Page 1 of 3 PHPMailer-ML is a mailing list and newsletter management tool. It leverages the easy-to-use and powerful PHPMailer package from an online administrative control panel that you run on your own web server. You can use PHPMailer-ML to receive subscription requests from your web site and to manage your mailing list. From PHPMailer-ML you can send emails to your mailing lists in HTML or plain text format. The administrative control panel allows you to create mailing campaigns, select mailing lists and create e-mails. Like PHPMailer, PHPMailer-ML is distributed for free under the General Public License (GPL). This tutorial will show you how to install and use the basic features of PHPMailer-ML.
PHPMailer-ML was originally developed in 2008 to showcase the function of PHPMailer. During 2009 the project has received significant development in terms of interface, CSV import function and newsletter editing. PHPMailer is a popular, top-rated PHP class for simplifying the sending of plain text e-mail, HTML e-mail and attachments. You can find a series of tutorials here on Community MX describing the features and implementation of PHPMailer: the Full Featured Email Transfer Class for PHP.
Figure 1 PHPMailer-ML mailing list and newsletter management tool.
Start by downloading the PHPMailer-ML package Source Forge. While you're there you may wish to also download the optional subscription form and progress bar. If you wish to add it HTML e-mails from within the administrative control panel (_acp) you can use the SPAW2 Editor were the CKEditor 3 which need to be downloaded and installed separately.
Once you have downloaded the source code, open the folder called a _acp-ml and edit the three settings files to specify your general, SMTP and database settings. In the inc.settings.php settings configuration file, customize your name and e-mail address which will be used to populate your mailing settings. You may also wish to customize the list name variable found in the list of variables would say you should not have to edit. The inc.settings_db.php database settings file needs your MySQL host, database name, user and password data.
After customizing the configuration files, upload the PHPMailer-ML folder to your web server in a directory which can be accessed from the Internet. To keep your configuration settings private, it is important that you secure the _acp-ml directory with .htaccess file which requires a password to access. For help with configuring an .htaccess file see Content Control with .htaccess by Rob Williams.
Be sure to verify the file permissions for the files you will access directly after you upload. Managing server permissions can be a bit tricky which is why this tutorial is giving intermediate rating. The package will give you some hints when it encounters directories which are not writable that need to be writable. Be sure to set the UNIX group permission to writable which on my server was 664. The index file in the _acp-ml and main directory should be 755.
Figure 2 The package may give you some errors regarding file permissions, but you may also get some in your browser.
Keywords
email, mailer, newsletter, mailing list, spam, sendmail, smpt, html, plain text, WYSIWYG, SPAW2, CKEditor, template
