BF Autoresponder - version 2.8

 

Overview

BF Autoreponder is easy to use PHP based email & RSS autoresponder and mailing list manager.

Contents

 

Requirements

The script needs only web host with PHP 5 or above and MySQL database. You will need to enable cron jobs on the server (there are some alternatives to this). This will be true by default on most web hosts.

 

Installation

The installation of BF Autoresponder is very simple and requires only few steps.

1. Create a MySQL database for BF Autoresponder. BF Autoresponder can also share the same database with other applications you may have on the host

2. Upload the files on your web host

3. Visit install.php with your web browser and follow the steps.

4. Schedule sender.php to run as a cron job once per day or once per hour (Setting it to once per hour will take care for delayed sending of newsletter emails and will not disturb the autoresponder emails in any way). If you have large email lists, you can set it to run once per 5 minutes.

If you don't know how to set up a cron job, please read our simple tutorial.

To use the software, visit admin.php with your browser.

It's highly recommended to delete install.php from the host once you have finished installation!

Changing the design

You can modify all files from folder 'templates' with any wysywig or ordinary web editor and change styles.css for the stylesheets.

 

Using BroadFast Autoresponder

1. Manage Mailing Lists and Users

This screen allows you to edit your mailing lists. You can edit and delete lists and members to them, activate or deactive or add members manually.

When you click on the number of users in each mailing list, you will be directed to the page where you can manage users. It allows you to search/filter and sort the members, see their IP address, import/export, add, edit or delete them.

If there are any unsubscribed members in the list, the number will be shown in brackets and in red color next to the number of the existing users. You can click on it and see who has unsubscribed, when and after how many received mails they unsubscribed.

On the "Manage mailing lists" page you will find also 3 other advanced features:

- Manage Custom Fields - you can create custom fields in each mailing list. They allow you to collect more data from your subscribers. The data then can be used in importing and exporting, and as well for customizing the mails with masks.

- Import/Export - it allows you to import members from Excell (CSV file) and export them into comma separated file

- Synchronize - This unique feature is for advanced users only. It allows you to integrate BF Autoresponder with any other existing web application you may have. If you have a MySQL database with members you can synchronize the mailing list which you have in BF with that database. In the Database Details section you should enter the connection values for the source database. If BF shares the same database you can leave all these fields blank. The Members table details section is to enter the actual name of the table where the members data is stored. You also need to fill the names of the fields where the specific data (name and email) is stored and the system even allows you to use more than one field for "name" (for example your application may store the name in 2 fields - first_name and last_name)

2. Manage Autoresponders

Here you can define and edit autoresponders. For each autoresponder you will be able to see registration URL or get the HTML code of the registration form.

Each active autoresponder has also a link to view log - the log shows detailed information about what mails were sent, when, to which subscriber etc.

Before doing that you should create at least one mailing list, because each autoresponder needs to be attached to mailing lists.

Autoresponders can be published as RSS as well. To enable RSS autoresponders, just check "Allow RSS access" at the bottom of the autoresponder create/edit form. After saving, you can get the Javascript or PHP code for ublishing the subscribe link on your website or blog. The subscribers will receive the RSS messages exactly on the same dates that they would receive them if subscribed by email.
Note that the link is dynamic and you must only use the codes provided. Do not right-click and copy the link to share it - this will produce a link that works fine only for the current date.

There are four types of emails in the autoresponders:

- X days after user registration (Sequential). This is the most common type of autoresponder message. The mails are sent at defined by you interval of time after the user's registration. This type of messages yelds very good results in selling and is appropriate for e-courses and other marketing sequences. There is no limit to the number of mails you can schedule in one autoresponder.

- Send on fixed date. If you select such type, your mail will be sent to the subscribers of the selected mailing lists at a fixe dates. This is useful for holiday greetings, new product launches or other events that are common for all the subscribers.

- Send every X days. You can send such messages for example every 4 days, 10 days etc. The type is useful for various reminders.

- Send on every [weekday]. Such messages are sent once weekly - for example every Tuesday or every Saturday etc.

