XenForo Newsletter Design

[kensonplays]

How does one use the Email Users feature to write up, lay out, and send out a newsletter to the entire community?

I wonder if somehow Xon's BBCode Pages addon could be extended to design newsletter content?

What are your ideas and thoughts on how to make nice looking newsletters? I may do monthly newsletters or something so I do not annoy members with too many emails.

 

[Cedric]

We use DragonByte's mail add on: https://admin-junkies.com/dbtech-mail/

Works wonderful, tracks down the reads, and you're able to write and style as a normal post in XF.

 

[Spartan]

We use DragonByte's mail add on: https://admin-junkies.com/dbtech-mail/

Works wonderful, tracks down the reads, and you're able to write and style as a normal post in XF.

Looks great from a user view point too!

 

[SoluDome]

What are your ideas and thoughts on how to make nice looking newsletters? I may do monthly newsletters or something so I do not annoy members with too many emails.

You can import your users to this script and send newsletter via it. It is similar to sendy. You can design and create newsletters in this.

listmonk - Free and open source self-hosted newsletter, mailing list manager, and transactional mails

Send e-mail campaigns and transactional e-mails. High performance and features packed into one app.

listmonk.app

 

[kensonplays]

You can import your users to this script and send newsletter via it. It is similar to sendy. You can design and create newsletters in this.

listmonk - Free and open source self-hosted newsletter, mailing list manager, and transactional mails

Send e-mail campaigns and transactional e-mails. High performance and features packed into one app.

listmonk.app

I have looked into email hosts like amazon ses, but we have basically a dedicated server (public cloud with dedicated resources: 120gb ram, 32 core CPU). We should be able to send out emails via our own hosting.

We use DragonByte's mail add on: https://admin-junkies.com/dbtech-mail/

Works wonderful, tracks down the reads, and you're able to write and style as a normal post in XF.

Well, I'll have to save up for that, and it will likely take 2-3 months haha.

 

[SoluDome]

I have looked into email hosts like amazon ses, but we have basically a dedicated server (public cloud with dedicated resources: 120gb ram, 32 core CPU). We should be able to send out emails via our own hosting.

You can use your own SMTP in that script and send mails using your own server.

How many sites you are hosting on that server? Just wondering which site need that much resources

 

[kensonplays]

You can use your own SMTP in that script and send mails using your own server.

How many sites you are hosting on that server? Just wondering which site need that much resources

We have plans to run our company startup on it, providing tools for content creators and community managers. But we are still in the early development stages, and we reached out and the host was interested in our plans. I cannot say much at the moment, since we are not publicly launched yet.

 

[Tracy]

I have looked into email hosts like amazon ses, but we have basically a dedicated server (public cloud with dedicated resources: 120gb ram, 32 core CPU). We should be able to send out emails via our own hosting.

It's a little more involved in that... MTA reputation (and ability for reliable delivery) will play a big part... and without having an infrastructure in place to handle bounced and such... you can REALLY trash your sending MTA IP if you don't know what you are doing.
I don't remember what hosting provider y'all were with.. but I do remember it was one that had IP reputation issues when being used for email deliveryability.

 

[kensonplays]

It's a little more involved in that... MTA reputation (and ability for reliable delivery) will play a big part... and without having an infrastructure in place to handle bounced and such... you can REALLY trash your sending MTA IP if you don't know what you are doing.
I don't remember what hosting provider y'all were with.. but I do remember it was one that had IP reputation issues when being used for email deliveryability.

We are getting a second, fresh IP (not previously used) primarily for email purposes. I do not do any of the technical behind-the-scenes stuff, that is all our co-founder of the company we are starting up. He does all the technical stuff, leads development, etc. I primarily work on managing things like the company Discord, outreach to people that seem interested, etc.

 

[Tracy]

We are getting a second, fresh IP (not previously used) primarily for email purposes

Sorry.... those stopped existing years ago.
I promise you.. if it's IPv4... it's been used, and if if is from DO/LiNode/OVH or similar... it's probably been trashed at one time or another. Before y'all start using it, you want to check to make sure it's clean.

I do not do any of the technical behind-the-scenes stuff,

it will still behoove you to remind him/her/them of that....it's something that some forget to do in the rush to get the "nitty gritties" done.

 

[kensonplays]

Sorry.... those stopped existing years ago.
I promise you.. if it's IPv4... it's been used, and if if is from DO/LiNode/OVH or similar... it's probably been trashed at one time or another. Before y'all start using it, you want to check to make sure it's clean.

it will still behoove you to remind him/her/them of that....it's something that some forget to do in the rush to get the "nitty gritties" done.

Tried figuring out Amazon SES, pretty confusing to me. Followed a sample (with my own SMTP & login & 587 port) from here: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/configure-amazon-ses-in-our-xenforo-forum.205540/

It is failing to send still, so yea, I have literally no idea how to fix. This is going over my head and cannot figure out how to get it working.

Considering disabling regular registration and ONLY allowing social registration just to stop this annoying headache from keeping happening lol.

 

[Tracy]

Problem with SES right now is some are having difficulty getting approved.. you have to word your "reasoning" very carefully, and explain that it's being used for transactional email and note how the bounce/unsubscribe is handled normally.
If you are using cpanel and have set it up correctly.. you should already have a MTA running and be able to configure for your domain to send/receive. Usually the biggest issue using SMTP are making sure you have the correct username for the email (generally you do have to use your [email protected] format for it and then the port/SSL or TLS. That can only be determined by what you set cPanel up to run on.
As I have commented in the past... the email aspect, especially if trying to serve it yourself or going with an outside provider that takes detailed configuration... is not the easiest thing to do. For some reason, admins tend to associate it with being as easy as their "personal email" to set up... but it involves a tad bit more in many cases.

 

[kensonplays]

Problem with SES right now is some are having difficulty getting approved.. you have to word your "reasoning" very carefully, and explain that it's being used for transactional email and note how the bounce/unsubscribe is handled normally.
If you are using cpanel and have set it up correctly.. you should already have a MTA running and be able to configure for your domain to send/receive. Usually the biggest issue using SMTP are making sure you have the correct username for the email (generally you do have to use your [email protected] format for it and then the port/SSL or TLS. That can only be determined by what you set cPanel up to run on.
As I have commented in the past... the email aspect, especially if trying to serve it yourself or going with an outside provider that takes detailed configuration... is not the easiest thing to do. For some reason, admins tend to associate it with being as easy as their "personal email" to set up... but it involves a tad bit more in many cases.

I have stopforumspam (moderate @ 1; reject @ 2) and honeypot (req approved by admin if denied) both enabled, cloudflare turnstile captcha. Would that be a decent enough antispam to turn off email confirmation for the account? Then one less problem to resolve, since users could just turn on push notifications if they want to be notified, etc.

 

[Tracy]

I have stopforumspam (moderate @ 1; reject @ 2) and honeypot (req approved by admin if denied) both enabled, cloudflare turnstile captcha. Would that be a decent enough antispam to turn off email confirmation for the account? Then one less problem to resolve, since users could just turn on push notifications if they want to be notified, etc.

I wouldn't... there are a few paid add-ons that would do more.
There is also an XF add-on that allows you to pick what two fields to reject upon (I exclude username and only base it upon IP and email). Same for the 1 moderate.. it's either IP or email, and ignore the username.
The add-on is called StopForumSpam Selector and shoudl be available on the XF site in the resources.

 

[kensonplays]

a few paid add-ons

Cannot afford more paid addons at the moment, friend loaned me the money for XF renewal and AndyB's site renewal. But rest was going to a PC upgrade of his.

Would StopForumSpam Selector be good enough a replacement to the paid addon? Since I cannot afford new addons for a couple months most likely. We have been trying all sorts of different fixes and none are really working haha.

 

[Tracy]

Would StopForumSpam Selector be good enough a replacement to the paid addon? Since I cannot afford new addons for a couple months most likely. We have been trying all sorts of different fixes and none are really working haha.

I don't use the paid add-on... and I get the occasional spammer that gets through (in fact just had one from Russia that triggered a known XF bug that you can apply a fix for but have to wait until whenever they release the next version to get it normally). You can't catch all of them. But I also do some other filtering at the CloudFlare level that kills a lot of the traffic routes that spammers typically use to connect.

 

[kensonplays]

I don't use the paid add-on... and I get the occasional spammer that gets through (in fact just had one from Russia that triggered a known XF bug that you can apply a fix for but have to wait until whenever they release the next version to get it normally). You can't catch all of them. But I also do some other filtering at the CloudFlare level that kills a lot of the traffic routes that spammers typically use to connect.

I turned bot blocker off on CF since it broke RSS feeds for some reason. IFTTT was not triggering, kept saying the feed was blocked. Unless I can allow IFTTT and discord bots to read RSS, I cannot have the bad bot blocker on cloudflare. :/

 

[Tracy]

IFTTT was not triggering, kept saying the feed was blocked. Unless I can allow IFTTT and discord bots to read RSS, I cannot have the bad bot blocker on cloudflare. :/

Even if you have the bad bot blocker turned on... you should have been able to create specific WAF rules (which is normally where those come into effect) that specifically allowed those bots through. Did you have your WAF rules set to allow known bots through?

 

[kensonplays]

Even if you have the bad bot blocker turned on... you should have been able to create specific WAF rules (which is normally where those come into effect) that specifically allowed those bots through. Did you have your WAF rules set to allow known bots through?

View attachment 2087

Set that up and changed the order to this. I could probs re-enable bot blocker and remove #2?:

 

[Empire]

Maybe out of topic, but I use SendGrid Still, use your newsletter system addon or whatnot but with SendGrid it releases the job load from your server outside of the room to handle it all I'm using the free account at the moment that only allows 100 a month, that's enough for members to get emails for new accounts or password changes and whatnot.

I like it and it's simple and also no more emails going into SPAM Ohhhhhh Yeahhhhhh