PHPlist Web Hosting

PHPlist Web Hosting

phplist is an open source mailing list or news letter manager. It is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database for storing information. It is completely free to download, install and use. Furthermore, it can be easily integrated into any website. The software runs on a web server and allows web site administrators to easily set up a web based newsletter subscription system where users can subscribe to the desired mailing lists. The software facilitates the sending of email messages to unlimited number of subscribers and allows email message templates and these messages can be personalized with attributes that are unique to each subscriber. Phplist is sponsored by tincan, and the software is downloaded more than 10,000 times per month. What’s more; it is listed in the top open source projects for vitality score on Freshmeat.

The system requirements for phplist are as follows:
The server softwares mentioned below have been successfully tested with phplist.

• GNU/LINUX
• Apache Web Server
• MySQL database server version 4.0
• PHP versions 4.3.x (IMAP module required for bounce processing)

phplist also runs on PHP 5, MySQL 4.1 & 5, although has not yet been fully tested. phplist also runs on windows, with Apache, PHP and MySQL. XAMPP server is highly recommended to run phplist on windows for testing and development. It has been reported that phplist can be adapted for Microsoft IIS web server. The latest phplist version (phplist version 2.10.5) was released on September 3rd. 2007. phplist is licensed under the GPL v2.
Advanced and user friendly features make this software extremely reliable, flexible and utilizable. Its key features include:

• Since phplist is a one-way email announcement delivery system; it can used for newsletters, publicity lists, notifications, and many other uses. (However, it is different from group mailing list systems like mailman.)
• The user friendly web interface allows writing and sending of messages and manage phplist over the internet.
• phplist keeps sending messages from the web server even after the computer has been shut down.
• 100 000 + subscribers: phplist is designed to manage mailing lists with hundreds of thousands of subscribers as well as for smaller lists.
• No duplicate or forgotten messages: phplist manages message delivery with a message queue, ensuring that every subscriber gets the email message, and that no subscribers receive two copies, even if they’re subscribed to more than one list.
• The open/view tracking feature lets the user know as to how many subscribers opened the email message.
• Click Tracking: This feature allows tracking of links and urls. The statistics can be viewed by message, URL or subscriber.
• Multiple Subscribe Pages: This feature allows the user to choose various combinations of templates, languages, user attributes and lists.
• “Templates” are completely customizable, and make site integration a fairly easy task.
• “Multiple Templates” on different subscribe pages can integrate phplist with several different web sites.
• “Subscriber Attributes” like ‘name’, ‘country’, and other personal information, are completely customizable. The use can again set certain specifications for the information required by the subscriber.
• User Specific Content: The user can utilize the Subscriber Attributes in message content to make each and every email message personalized with the subscribers name, country, or any other related attribute.
• HTML email messages: Subscribers can be given the choice between text or html email messages or both.
• The HTML Editor allows the user to edit html messages from phplist using FCKeditor. TinyMCE is also available.
• Internationalization: phplist is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Traditional Chinese, Dutch, Vietname and Japanese and the translation work is in progress for other languages.
• Easy Install via Fantastico, FTP upload, or SSH.
• Multiple list Administrators: The super-admin can assign lists to List Managers, who can manage their users and lists. The super-admin user can ‘prepare’ messages that can be sent by list managers to their lists.
• Subscriber Preferences: All email messages that are sent out to the subscribers contain personalized URLs for subscribers to update their preferences or unsubscribe. Subscribers can also update their own information and keep the database up to date.
• The User Management tools are excellent to manage and maintain large databases of subscribers.
• Bounce Processing keeps the database clean of unused and non-existent or inactive email addresses.
• The Advanced Bounce handling allows phplist to distinguish between permanent and temporary message-delivery errors.
• CSV Import and Export: Use CSV and tab delimited files to import existing list of users or to export the users on the phplist system for use in the in-house database.
• Attachments can be uploaded and included in messages for download.
• Send a Web page: User has the option of assigning the URL of a web page that needs to be sent to the subscribers and phplist fetches it and sends it to specified subscribers.
• RSS feeds can be automatically sent to a mailing list weekly, daily, or monthly.
• PDF messages can be automatically created and sent as attachments.
• Batch Processing is useful in shared hosting environments. Ability to set the maximum number of sent messages in a given time period.
• Throttling can limit the load on the server so it doesn’t overload.
• Domain Throttling limits the number of emails to specific domains.
• Scheduled Sending allows the user to assign when the mail messages need to be sent.
• Repetition: A message can be repeated automatically to send updated dynamic content and attachments.
• Text from HTML: Text email messages are managed fluently in phplist. phplist will automatically create a text version of an html message. Optionally the message composer can create it manually.

Features that will soon be included are as follows:

• PGP signing and encrypting: Ability to send messages as digitally signed, encrypted or both.
• Email to Fax: Configure the details of the favorite email 2 fax gateway and phplist will send the HTML version of the message as a PDF attachment to the fax gateway. The fax will include the images in the HTML.
• Integration with other tools: Several systems integrate phplist with a CMS or blogging tool.

Phplist can be integrated with other packages that include phpBB, Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, eZpublish, osCommerce, Zen Cart and Nucleus CMS.