[thelist] Help with a Mailing List php app

[Mark Hammersley]

> Does anyone know where I can find a tutorial or some help with creating a
> mailing list management app that uses PHP? I found one, but it's rather
> outdated[1]. I followed it the best I could but it just doesn't seem to
> work.

Hi Gabriel,

We use phplist (www.phplist.com) which is an open source system.

I've also written some simple php scripts to send messages.  The mechanics
are quite straightforward but as the list size grows we hit quite a steep
learning curve.  At present we use a modified version of the phplist engine.
Some "lessons learned":

1.  PHP script times out at around 1500 messages and needs to be run from
the command line rather than through a browser (we discovered at the same
time that the phplist mailing engine runs significantly faster in this mode.
Our list is now around 4500 and it takes 30 minutes to send)

2.  Bounce handling -- Aaaagh !  phplist does this better than I could write
myself, but there is still room for improvement.

3.  Setting the headers.  There are several header lines to go in mail
messages and different ones seem to be important for different gateways.
Some bulkmail filters look at the headers to decide whether to pass the
message.  I still don't fully understand this part, but our "home made" php
script sends messages whose headers show that they were sent by
"web at localhost" and some filters score this if it different to the "from"
address.

Hope this helps - Mark.