Be careful with the last 2 types of messages, sending same email often may upset your subscribers. 3. View Newsletters

On this page you will see all saved newsletters sent or saved previously. You can edit or open any of them and use it again. Using the link at the top you can create and send a new newsletter

4. General Settings

Here you can change the administrators password or to activate or deactivate online registration module. You can also set if you want the mails from broadcast to be sent immediately or via cron job (see below). You can limit the amount of mails sent per hour accordingly to your hosting limitations and to set delay between each mail (for the same reason).

- Sending the mails as cron job: If you want to activate it you need to schedule execution of sender.php once per hour

5. Bounced Mails Settings

Using this advanced feature BF can automatically clean up your mailing list from innactive accounts. You can delete or deactivate accounts after a number of bounced back mails. Your bounce address must be real email on the server and it should be different than the "Sender" email. Then you need to add a forwarder that will forward the emails received from the bounce address to the script bounce.php. The format of the command slightly differs on different server, so you will need to check what is it on yours. Please don't contact me asking about this - only your server administrators can answer you.

6. Member details and masks.

By default you can use thee masks that can be replaced in the emails subject and message - {{name}}, {{firstname}} and {{email}}. Although the registration pages take full name only, the script extracts the first name automatically so you don't need to create a custom field for that.  The software will also take care for unification of the entered names, because some people enter them in all caps, or only small letters, use commas and so on.

7. Files and Links.

You can embed URLs to web pages and files in your emails and you can also track the number of clicks/downloads they receive. Visit the Files/Links menu and add your URLs or upload your files. The system will show you the tracking URL under each link or file. You can then use this URL in your newsletters or autoresponder emails.

Programmable Registration API (For advanced users only, optional)

The programmable API is a simple way to allow registering users automatically for example when they join your membership site, blog or anything else. To register an user you just need to send a REST request to api.php in the following format:

http://yourwebsite.com/path_to_autoresponder/api.php?do=register&list_id=1&email=test@dot.com&name=John%20Smith&confirm_email=1&pass=encrypted_password&field_1=30&field_2=Male

Where the list_id=1 should contain the list ID which you can see at the end of the registration URL shown in mailing lists page. So if the list ID there is 5, you need to put list_id=5 in the API URL. The fields "name" and "email" contain the name and email of the user you want to register. Note that the values should be URL encoded. The field "confirm_email" defines whether you want to reguire email confirmation or the user will be immediately activated in the system. Set confirm_email=1 to require email confirmation and confirm_email=0 to activate the user automatically.

The fields "field_1" and "field_2" are just example names for your optional custom fields you may have in the mailing list. You can get their names from the HTML code of the registration form for that list.

Finally, the parameter "pass" should contain MD5 enctrypted API password. The password can be set by yourself in the main settings page.

Here is a sample PHP code showing a request to the API:
file_get_contents("http://somedomain.com/autoresponder/api.php?do=register&list_id=6&email=john@dot.com&name=".urlencode("John Smith")."&field_1=Male&confirm_email=0&pass=".md5("123456");
Of course the URL can contain variables. Same can be realized in any other server technology, not just PHP.



Alternative to Cron jobs

If by any chance your host does not allow running cron jobs, you can still use the autoresponder. Just include sender.php as an image in the HTML code of your well visited site or blog (the page or site where this is included should have at least one visitor daily). Everything will be handled automatically. Don't worry, even if you put the code on a site with thousands of visits this will not overload the autoresponder server.

Here is what code you need to include: <img src="http://yourwebsite.com/path_to_autoresponder/sender.php?html=1" alt="" width="1" height="1">

Note that youwebsite.com should be replaced by the website URL and path_to_autoresponder is of course the path to BF Autoresponder installation.



Upgrading from previous versions

If you are running version older or equal to 2.7, do the following:
  1. Upload all files by FTP
  2. Edit file inc/mysql_wrapper.php and fill in your current database details.
  3. Visit upgrade.php with your browser. You should see "Upgrade completed!" message.
That's it!

Support

For any problems or questions contact me on admin@pimteam.net

 

License

The license of this script allows you to install it on unlimited domains that you own. Reselling it however is not allowed. If you are interested in reselling, please contact me.

The script is using the following LGPL or MIT licensed third party packages: jQuery, SwiftMailer, reCAPTCHA, and CKEDITOR.

A Product of CalendarScripts and Bobby Handzhiev