Some compatibility issues cropped up, regarding UTF-8/unicode character set/encoding
in re: to the SQL schemas. The schemas for all supported SQL backends have been
modified to better work, mostly by changing fields with type, text(320), to type,
varchar(80). Other notes have been added to the UTF-8 FAQ.
Along with looking into changing the default schema in Dada Mail, the v3 to v4 migration script will now make the necessary schema and character set changes.
The character encoding changes and SQL schema changes could potentially be desctructive, so we do, in fact, highly encourage you to make a backup of the entire database, before running the migration tool. Most notably, the character encoding change does not work perfectly. If your data contains a lot of non-Latin1 characters, we'd highly suggest you do your own ASCII/Latin1 to UTF-8 migration, before upgrading your Dada Mail.
If you are running a verion of Dada Mail 4.0.0 to 4.0.3, you'll still need to make those schema changes manually if you're having trouble (exactly what to do, including example SQL is located in the UTF-8 FAQ).
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/#issue/36
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/#issue/35
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/closed#issue/34
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/closed#issue/33
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/closed#issue/32
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/closed#issue/31
CGI::Session handles all session management in Dada Mail.
The CPAN perl modules, Scalar::Util and List::Util are included with Dada Mail, but aren't actively used (and are probably outdated), so that any server-wide installed versions will be used, instead. This is because the XS versions of these modules are needed for POP/SMTP SSL connections and having these usable by default, breaks SSL connections. The directories,
dada/DADA/perllib/List
and,
dada/DADA/perllib/Scalar
have been renamed,
dada/DADA/perllib/List-remove_to_install
and,
dada/DADA/perllib/Scalar-remove_to_install
renaming them back to their original name will make them, "active"
We have worked very, very hard to get Dada Mail working with UTF-8/Unicode.
We think we did a pretty good job and you'll have a most amazing experience when comparing this version to any previous version of Dada Mail (ever), but there may be tiny things still to work out.
We need to know about them, don't be shy!
People who upgrade to 4.0.3 (and any version afterwards, until things change!) should note that the MySQL and PostgreSQL Table Schemas have changed!
You may need to update your own tables, to support UTF-8 (if they aren't already in that encoding).
If you're upgrading, please read over the updated UTF-8/Unicode FAQ:
If you're doing a new install, there's nothing you need to know, Dada Mail should work well out of the box in re: to UTF-8/Unicode stuff.
We've changed a few of the default list settings, hopefully so that everyone has a more pleasant experience, right off the bat:
We've enabled the setting to active the Black List, by default.
We're also enabling the below settings:
You still have the option to change new lists to the previous behavior and already created lists will have their previous behavior, if Black List Settings have already been edited.
The option, Print List-Specific Headers has been removed from, Mail Sending -Advanced Sending Preferences has been removed, but the functionality has not. All mailing list messages will have these headers.
Send Unsubscription Confirmation Emails (Closed-Loop Opt-Out) has been disabled by default (you can still enable it)
This option, when enabled, requires that when someone wants to unsubscribe, they have to confirm this unsubscription by clicking on the unsubscription confirmation link in a URL sent their subscribed address.
When disabled (the new default), they simply have to fill out the subscribe/unsubscribe form.
When available, both the Subscription and Unsubscription links will have the potential subscriber's (or unsubscriber's) email address in the link itself, so that the user does not have to do the two-step of first following the link and then typing in their email address.
These links are created per-subscriber (or potential sub/unsub), when you use the:
<!-- tmpl_var list_subscribe_link -->
or,
<!-- tmpl_var list_unsubscribe_link -->
tags. Previously, these tags only provided a link to the subscription/unsubscription form, without the email address embedded within the link itself. There is no way to revert this behaviour, but you can still roll your own links, like this:
Subscription Link:
<!-- tmpl_var PROGRAM_URL -->/s/<!-- tmpl_var list_settings.list -->
Unsubscription Link:
<!-- tmpl_var PROGRAM_URL -->/u/<!-- tmpl_var list_settings.list -->
Dada Mail will now do a quick check to make sure that there is a Dada Mail Unsubscription link in your mass mailing messages, before sending them out.
If one is not found, one will be automatically appended to the end of your message.
It will not be very fancy.
We suggest that you make sure that you have a real, valid, Dada Mail unsubscription link in your Mailing List Messages.
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/issue/30
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/issue/29
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/issue/28
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/issue/27
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/issue/26
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/issue/16
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/issue/21
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/issue/24
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/issue/23
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/issue/20
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/issue/19
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/issue/18
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/issue/15
For whatever reason, the, "Allow Open Discussion List" option wasn't viewable, until
you first enabled discussion lists. It will now *always* be viewable, as long as the
Plugin Config Param, Allow_Open_Discussion_List is set to, 1
A new Plugin Config Paramater called, Check_Multiple_From_Addresses has been added
and has a default value of, 1. When enabled, messages that have more than one
sender aren't supported by Dada Bridge and these messages will be ignored.
