Size and efficiency of messaging for internal mailing lists ...

Three questions ...

1. Based on 0.95 MODx maturity, are there real-world limits on the number of members in a user group for sending emails efficiently, besides those imposed by ISPs and PHPMail, sendmail, etc? For instance, can I send an email usefully to 1,000 people? Yes, I know 1.0 will not only cure cancer and end global warming/cooling/whatever but automagically write as well as send email even before someone has decided one is needed .... Meanwhile ....

2. Will the message text area parse html correctly or does it handle plaintext only? This is a lazy question, I know, but I figure I’m sandwiching it between two others I cannot answer adequately.

3. Can users be imported into MODx in the Manager? Alternatively, how difficult would it be to import them directly into the database?

Partly, this has arisen from my frustration with trying to get the Koops list thingy to work. Mainly, the relative ease of doing the above, if feasible, would meet some other needs. Someday, I will join the illuminated ones who understand MODx <----> Koops over on its psychiatric support thread, but I hope it won’t be soon. The migraines are too painful ...

Quote from: RussLipton at Jan 13, 2007, 05:11 PM

1. Based on 0.95 MODx maturity, are there real-world limits on the number of members in a user group for sending emails efficiently, besides those imposed by ISPs and PHPMail, sendmail, etc? For instance, can I send an email usefully to 1,000 people? Yes, I know 1.0 will not only cure cancer and end global warming/cooling/whatever but automagically write as well as send email even before someone has decided one is needed .... Meanwhile ....

MODx is not mailing list software and will never be. I’d be inclined to say you need to outsource that kind of mailing list to a system that is built for dealing with all the problems that come with maintaining large mailing lists.

Sarcastic reference to 1.0 noted...

Quote from: RussLipton at Jan 13, 2007, 05:11 PM

2. Will the message text area parse html correctly or does it handle plaintext only? This is a lazy question, I know, but I figure I’m sandwiching it between two others I cannot answer adequately.

What message text area are we talking about? That completely depends on how the processing is done in PHP and what you present for the users to enter email. And also depends on the method used to send the email whether it can handle HTML.

Quote from: RussLipton at Jan 13, 2007, 05:11 PM

3. Can users be imported into MODx in the Manager? Alternatively, how difficult would it be to import them directly into the database?

There is a component in the repository for importing users...a quick search should turn up something.

Quote from: RussLipton at Jan 13, 2007, 05:11 PM

Partly, this has arisen from my frustration with trying to get the Koops list thingy to work. Mainly, the relative ease of doing the above, if feasible, would meet some other needs. Someday, I will join the illuminated ones who understand MODx <----> Koops over on its psychiatric support thread, but I hope it won’t be soon. The migraines are too painful ...

Sorry, I’m not familiar with what Koops is...or which thread you are referencing ?

@OpenGeek - Thanks much; will do some experimenting based on your replies. I hope you weren’t offended by 1.0 humor .... I continue to be nothing but impressed by yours (and everyone’s) work. Cheers!

UPDATE: WebusersImport may do the trick on that side (had never noticed before) - http://modxcms.com/WebusersImport-948.html.
However, 0.95 support has not been announced. Support thread here: http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,6863.0.html

UPDATE: Installed WebusersImport under 0.95 and imported four users from file without a hitch. The message area I was referring to is just the textarea for sending emails to user groups under ’Messages’ in Manager. This does support full HTML.

It would be very useful to be able to mail a document, complete with formatting, as a message to an internal user group. Two possible UI models:

1. Option to direct a document (from the document itself) for mailing; switch to the message module with document included for filling out of to; subject line?

2. Option to browse-select a document from the message module itself to serve as the content of the email.

Anyway, I’m sure this is so far below the radar as to be invisible; just a wish.

I’m a bit puzzled by OpenGeek’s comment about sending 1,000 emails. MODx is surely not a mailing list application but both Expression Engine (native) and Textpattern (plugin) support mailings of that magnitude - obviously in concert with appropriate ISP settings/limits. I would have thought that MODx was being tuned/used/targeted for large corporations? It is certainly valuable to have the option of sending mailings to groups and/or everyone at 1,000 employee-plus entities .... but I guess it really shouldn’t be done at this point within MODx itself.

Now, back to puzzling out the Koops Mailinglist module ...

KoopsMailinglist is a simple but rather nice mailing list script that I more-or-less shoehorned into a MODx snippet/module package. The snippet registers people (to both the MODx web user management system and the Koops independent manager system) while the module handles the Koops user management system and the writing and sending of the newsletters. It only handles a single list. One of These Days (tm) I’ll twist the subscriber part into using MODx users and group, and the newsletter editing part into using MODx documents.

If you are serious about mailing lists, I would recommend something along these lines http://www.mailbuild.com/. I’ve modded CubeCart and MODx to use it for a number of sites, with both a simple form pointing to them and with SOAP remote calls; PHP can have SOAP included, or the nuSOAP library works well. The eForm snippet lends itself well to making the SOAP calls.

I wasn’t aware that the internal messaging system in the MODx Manager had anything to do with email. I’ve never really looked that closely at it, but I always thought it was just a simple message system for manager users.

@Sottwell - thank you for your help. I am interested in Koops, but for overlapping, not identical reasons to my original post. I have checked out Mailbuild casually, but didn’t know anyone who had used it; thanks for the tip.

I could have been clearer about my own questions/point ... so:

For an intranet, I would really want a ManageruserImport resource; I am thinking this shouldn’t really be too hard to clone from WebusersImport, assuming the manager and web users tables are fairly similar. I’m only wanting to grab real name, user name, password, email ...l just what WebusersImport does.

Then, manager users can be assigned to various groups (employees; marketing; finance, etc) and given appropriate roles - which would include access to messages, of course.

Why bother? The ability to direct scads of CMS-managed documents to internal groups as email can be quite valuable; complementary as well as (sometimes) in parallel to an Intranet itself. Policy docs, human resources, department-specific communications with persistent value. Email is such a joke that I (as employee) would always look first to my MODx environment if I knew that this is where departmental messages were organized.

It’s true that I would also wish for the ability to direct such emails to web users as external mailing lists - for other purposes. Again, that wouldn’t seem to be too big a deal, feature-wise - while truly useful.

Of course, it’s up to sysadmins to ensure that MODx passes those messages to mail servers that will handle the desired load .... always a pain, but not rocket science.