django-newsletter

Newsletter application for the Django web framework.

What is it?

Django app for managing multiple mass-mailing lists with both plaintext as well as HTML templates (and TinyMCE editor for HTML messages), images and a smart queueing system all right from the admin interface.

Status

We are currently using this package in several production environments, but it should still be considered a work in progress.

Translations

Most of the strings have been translated to Dutch and a German translation should be available soon. Feel free to contribute any translations through Transifex.

Requirements

Please refer to requirements.txt for an updated list of required packes.

Installation

1. Get it from the Cheese Shop:

   pip install django-newsletter
   

   Or get the latest & greatest from Github and link it to your application tree:

   pip install -e git://github.com/dokterbob/django-newsletter.git#egg=django-newsletter
   

   (In either case it is recommended that you use VirtualEnv in order to keep your Python environment somewhat clean.)

2. Add newsletter and to INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py and make sure that the dependencies django-tinymce and django-extensions are there as well:

   INSTALLED_APPS = (
       ...
       'tinymce',
       'django_extensions',
       ...
       'newsletter',
       ...
   )
   

3. Import subscription, unsubscription and archive URL's somewhere in your urls.py:

   urlpatterns = patterns('',
       ...
       (r'^newsletter/', include('newsletter.urls')),
       ...
   )
   

4. Make the media dir available as {{ MEDIA_URL }}newsletter/ and do the same for the django-tinymce app.

   Preferably use something like django-staticmedia to manage the media files for your installed apps so you won't have to worry about this. You can simply pip install django-staticmedia and add the following to urls.py to make everything accessible in the development server:

   import staticmedia
   urlpatterns += staticmedia.serve()
   

5. Configure TinyMCE if you have not already done so. At the very least make sure you set TINYMCE_JS_URL in settings.py to point to wherever tiny_mce.js is located. (Typically /media/tinymce/tiny_mce/tiny_mce.js)

6. Create required data structure and load default template fixture:

   ./manage.py syncdb
   ./manage.py loaddata default_templates
   

7. Change the default contact email listed in templates/newsletter/subscription_subscribe.html and templates/newsletter/subscription_update.html.

8. Run the tests to see if it all works:

   ./manage.py test
   

   If this fails, please contact me! If it doesn't: that's a good sign, chap. You'll probably have yourself a working configuration!

9. Add jobs for sending out mail queues to crontab:

   @hourly /path/to/my/project/manage.py runjobs hourly
   @daily /path/to/my/project/manage.py runjobs daily
   @weekly /path/to/my/project/manage.py runjobs weekly
   @monthly /path/to/my/project/manage.py runjobs monthly
   

Usage

1. Start the development server: ./manage.py runserver
2. Navigate to /admin/ and: behold!
3. Put a submission in the queue.
4. Submit your message with ./manage.py runjob submit
5. For a proper understanding, please take a look at the model graph.

Unit tests

Fairly extensive tests are available for internal frameworks, web (un)subscription and mail sending. One feature currently untested is actually sending mail to very large numbers of recipients (1000+), but feel free to try around. Please to note that the unittests (or actually, Django) currently requires a 404.html in your templates directory in order to be able to test 404 responses.

TODO

• Add a separate submission queue view in the admin instead of the modded edit view, which is confusing to the user.
• Finish front end for article ordering from admin.
• Write tests for: template syntax checking, ordering of articles in a message.
• Extend subscription models to allow for mail deliverability feedback.
• Refactor default contact email out of the templates.

License

This application is released under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3.