[lists]

[Send a message]

This is where you will spend most of your time when composing your newsletters. There are several tabs which manage different parts of message....

• [Content] NB: The main message creation window.
• [Format] for selecting newsletter template and format. Leave as is unless you have multiple templates to choose from.
• [Scheduling] sets date and time for message, defaults to current date and time which is fine for most messages.
• [Criteria] only relevant if attributes have been assigned to list members.
• [Lists] NB: where you select which lists will receive message and add message to send queue.
• [Misc] NB: handy for specifying an email address for notifications of message send progress.

The [Content] tab is the default tab and is where most of the action is. You need to specify the "Subject" line that will appear in the email and also the "From" email address which will be where any replies to the newsletter are sent. The "Message" box is where you type or paste in your message content. The message box has many sexy formatting options courtesy of the WYSWIWYG javascript editor.

We reccommend that you only use the basic formating commands such as... text Bold/Italic/Inderline, lists, text alignment and links. Remember that your message content is inserted into a template which typicaly controls most of your formatting requirements.

NB: If you paste your message from a text editor or word processor be sure to use the icons provided for that purpose by the javascript editor or you will end up with a soup of previously invisible formating commands. If this still does not work then paste your message into Notepad or some other plain text editor and then cut and paste from there to message block.

When you are happy with your message or just dont want to lose the content, click the "Save changes" button at bottom of page. This will create a "Draft" message which you can return to at a later stage using the [Messages] menu option.

To queue the message for sending click on the [Lists] tab and specify what lists you want to send message to... then ALLWAYS click "Send Test Message" to a valid entered email address so you can see what message will actually look like once added to your template. Then check your email and make sure all OK!

Now you can click "Send Message to the Selected Mailinglists" button. NB: this places the message in the send queue but does not actually send the message! The message sending process only starts when you click the [process queue] menu option.

[Users, manage users, subscribe pages]

It is unlikely that you will ever need to use these options. Feel free to look around but be VERY careful you do not modify anything!

[messages]

This is where you can view all messages "sent", saved as "draft", or "queued" for sending.

The "sent" tab shows all messages sent with summary statistics. The following links are available with further info...

• view : see the actual message
• requeue : powerful function to resend message to subscribers who have joined lists after the original message was sent.
• edit : edit the message before requeue option used if you want to slightly change the content
• click stats : will display statistic on any links in the message that were clicked by users
• delete : remove the message permanently

The "draft" tab shows any messages that you have saved. To send a draft message to a list click the "edit" link on right of page and then proceed as detailed above in [send a message] menu option.

The "queued" tab shows any messages that you have clicked "Send Message to the Selected Mailinglists" button for. These message will be sent when you select [process queue] menu option.

[statistics]

This is an alternative entry point to viewing message viewing statistics as well as generalised stats where links are common to multiple messages. Great to get a feel for what your message recipients find most interesting.

[templates]

This is where message templates are managed. Feel free to look around but be VERY careful you do not modify anything!

[process queue]

This will actually process the messages that you have clicked "Send Message to the Selected Mailinglists" for. The reason for the confusing button text is that in many PHPlist installations there is a background process that will process the message queue every hour or some other interval.

At this point make yourself a cup of coffee and relax as depending on the size of your list it could take some time. The average send rate is one email every 3 seconds. There is no need to keep the browser window open as you can return later and view the message send stats using the [messages] menu option.

[process bounces]

Often users will supply invalid email addresses by accident or on purpose in the case of spammers. When PHPlist attempts to send to an invalid email address (or a full mailbox) then the message bounces. If an email address bounces more than 5 times the user status is changed to UNconfirmed which means that they will no longer be sent emails.

It is a good idea to select this option periodically (say every time before you select [process queue] option) as this will stop repeated sends to invalid email addresses which can accumulate over time.

[view bounces, eventlog]

Mostly geek stuff that Seriti will handle for you when we do periodic system health checks!