Set this paramater to, 0 to revert to the previous behavior.
Dada Mail had a very simple test to make sure mail using the sendmail command was successful, by looking at any error messages created from sending mail this way. If a, "broken pipe" message was found while sending a mass mailing, a mass mailing would be stopped, and would be picked up and sending would be attempted starting at the same address that gave the error. The complete logged error may look like this:
[Mon Jan 4 16:40:08 2010] mail.cgi: Pro Dada 4.0.1 Warning:
[Mon Jan 4 16:40:08 2010] mail.cgi: didn't close pipe to '|/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -fbounces@example.com' while
[Mon Jan 4 16:40:08 2010] mail.cgi: attempting to send a message to: '"My Mailing List" <me@example.com> because:' Broken pipe at ..//DADA/MailingList/Schedules.pm line 808
[Mon Jan 4 16:40:08 2010] mail.cgi: Broken Pipe error! returning -1 - Mass Mailing should be exit()ed! at ..//DADA/MailingList/Schedules.pm line 808
[Mon Jan 4 16:40:08 2010] mail.cgi: [listshortname] Mailout:<20100104164007.54315974@nicky510.com> Bailing out of Mailing for now - last message was unable to be sent! exit()ing! at ..//DADA/MailingList/Schedules.pm line 808
This behavior is problematic, since the, "broken pipe" error can happen, even if a message (or part of a message) is actually sent. Sometimes this happens if you have a message that contains a dot by itself on one line, like this:
.
If this is problematic to you (messages being cut off because of a lone dot on one line)
and you're using the sendmail command to send messages, consider changing the $MAIL_SETTINGS
and, $MASS_MAIL_SETTINGS Config variables to include the, -i flag, like this:
$MAIL_SETTINGS = "|$MAILPROG -t -i"; $MASS_MAIL_SETTINGS = "|$MAILPROG -t -i";
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/closed/#issue/6
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/closed#issue/10
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/closed#issue/12
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/closed#issue/11
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/closed#issue/14
The following topics were added to the documentation:
A MySQL Schema specifically for MySQL 4 is now shipped with Dada Mail at:
dada/extras/SQL/mysql4_schema.sql
Although not heavily documented (yet), a DB Backup to SQL script has been added to the distribution at:
dada/extras/scripts/dada_settings_backup_to_sql.pl
The, New List Screen has been giving minor formatting tweaks.
Some work has been done to speed up DADA::ProfileFieldsManager by caching.
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/closed#issue/1
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/closed#issue/2
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/closed#issue/4
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/closed#issue/5
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/closed#issue/7
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/closed#issue/8
http://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/issues/closed#issue/9
Support has be re-introduced to allow Multiple List Sending. See the separate docs on this feature:
Please see the docs specifically about Dada Mail Subscriber Profiles:
You can now have a, "Label" to your Subscriber Profile Field. A label is what's visibly shown and is not now created from the field's name.
You can now have an, "open to all to subscribe" mailing list, that still requires approval from the list owner.
Please see the docs specifically about this new feature:
This version of Dada Mail is currently shipped with all charsets and encodings to, "UTF-8", but Dada Mail itself is far from support this character set completely.
This is because it is hard.
Please see the docs specifically about this new feature:
Yup. Dada Mail can Tweet. More information:
We're experimenting with bringing CKeditor support to Dada Mail. Please see the embedded Config.pm docs about this:
Config.pm.html#ckeditor_integration____ckeditor_url__experimental__
This means, that anything about the mass mailing is logged for that specific mass mailing - this should hopefully make debugging a little bit easier.
There's a new link entitled, "Open Mass Mailing Log in a New Window -> "
This functionality is currently extremely rough, but is a pretty easy way to see what, in fact, is going on.
We've started catching sendmail errors and, if we find an error, we'll exit out of the sending process, for the message to be automatically picked up and the last email that had a problem, to be tried again. It's currently not perfect, but it's a very small step forward.
You can now clone the settings from one list, to another list, in the, "Create a New List" screen.
You can now Remove all subscribers at once in the, Manage List - View Subscribers screen.
For the most part, AJAX stuff in Dada Mail has been replaced by the prototype.js and Scriptalicious Javascript Libraries.
If it wasn't clear or official before, it should be now:
The black list matching does not work with matching strings, but will only work to match the user or domain of an email address or the entire email address. These are valid black list entries:
Mostly meaning, you can embed images within the email message itself.
You can now specify the Port Number of the POP3 mail server
Simple moderation support is included, to Authorized to moderate messages.
The Clickthrough Tracker now has a new SQL backend option for the URL redirect list.
The log is still in PlainText.
The update_subscriptions.cgi extension has been removed, as its features have been superceded by the Dada Profiles feature. And then some.
The CPAN Perl Libraries needed for Dada Mail are now being saved within the Git Repository of Dada Mail. We don't know if this is the greatest idea, since we don't really plan on making changes to this modules. But, we're doing it. If any problems occur, please report!
There are many new modules in Dada Mail's backend, including: