Autoresponder Basics
[15 article(s) in this category]
Buying and using an autoresponder. Autresponder featues to look for and how effectively to use your autoresponder.
Autoresponder Usability
[13 article(s) in this category]
How efectively to use your autoresponders and get profits from it.
Email Deliverability
[6 article(s) in this category]
Improve your email deliverability by setting up SPF,Domainkeys and rDNS etc.
Email Marketing
[28 article(s) in this category]
Tips and articles on Email marketing. Using autoresponder to send promotions and follow ups like ecourses.
Marketing and Promotion
[5 article(s) in this category]
Marketing and promotion of your products and services using your autoresponder.
Tech Articles
[3 article(s) in this category]
Techniques related to autoresponder set up, web site preparation and email servers.
Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-18 23:17:42 No. of Views: 902
What are ASCII and BINARY modes?
ASCII is the standard method of exchanging information between the computers. It uses 7 bits in a standard byte and holds text.
BINARY is the number system based on number 2. It uses all 8 bits in a byte and can hold images along with text.
Why do we need to worry about transfering the files?
While uploading files from our computers to web sites, most of the times we are transfering the information between two different operating systems. Ex: Our Windows PC to Linux servers. So these different systems see the files at different angles especially at the end of the line and end of the document characters.
So if this part of the file is not transfered properly, you will get script errors like:
* 500 internal server error
* Premature end of script headers
* File is corrupted error
* Incomplete file transfers etc.
Knowing which file is which.
ASCII: As a rule of thumb, all the files that you CAN open in a Notepad needs ASCII mode transfer.
Examples:
* .txt (with no unicode like international language characters)
* .html
* .htm
* .shtml
* .php
* .js
* .cgi
* .pl
* .xml
* .rtf
* .asp
EXCEPTION TO THIS RULE: Microsoft word docuements (.doc) should be uploaded in BINARY.
BINARY: All the files that you CAN NOT open in a Notepad needs BINARY mode transfer.
Examples:
* .txt (with unicode)
* .doc
* .jpg
* .gif
* .png
* .jpeg
* .bmp
* .exe
* .pdf
* .dll
* .zip
How to set up your ftp software?
The example shown here is for WS_FTP PRO software. But all ftp software have these options. You need to look into your software userguide to see where these options are located.
1. Open up your WS_FTP PRO.
2. Highlight the website name on left side.
3. Click on 'Edit' button right side > 'Startup' tab > You will see the options.
ASCII mode: Uploads all files in ASCII mode
BINARY mode: Uploads all files in BINARY mode
AUTO: Automatic selection of mode based on your ftp software settings
4. Go to 'Options' > 'Extentions' tab > you will be able to add the file extentions there which are uploaded in ASCII by your software. If you do lot of uploading, then it will be better to tell your software which files you need to upload in ASCII.
Go to the Article Page ...
Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-18 23:14:24 No. of Views: 1387
Follow up Autoresponder PRO has built-in TinyMCE editor. It is very easy to use and customizable editor. They have a very active forum going on, so support wouldn't be a problem.
We can add tables, images and different fonts etc to html emails very easy with TinyMCE editor. But the problem is the URL of the images will be stripped-out when the subscriber actually receives the email. This was the complaint from the users of Follow up Autoresponder PRO.
So I digged deep into their documentation on TinyMCE's web site and changed the code which is used to implement the TinyMCE into the autoresponder script.
PROBLEM WAS BROKEN IMAGES IN THE HTML EMAILS:
Even when users of the script add the image urls as full absolute paths during message creating, the TinyMCE truncates the first half of the url, so the images won't display in html emails when the subscribers receive it.
HOW TO FIX IT:
You need to tweak the integration code of TinyMCE a little
bit. My first code looks like this in the template files of Follow up Autoresponder PRO.
Later I added an extra line to stop the url truncation by TinyMCE. I added the following code to the present integration code:
convert_urls : false
Now the code looks like this: This code tells TinyMCE to stop converting urls to reletive url paths.
