• What do you see as the benefit of using an external service like CiviCRM as compared to a “Drupal” specific setup like using Simplenews or Message notify?
• And for the sake of argument, what would you see as a benefit of using a “Drupal” setup over an external service?

CiviCRM

• How much integration is there between Drupal and CiviCRM?
• Can you create new lists from the Drupal interface?
• Can you create the newsletters in the Drupal interface?
• How does it deal with images in a newsletter?
• How can you add site content into a newsletter?
• Can you setup autoresponders?
• Can you setup split tests?
• Are there any analytics included?
• How do users subscribe and unsubscribe from a newsletter?

Alright, before we get into the modules themselves, I’m going to be asking all of the guests in this series the same two questions about newsletters in Drupal.

• What do you see as a benefit of using a “Drupal” setup like the Message stack over an external service like MailChimp?
• And for the sake of argument, what might you see as the benefit of using an external service as opposed to a “Drupal” specific setup?

Message

• What is the Message module?
• What are some of the features?
• Can users subscribe/unsubscribe?
• What is the documentation like? Are there screencasts?

Message Notify

• What is the Message Notify module and how does it integrate into the message stack?
• What are some of the features?
  • SMS - how do you use this?
• Can users subscribe/unsubscribe?
• What is the documentation like? Are there screencasts?

Message-Subscribe

• What is the Message-Subscribe module and how does it integrate into the message stack?
• What are some of the features?
  • Messages sent on the fly/batches
  • Can you setup daily/weekly digests?
• How does it scale?
• How custom can each message be?
• Can you setup autoresponders?
• How do you include site content?
• How does it deal with images in a newsletter?
• Are there analytics?
• Can users subscribe/unsubscribe?
• What is the documentation like? Are there screencasts?

Use Cases

• What are the appropriate use cases for each module?

Mass Contact

• When I asked you to come on the show, you replied by saying that Mass Contact was never meant to be a newsletter module. So, can you explain exactly what Mass Contact is, how does it works, and how it should be used?
• What are some of the features?
  • You can send a message to one or more categories of users, which are specified by role.
  • Large recipient lists may be broken up into smaller chunks.
  • The site administrator can control how many messages are allowed to be sent by a single person in an hour.
  • The message may be sent such that the recipients' e-mail addresses are hidden from each other.
  • The message may be sent as plain text or HTML, even specifying the input format filter to use. (The Drupal 7 version requires the Mime Mail module.)
  • The message may include one or more binary file attachments. (The Drupal 7 version requires the Mime Mail module.)
  • The site administrator may specify different texts to be placed at the beginning and/or the end of every message that is sent out.
  • A copy of the message may be saved as a node.
  • Users may opt-out, by category, of receiving mass mailings on their account settings page.
• Can users subscribe/unsubscribe?
• What is the documentation like? Are there screencasts?

Use Cases

• What is an appropriate use for this module?

Background

This is the second episode in the “Newsletters in Drupal” mini-series, and I’m really excited for this show! We’re actually going to be talking about two modules, and the reason I’m excited is because there’s potential for these two modules to merge into one. We all know that there are a million ways to do any one thing in Drupal, and from a site-builder, and maintenance point of view, it’s always a good thing if we can eliminate duplicate modules! So, while nothing’s set in stone yet, this might just be the beginning of the end for at least one redundant module!

Alright, before we get into the modules themselves, I’m going to be asking all of the guests in this series the same two questions about newsletters in Drupal.

• What do you see as a benefit of using a “Drupal” setup like Simplenews or Newsletter over an external service like MailChimp?
  • Sascha:
    • Everything happens in Drupal, Full control over the data, user interface and processes. Simplenews allows you create personalized newsletters based on the context of the user, using other data from your site. For example, you could add the list of content they flagged last month or suggestions based on that.
  • Paris:
    • Better integration of your drupal data with the newsletter system.
    • You can use other existing modules to improve the creation or automatic population of your newsletter.
    • Central place for its administration.
    • It is open source, so you can easily modify it further according to your needs, or hire someone to build another custom module on top of it.
    • Of course, it is free
• And for the sake of argument, what might you see as the benefit of using an external service as opposed to a “Drupal” specific setup?
  • Sascha:
    • A large number of features that are ready to use and better backend user iinterfaces like templates and template builders. We are currently working on integrating with Panelizer, so that you can use similar tools as well in Simplenews but we don’t have nearly as much time as the teams behind these services to provide the same experience.
    • Scalability, being able to send tens of thousands of e-mails in short time. You can of course use a transactional e-mail service like Mendrill or Mailjet for reliability, statistics and so on but the e-mails are still built on your site.
  • Paris:
    • You dont have to think about server configuration, mail servers, spam mails, blacklisting and other technical things.
    • Your server load, since the whole system is hosted elsewhere
    • Maturity: i think most external services are more mature than simplenews and of course a lot more than newsletter

Simplenews

• What is simplenews, and how does it work?
• What are some of the features?
  • Sending nodes as newsletters to subscribers
  • Multiple newsletter categories with separate settings
  • Per category and multi-signup Blocks and Pages
  • Subscriber management including mass-subscription and export
  • Optional E-mail confirmations for anonymous users
  • Customizable newsletter templates
  • Support for HTML (including text alternative) newsletter when used in combination with a supported mail system module
  • Views and Rules integration
  • Support for multi-language newsletters
• What is the documentation like? Are there screencasts?
  • There is some documentation on drupal.org but it is outdated.
  • There is the screencast from Modules Unraveled

