Hi Eric,
Thank you for your thoughts. Seems like we are doing something very similar.
What do you mean by? *but I was always afraid that a Surgemail update
would break it (list members)
I am doing pretty much what you did manually now, but dealing with a
list that is 5-10 times in size. I am aware of the bounce issues, but
have spent quite a bit of time building a processor. My processor has
a rules engine which parses the bounce message, scans the text,
compares it against all the rules, classifies it as a hard bounce,
soft bounce, not a bounce, or can't be determined. It then stores
them after classifying and clears out the SurgeMail bounce directory.
In this way, you can then create rules for soft bouncing messages
about how long to keep sending to them. You could even display a
message to your user when they log into your website that their email
address is soft bouncing. This is what Yahoo! does. You can then
manually process messages that cannot be determined and update your
rules.
This is something I have wanted to build for several years and I am
just getting to it. I am using it, but I still need to round out the
features somewhat. I hope to release it as open source. If others
are interested, they can chime in. Not trying to step on SurgeMails
toes, obviously, this is tied to SurgeMail tightly, but I needed
something I could script and tweak easily.
Tony Z
On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 8:18 AM, Eric Vey HIDDEN@@ericvey.com> wrote:
>>
>> I also would like to open the members file via script, delete all the
>> contents, and then add all my members from a database query before
>> sending a message.
>
> This is where you could have trouble, not from a technical standpoint but
> from an administrative one.
> I maintained one of these lists for years and the addresses were contained
> in a separate database on a different system in another state.
> One problem was that I didn't want two databases, one that was in Dlist and
> one that was in the main office's server. So if the email address was
> changed in one, it should be changed in the other.
> Another problem was that not all bounces are fatal bounces, meaning that a
> "mailbox full" bounce message doesn't mean that I want to delete the email
> address. Maybe after three months or tries or something, but not on the
> first one.
>
> For me, I used a low tech solution.
> Setting up for a new message was easy. Ran a query on the database to get a
> new list, deleted old list addresses and pasted in the new addresses since
> it is a text file.
> This can also be done remotely in the HTML interface page. You should be
> able to script this easy enough, but I was always afraid that a Surgemail
> update would break it and with a list of ~5,000, mistakes can be
> embarrassing.
>
> Bounces were more time consuming. I set up a way to collect the bounce
> messages, then I would glance at each one and make a decision as to what to
> do.
> A list of bad addresses was compiled and sent to the office where they could
> either run a script or manually delete the bad addresses.
> Since there is no standardization of bounce messages, I don't know how one
> would do it otherwise.
>
>
> Tony Zakula wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have an announcement only list setup under DList. I have the
>> setting set to collect all the bounced messages into the bounce folder
>> and, I have written my own bounce processor with a script engine to
>> unsubscribe bounced addresses from my database.
>>
>> The next thing I would like to do is be able to update my database
>> with those wishing to be unsubscribed. I noticed there seems to be a
>> folder there that is named updatesHIDDEN@listName. Will the leave
>> messages be dumped in there like the bounce messages? One per file so
>> that I can parse and process them? Normally you handle this on your
>> website, but GMAIL seems to offer to unsubscribe people automatically.
>>
>> I also would like to open the members file via script, delete all the
>> contents, and then add all my members from a database query before
>> sending a message. Do I need to be careful about when that is
>> accessed? I do not want to conflict with SurgeMail.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Tony Z
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
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