SunMailer Newsletter

SunMailer is an email newsletter module that aggregates content using views from the Views module. Once configured and scheduled, it can automatically send newsletters on a recurring basis without any user intervention. It originated as a project for The Cornell Daily Sun, hence the name SunMailer.

Scroll down to SunMailer 6.x-2.x Notes for more information about the next major release of SunMailer.

Features

• Automatically aggregates content, sends the newsletter, and removes sent content from future newsletters (the newsletter can also be manually sent)
• Newsletter can be split into multiple sections that can be individually subscribed to
• Users can individually subscribe, or subscriptions can be managed via user roles
• Supports both text and HTML emails
• Can send a custom email message to all subscribers
• Full documentation included when Advanced help is installed
• Subscription statistics
• Alternate text body for HTML emails (useful for text-only email clients, e.g., mobile phones)
• SMTP support, including authentication, SSL, and TLS

Customizing the newsletter

SunMailer generates the newsletter by first generating XML and then translating it to text or HTML via XSLT. It comes with two XSL files, one for a text newsletter and one for an HTML newsletter.

The XML includes both basic information about each node as well as the rendered values of any fields provided by the view which generated the node. Alter hooks are provided to further modify the XML.

The two included XSL files only use the basic information provided for each node, but additional XSL files can be uploaded via the module's user interface to redesign the existing text or HTML newsletter or add brand new designs.

Requirements

In addition to PHP 5.2 or higher, SunMailer requires PHP's XSL extension and a third-party library named PHPMailer. It generally supports anything PHPMailer supports. Scheduling the newsletter to be sent automatically requires cron. Consult the README for more info.

Important components of SunMailer have been tested with SimpleTest.

SunMailer 6.x-2.x Notes

The next major version of Sunmailer, 6.x-2.x, is in beta. It should be safe to deploy in a production site if you want to take advantage of all the new features, though testing in a development environment first is still recommended. Documentation may be lacking until the 6.x-2.0 release.

Major new features

• Anonymous users can subscribe to the newsletters
• Multiple newsletters are supported
• New interface for managing subscriptions and importing subscribers

Upgrading from 6.x-1.x

To make time to land some of the major new features for 6.x-2.x and to simplify the architecture and user interface, keeping the module manageable and maintainable, other less important or rarely used features were removed or moved out somewhere else.

The focus of the core SunMailer module will shift back to a simple newsletter targeted at anonymous users, though flexibility has been added to support other subscription models.

• Unlimited designs (formerly known as formats) for a single newsletter are no longer supported. Unlimited designs can still be uploaded, but each newsletter can only have a single design and an optional alternate text design.
• Role-subscribe has been moved into a separate module.
• Individualized newsletters based on each authenticated user's permission are no longer supported.
• The format of the newsletter's XML and some of the sunmailer_xml_*_alter hooks have slightly changed. You will need to ensure that any custom XSL designs or implementations of these hooks are updated for the 6.x-2.x version.

The upgrade process will cover all but the last issue for you.

Downloads