Features

More than a long speech, here the list of the main features :

• Coupling capacities with another django model.

• Variables can be used in the newsletter’s templates.

• Mailing list managements (merging, importing…).

• Import/Export of the contact in VCard 3.0.

• Configurable SMTP servers with flow limit management.

• Working groups.

• Can send newsletter previews.

• Subscriptions and unsubscriptions to mailing list.

• Attachments in newsletters.

• Unique urls for an user.

• Tracking statistics.

Architecture

At the level of the application architecture, we can see 2 originalities who need to be explained.

$ python manage.py send_newsletter

Installation

$ python setup.py install

$ pip install -e git://github.com/nephila/django-maja-newsletter.git#egg=maja_newsletter

$ easy_install django-maja-newsletter

INSTALLED_APPS = (
  # Your favorites apps
  'django.contrib.contenttypes',
  'django.contrib.sites',
  'django.contrib.admin',
  'django.contrib.sessions',
  'tagging',
  'maja_newsletter',)

url(r'^newsletters/', include('maja_newsletter.urls')),

url(r'^newsletters/', include('maja_newsletter.urls.newsletter')),
url(r'^mailing/', include('maja_newsletter.urls.mailing_list')),
url(r'^tracking/', include('maja_newsletter.urls.tracking')),
url(r'^statistics/', include('maja_newsletter.urls.statistics')),

NEWSLETTER_DEFAULT_HEADER_SENDER = 'My NewsLetter <newsletter@myhost.com>'

DBMS considerations

It’s not recommended to use SQLite for production use. Because is limited to 999 variables into a SQL query, you can not create a Mailing List greater than this limitations in the Django’s admin modules. Prefer MySQL ou PgSQL.

HOWTO use TinyMCE for editing the newsletters

It can be usefull for the end user to have a WYSIWYG editor for the creation of the newsletter. The choice of the WYSIWYG editor is free and the described method can be applied for anything, but we will focus on TinyMCE because he has many features and a usefull plugin for loading templates within it.

First of all install the django-tinymce application into your project.

That’s done, enjoy !

HOWTO couple your profile application with maja_newsletter

If you wan to quickly import your contacts into a mailing list for example, you can write an admin’s action for your model.

We suppose that we have the fields email, first_name and last_name in a models name Profile.

In his AdminModel definition add this method and register it into the actions property.

class ProfileAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):

    def make_mailing_list(self, request, queryset):
        from maja_newsletter.models import Contact
        from maja_newsletter.models import MailingList

        subscribers = []
        for profile in queryset:
            contact, created = Contact.objects.get_or_create(email=profile.mail,
                                                             defaults={'first_name': profile.first_name,
                                                                       'last_name': profile.last_name,
                                                                       'content_object': profile})
            subscribers.append(contact)
        new_mailing = MailingList(name='New mailing list',
                                  description='New mailing list created from admin/profile')
        new_mailing.save()
        new_mailing.subscribers.add(*subscribers)
        new_mailing.save()
        self.message_user(request, '%s succesfully created.' % new_mailing)
    make_mailing_list.short_description = 'Create a mailing list'

    actions = ['make_mailing_list']

This action will create or retrieve all the Contact instances needed for the mailing list creation.

After this you can send a newsletter to this mailing list.

Development

A Buildout script is provided to properly initialize the project for anybody who wants to contribute.

First of all, please use VirtualEnv to protect your system.

Follow these steps to start the development :

$ git clone git://github.com/nephila/django-maja-newsletter.git
$ virtualenv --no-site-packages maja_newsletter
$ cd maja_newsletter
$ source ./bin/activate
$ python bootstrap.py
$ ./bin/buildout

The buildout script will resolve all the dependancies needed to develop the application.

Once these operations are done, you are ready to develop on the project.

Run this command to launch the tests.

$ ./bin/test

Or you can also launch the demo.

$ ./bin/demo syncdb
$ ./bin/demo runserver

Pretty easy no ?

Database Representation

Changelog