Go to the Article Page ...
Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-18 22:38:58 No. of Views: 1243
What is cron?
Actually it is called 'cron daemon'. Cron is an automatic task machine. You will use it on your Unix or Linux operating systems for doing some tasks at specific intervals with out your intervention every time. You set the clock and forget. The cron daemon runs the work for you.
What is cron tab?
'Cron tab(CRON TABle)' is a text file that contains a series of cron functions.
What cron will do for you?
* If you want to send your email cources to your subscribers at 11.30 night, you will set the cron job on your server. And your cron manager sends one email every day at 11.30 until all the emails will be finished. If you want to send them on Sundays, you can schedule it with your cron.
* You can schedule it to delete your website members with expired accounts.
* You can schedule it to recieve an update on your subscribers from your mailing list manager.
* You can check your links on other websites in link exchange programms.
Have your webserver cron enabled?
Have you seen any icon with a name 'Cron Jobs' in your control panel?
Have you seen a text link like 'Cron Manager' or 'Cron jobs'?
If you see one, then you are cron enabled. Ask your host about your cron availability. Some host allows cron with out graphical interface. You have to access it through telnet.
If you are hosted on Virtual hosting domains then your system administrator has to set up your cron tabs for you.
What are the components of cron?
=Field====Value====Description=
minute====00-59====exact minute the cron executes
hour======00-23====hour of the day the cron executes(0 means midnight)
day=======01-31====day of the month the cron executes
month=====01-12====month of the year the cron executes
weekday===00-06====day of the week the cron executes(Sunday=0,Monday=1...)
command===Special==complete sequence of commands to execute
Examples how to set cron:
If you have installed a php script in your piblic_html/www/html directory called members.php and wanted to run this program each night as 11.30 PM as in above example.
You would setup the following crontab line:
30 23 * * * /home/username/www/script/members.php
30--represents the minute of cron work
23--represents the hour of the day
The * represent every day, month, and weekday.
If you want to set the cron job every sunday at midnight 11.30 PM then it would be like:
30 23 * * 0 /home/username/www/script/members.php
0--represents the Sunday.
If you want the cron job to run at 1:00 and 2:00 A.M then you can set it like:
* 1,2 * * * /home/username/www/script/members.php
This runs your cron at 1 and 2 A.M every day, every month and every week.
If you want to run the above task only from Monday to Friday then set it like:
* 1,2 * * 1-5 /home/username/www/script/members.php
Setting up the cron:
Now every host panel is equipped with graphical user interface to set up cron jobs. How easy is that!
Here I am descriding cpanel user interface:
1. Login into your cpanel.
2. Click on 'Cron jobs' icon on your cpanel home page.
3. You will be taken to a page with two buttons - 'Standard' and 'Advanced'.
4. Click on 'Standard' which leads you to a graphical user interface.
5. Select the minutes, hours, day and month.
6. Enter the script file path as absolute path.
7. You have to define the php path before the script path. This can be 'php' or '/usr/bin/php'.
8. See example: I set the cron to run every day night 11.30 and path pointing to a members.php script.
http://www.scripts4webmasters.net/images/cron-cpanel.jpg
Input your email at top right side so you will receive any errors if cron job is not correctly set. Once you'd make sure that cron running properly, you can remove your email and leave the box empty.
TIPS in setting up your cron jobs:
* Ask your host about the procedure if you are not sure of a thing.
* Check your cron once in a while. For example you set your cron to send your ezine at 11.30 PM. Then you subscribe yourself to see it is working or not.
* If you are setting the script path in your schedule, the path SHOULD be from your hosts server root. NOT your domain path. Ex:/home/user/www/script/members.php is correct.
http://www.yourdomain.com/script/members.php is incorrect.
* Script names are case sensitive on Unix. So be careful in entering the script name.
Go to the Article Page ...
