How to get VEMOD to send a newsletter? you need to do this:

Sunday, 24 October 2010

I have terrible problems with VEMOD, I like it in many ways but it has
some big failings. I am pretty technical but VEMOD often defeats me. It
is completely counter-intuitive as to how to initiate a mail session. It
seems to be a case of pull this, ring this bell, turn this tap, tick
this box and pull one or two levers from the back end, do some tweaking
at the front end and hope like hell that it fires off. Then to find out
what it has actually done, when it mailed, who to &c seems to be another
arcane science in itself. It is like nursing a old steam engine into life.

To get the thing to send a newsletter you need to do this:

From the back end:

Create a list of subscribers - click on the VEMOD component icon
and from the control panel click on the subscriber icon and add all
your users to the list. Remove those users that you don't want to
receive the email.

Add a scheduled newsletter, select the 'content' tab. Give it a
'Frontend description', 'Compilation title' and some 'Compilation
introtext'. Set a scheduled date/time for the newsletter through the
'news compilation' drop-down and ensure that the tick box is selected
and ticked, just click on the box... Make sure the other 'Sections that
allows subscription' is not enabled. Make sure the other ' Single
newsletter' section is not enabled.

The scheduled date/time for the newsletter is really critical in the
sending of the newsletter, if you are trying to manually trigger an
immediate newsletter, if you get this wrong nothing will go out. You
may have to set the frequency to daily in order to capture the most
recent articles. Also, Vemod states "Compiled news mails can not be
previewed before the compilation date/time has passed!". This doesn't
make sense and is contradictory, what I think it means is "a news mail
compilation is not available for preview prior to scheduled date/time".

Under the 'news mails' tab:

* Select Don't Truncate
* Change the "Unsubscribe all link text"
* Select the sidebar modules that you want to appear on the
newsletter, some modules just won't work depending upon the
compatibility
* Give the newsletter a subject.
* Copy/paste the newsletter header into the 'Mail Format' section.
It must be in HTML format so you will have to use an external editor.
* Save!

From the front end, log into the site using a privileged account.

Select the Vemod application using the menu link you have previously set up.

If you have done it right you will see a list of articles ready for
sending, plus a preview of the newsletter and a list of subscribers.

You are subscribing to

Latest

News from Henley Operatic Society - Drama at its best

Select Your prefered e-mail format

	HTML		Preview
	Text		Preview

At this point click the preview button:

And you will see this screen:

0 items are new

Previous news scan Sunday, 26 June 2011 08:46:18

Now		Tuesday, 21 June 2011 10:36:11
Previous compilation	Category: Latest	Saturday, 25 June 2011 23:00:00
Previous news scan		Sunday, 26 June 2011 08:46:18
Next compilation	Category: Latest	Sunday, 26 June 2011 23:00:00

Mail

Method	BCC-copy
Receiver of original mail	ebemail@sitename.co.uk
Scheduled news scans	Off
From name	HAODS Web Editor
Mail from	webmaster@henleyoperatic.co.uk
Mailer	PHP mailer	PHP mail uses default values !

* Where it says "Previous news scan", what you must do is change the date range to a point back in time encompassing all the articles you wish to send. Clicking on the date will allow you to change it:

Click on the tick. If you have the back-end configured correctly then a list of articles will then appear. Check they are the ones you want to appear.

Previous news scan Sunday, 26 June 2011 08:46:18

Change the date to an earlier time:

Previous news scan

Server time :

This will display something similar to this:

Previous compilation	Category: Latest	Monday, 11 April 2011 23:00:00
Previous news scan		Tuesday, 12 April 2011 00:00:00
Stephen Sondheims Follies. A Big Show From A Big Society - A Crit.	Latest	Created: Tuesday, 12 April 2011 10:04:08
Celebrities who appeared at the Kenton No. 14 - David Kossoff	Latest	Created: Friday, 06 May 2011 09:36:01
Fun Run 2011	Latest	Created: Friday, 06 May 2011 12:45:52
Congratulations Haods! Winners Of The 40th Kenton Drama Festival	Latest	Created: Thursday, 09 June 2011 09:05:22
Koncert for Kay	Latest	Created: Friday, 10 June 2011 08:30:22
Dogs Double Bill Replaces Dangerous Corner	Latest	Created: Monday, 13 June 2011 11:00:30
No. 16 - Thomas Morton - Playwright (1764 - 1838)	Latest	Created: Wednesday, 15 June 2011 08:30:04
A Dog's Life Makes a Clean Sweep at Abingdon!	Latest	Created: Thursday, 16 June 2011 08:46:48
Raffles and Olivia - The First Performance	Latest	Created: Monday, 20 June 2011 09:45:42
Daisy Climbs High for Charity	Latest	Created: Monday, 20 June 2011 10:03:11
Little Shop of Horrors Cast	Latest	Created: Monday, 20 June 2011 14:15:11
Chairwords - June	Latest	Created: Monday, 20 June 2011 14:58:16
Current compilation	Category: Latest	Monday, 20 June 2011 23:00:00
Now

If these are the articles you want to send then scroll to the bottom and click the send mails button.

This will then send the newsletter to all and sundry and the sending list will be shown.

It is not easy to get to grips with VEMOD, in Swedish it means
'melancholy' and that's how I feel when I have to use it, every time I
forget some part of the process and this makes me sad...

'Doh!'

PS. Recently I had some troubles getting vemod to recognise that
some new articles had been written. It just wasn't seeing them. em.

Regardless of cache cleaning, config. changes &c it would not
show the most recent articles, so from the back end I removed the
single newsletter checkbox on the main content tab and rechecked the
categories I wanted to be displayed, this caused some of the Vemod
front-end display to change removing the option for a single newsletter
and as a result, lo and behold the newest articles appeared.

Set as favorite

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