Thursday
Oct122006
New Membership System Live
Thursday, October 12, 2006 at 9:09AM
Went live with the new system yesterday and let the forum users try it out first!
No major problems although it's difficult releasing control to an automated system. You still want to see every email that gets sent out! Just about to do a mini screencast letting people now about the new facilities.
Talking about letting people know, I also decided at the last minute to use a proper mailing list system to forward instructions and also to use as my delivery mechanism for newsletters etc. My current one is phplist which is a free application which works well but I'm limited to only sending 350 emails per hour.
I decided to go with aWeber (affiliate link). This is a hosted service that came highly recommended from the guys at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo. It's a chargeable service ($19.99) per month but looks to have more whistles and bells than I'll ever need to use. Couple of problems though in that aWeber is an opt-in mailing list to prevent spammers from using it. By that, I mean you have to get subscribers to opt-in to joining the mailing list by clicking a link when they get added to the system.
This is a great mechanism to help cut down spam but it does mean that if you're adding users in bulk, they all have to opt-in before you can send a message to them. Actually, you can send a message immediately but only those that have opted in will be sent it! The care that the system takes to prevent abuse looks pretty impressive, even to the extent of the bulk upload of users being manually inspected by support staff.
Anyway, after 12 hours, I'm over 50% opted in so it shouldn't take too long to get everyone onboard.
Another nice thing is you can create registration forms to host on your website so people can sign up for lists so I may create a few lists for none Extra! members later.
Ah well, better get these screencasts done!
No major problems although it's difficult releasing control to an automated system. You still want to see every email that gets sent out! Just about to do a mini screencast letting people now about the new facilities.
Talking about letting people know, I also decided at the last minute to use a proper mailing list system to forward instructions and also to use as my delivery mechanism for newsletters etc. My current one is phplist which is a free application which works well but I'm limited to only sending 350 emails per hour.
I decided to go with aWeber (affiliate link). This is a hosted service that came highly recommended from the guys at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo. It's a chargeable service ($19.99) per month but looks to have more whistles and bells than I'll ever need to use. Couple of problems though in that aWeber is an opt-in mailing list to prevent spammers from using it. By that, I mean you have to get subscribers to opt-in to joining the mailing list by clicking a link when they get added to the system.
This is a great mechanism to help cut down spam but it does mean that if you're adding users in bulk, they all have to opt-in before you can send a message to them. Actually, you can send a message immediately but only those that have opted in will be sent it! The care that the system takes to prevent abuse looks pretty impressive, even to the extent of the bulk upload of users being manually inspected by support staff.
Anyway, after 12 hours, I'm over 50% opted in so it shouldn't take too long to get everyone onboard.
Another nice thing is you can create registration forms to host on your website so people can sign up for lists so I may create a few lists for none Extra! members later.
Ah well, better get these screencasts done!
Technorati Tags:
Premium Podcasting, Subscription Membership, Subscription Tools, aweber
Reader Comments