a scheduled message – just click the button on top labeled, Send Test,
A test mass mailing message will be sent out immediately.
This new option, when enabled, does something a little different. Instead of sending a test message right away, the scheduled mailing will only go to test recipients when the schedule itself is set to go out, thereby allowing you to make sure the scheduling is working, and not just test to see if a message can be sent out/looks good in your mail reader.
So, if you’re schedule is set to be sent next Wednesday, that’s when your test recipients – and not your mailing list subscribers, will receive the scheduled mailing. This can be useful to make sure that (for example), your recurring schedule is firing off correctly. One reason a schedule is not being fired off correctly is if the cronjob for Dada Mail has not been set, and that’s the first thing I would do when debugging a problem like this.
Test recipients can be set in the authoring screen. Click the, Options tab, then the, Testing tab. Dada Mail should give you the option to either list addresses you would like send a test message, or to use the Testers sublist, the latter of which can be reused for multiple drafts/schedules.
Curious about the different ways to send a test message? See our blog post about Test recipients: New in v11.5.0: Send Test Mass Mailings to Multiple Recipients.
Send email notification to List Owner when the scheduled mailing goes out
When enabled, this option tells Dada Mail to send a notification email directly to the email stating, “Hey! That scheduled mass mailing you set up? It’s sending!“. This can help confirm that everything is running properly. Here’s what that email looks like,
Send email notification to List Owner if a problem occurs
Just like the, “success” email notification, this option will send out an email notification if a scheduled mass mailing didn’t send out correctly. Hopefully, that email notification will also give clues as to why things didn’t get sent out. Here’s one example:
In this example, it’s the URL we’ve set to fetch the content of the HTML message (https://sdafkljsdflkjadsflkjasdlfkjalsdkfjlasdkjflkfdsj.com). It seems Dada Mail is having trouble fetching it (surprising, for sure!).
URLs in scheduled mass mailings can be useful, as the content fetched from the URL can change/be dynamic, so every time you send say, a recurring mass mailing, your message will also be unique. To build on that, Dada Mail can also send out a message based on an RSS feed, and also only if the content differs from the last message sent in the schedule.
See our blog post: Use Dada Mail to create a mass mailing from a blog feed, then send it on a recurring schedule, to see a walk through on how this works.
So that’s some of the new features found for scheduled mailings. In future blog posts, we’ll go over some other features that make their debut in v11.11.x of Dada Mail.
Important Information on Amazon SES and Dada Mail
Long story short: Upgrade! Amazon AWS is deprecated support for an important part of Amazon SES that Dada Mail relies on. v11.10.3 of Dada Mail and later adds the support for what’s now needed.
v11.10.3 of Dada Mail has just come out, and with it is support for something called Amazon AWS Signature Version 4. Long story short, it’s a way to sign/authenticate the email messages Dada Mail sends to Amazon SES, so that it knows that you’re allowed to send out messages. Technical information can be found here. Up until v11.10.3, Dada Mail only supported Signature Version 3 (and below). On September 30th, 2020 Amazon AWS will deprecate the support for Version 3 and below, and you’ll have to use Version 4.
If you’re running Dada Mail and utilizing Amazon SES, what are your options to continue to use the service?
Upgrade
The best thing to do is upgrade to the most recent version of Dada Mail – anything at or above version 11.10.3 will have the needed support to properly use Amazon SES moving forward. If you don’t know how, or don’t want to upgrade yourself, we do have services to do the upgrade for you. If you would like to do it yourself, we have docs on how to do that, too. Once you’ve done the upgrade, there’s nothing extra you’ll have to do to continue using Amazon SES moving forward.
Switch to the SMTP Gateway
With the deprecation of Signature Version 3, the API for Amazon SES won’t work in any version of Dada Mail prior to v11.10.3. But, you could still using the SMTP Gateway that Amazon SES provides. Before trying this, make sure that the correct ports are opened for outgoing communication (587 is recommended, but port 25 may also be used).
Patch Your Own Copy of Dada Mail
We’ll label this as a hack, mostly because it’s not been tested all that much, but should work, regardless. Just make sure that the version of Dada Mail you’re running is reasonably new – anything from v9 – v11 should have a good chance that this should be successful.
To do this hack, you’ll need to copy over two files from the most recent version of Dada Mail, to your running copy of Dada Mail. Here they are:
It’s VERY important to preserve the file path location. “Signature4.pm” doesn’t exist in any version of Dada Mail prior to v11.10.3, so it’s parent directory, “AWS” and the file itself will need to be created. “SES.pm” does exist in older versions of Dada Mail, and you’ll want to overwrite what’s in there.
If you’re stuck with not being able to upgrade, and cannot get this hack to work, contact us and we can apply this patch for a nominal cost.
Questions? Reply to this blog post, or post onto our support forum.
Happy Sending!
v11.10.0 brings reCAPTCHA v3 support and more Tracker analytics
v11.10.0 has recently been released. Download and Install! Here’s what’s new to look out for:
reCAPTCHA v3 Support
Google’s reCAPTCHA system helps keep abuse of the app to a minimum. It’s the best tool you’ve got for the job to stop the process of a web bot submitting forms with garbage information. v2 of reCAPTCHA works great, but does require your users to check a box, and perhaps even solve a CAPTCHA puzzle, which is yet another barrier between them and subscribing to your mailing list.
v3 does away with the checkbox, and handles verification based on a number of things, including reputation of the user. No checkbox will be visible, but you’ll see the floating reCAPTCHA badge on the lower right hand side of the screen:
reCAPTCHA is used in the following areas of the app:
- Initial subscription form
- Resend Subscription confirmation form
- After a successful subscription confirmation
- Reset mailing list password
- Forward to a friend form
- Profile registration
- Logging into a mailing list
- Creating a new mailing list
- Deleting a mailing list
The last three being new to v11.10.0.
Configuring reCAPTCHA Dada Mail is done through the Dada Mail Installer. See the documentation for the installer itself for details.
Mass Mailing Sending Details Logged and Reported
The start time, finish time, sending method, and message size are now logged and reported for each mass mailing. This information is available in the Tracker plugin for each individual mass mailing.
This information can be used to help draw relationships on things like sending speed vs. message size (bigger the message, the slower the sending generally), or sending method and all the other analytics (opens, clickthroughs, bounces) and help draw conclusions (is Amazon SES causing better deliverability?).
Tracker Enhancements, Better Charts, and Unique Clickthrough/Opens Tracking/Reporting is Back
Rejoice! The Tracker plugin has been given a wonderful refresh. The new chart on the main Tracker screen is now more useful, easier to read, and better designed:
Tracking and reporting unique Opens and Clickthroughs has also been re-implemented, this time using completely anonymous data. When we released v11.0, we removed this ability to comply with the GDPR, as we also tracked the email addresses with the opens + clickthroughs. For this version of Dada Mail, we don’t – all this data is tracked without using Personally Identifying Information.
The table below this chart has also been redesigned to show a greater amount of useful information, to help you see just how impactful your mass mailings are.
To see even more data on each individual mass mailing, click the chart icons on the left hand side of each row. Reports on message recipients, opens, clickthroughs, unsubscribes, bounces, sending errors, abuse reports, archive views, and mail forwards will be available to you.
We’ve also updated the chapter for using the Tracker plugin that’s available in the Dada Mail Manual. Access to the Dada Mail Manual is given to Pro Dada Subscribers.
Find out more about the Dada Mail Manual and getting a Pro Dada Subscription.