Newsletter

• What sets Newsletter apart from Simplenews? How is it different?
  • Newsletter was built with automated newsletters in mind..That is, you have many newsletter lists and want to send them with different time intervals each..I know that there is an add-on module for simplenews that does that, but it came a lot later than newsletter was released
  • It also has easier workflow for admins and statistics (Same as above, there is a simplenews module for that
  • Finally it is base on Drupal 7 entities, which makes it easier to integrate with other entity based modules.
• What are some of the features?
  • Multiple newsletters lists configurable on existing terms
  • Plain text or HTML out of the box.
  • Multiple schedules Each newsletter can have more than one schedule, e.g. Daily, Monthly, Weekly, manually or even custom, eg after 10 new posts for this term.
  • Centralized administration and configuration on a single page.
  • Users can customize the terms in the list they subscribe to.
  • Custom template per list.
  • Statistics (CTR and Open-Rate)
• What is the documentation like? Are there screencasts?
  • Unfortunately not..all documentation there is, is in README.txt

Use Cases

• When would someone use one module over the other?
  • Sascha:
    • I had only a quick look at Newsletter today but from what I saw, it has more functionality for administrators and is probably also easier to use out of the box than Simplenews. I think it is a typical project that has been built for a specific use case and if that use case is what you are looking for, then newsletter might be a good match for you.
    • Simplenews has evolved over a long time and has some of advantages due to that
    • A reliable spooling system that makes sure that mails are sent and are only sent once, including support for large numbers of subscribers and parallel send processes
    • A more flexible sign-up process which can be configured per newsletter category, configurable confirmation mails, combined confirmations for multiple categories and so on
    • The fact that newsletters are nodes makes it easy to provide an online archive and a web-version of your newsletter
    • Uses Drupal’s theming system to build the outgoing mails.
    • So if those things sound like something you want or need, then you should probably have a look at Simplenews
  • Paris:
    • Agreed with above, don’t have anything to add

What does the future hold?

• Can we expect to see the modules merge in the near future?
  • Sascha:
    • Depends on what you understand from a merge. A number of additional features provided by Newsletter (statistics, scheduling) is already available as separate projects. The new major version for Simplenews, which we are currently working on, will contain an improved architecture based on entities, similar to Newsletter. That should make it possible to provide the remaining additional functionality that Newsletter provides on top of Simplenews, for example the simple and straightforward of for creating and re-using templates. So once we are there, then we can probably state that Newsletter is deprecated for most usage in favor of Simplenews
  • Paris:
    • Newsletter will just provide a migrate class to transfer all the data to simplenews equivalent and of course requiring as dependencies simplenews add-on modules (like simplenews_statistics)
• What are the goals and features developed in for Simplenews 7.x-2.x?
  • Sascha:
    • New underlying, entity-based architecture
    • Clean terminology in the UI and code: newsletters, subscribers, newsletter issues
    • Recipient handlers, allowing to address a subset of your subscribers based on views, organic groups, per language, a CRM

• First-off, we’re going to be talking about both the MailChimp and Mandrill modules. So, before we get into the modules, can you explain the difference between the two services?
• Unique relationship with MailChimp and how they’re sponsoring development, etc.
• What do you see as the benefit of using an external service like MailChimp as compared to a “Drupal” specific setup like using Simplenews or Message notify?
• And for the sake of argument, what would you see as a benefit of using a “Drupal” setup over an external service?

Mail Chimp

• How much integration is there between the module and the service?
• Can you create new lists from the Drupal interface? How many lists?
• Can you create the newsletters in the Drupal interface?
• How do you work with templates? Do you configure them on the MailChimp side, and then select them in the Drupal interface?
• MailChimp has a “drag and drop editor”, is that functionality carried over to the Drupal interface?
• How do you include site content?
• How does it deal with images in a newsletter?
• How can you add site content into a newsletter?
• Can you setup autoresponders?
• Can you setup split tests in the Drupal interface?
  • LT: MailChimp handles this with it’s email optimizer
• Can you view reports and analytics in Drupal?
• How do users subscribe and unsubscribe from a newsletter?

Mandrill

• What is Mandrill?
• How does the Module integrate with the service?

Use Cases

• MailChimp
• Mandrill
• When would you use both?
• Documentation? Screencasts?

This week I talk with Jeff Linwood about his work on a Drupal plugin for PhoneGap that lets you easily build native mobile apps with Drupal. Jeff will be co-presenting at DrupalCon Denver 2012 with Fabian Franz (Fabianx) on the topic of building mobile apps with Drupal and PhoneGap. You can find out more about their talk "Auto Generate your Mobile Drupal app Using PhoneGap" on the DrupalCon website.

We also recorded a screencast to show you how to use PhoneGap to build an app using Drupal. So, be sure to check that out too!

If you have any questions about the show or PhoneGap you can contact Jeff at his website jefflinwood.com, or post in the comments below.

UPDATE: Jeff and I have decided to put on a FREE live webinar about PhoneGap. If you'd be interested in that, get on the mailing list to receive updates as they are made available.