phpLedMailer Advanced Topics
Documentation Index

Introduction
While one of the primary goals of phpLedMailer is to be simple to use, one of the things inherent to the design of an application like this is that people are going to want to do advanced things with it. This page is dedicated to help explain how you can do some of the more advanced things within phpLedMailer.

Configuration Page
The Configuration page of phpLedMailer is essentially an interface to the plm_config table of the database. This table is pulled each time phpLedMailer is loaded, and various run-time options are controlled by these values.

• Mailing List Name
  This is the name of the mailing list. This will show up on any templates where {listname} is placed. This is a field that should be modified to fit the name of your site, or the purpose of the mailing list.
• Mailing List Reply-To Address
  This is the address people will be replying to when they hit the 'Reply' button on their e-mail clients. We generally recommend pointing this to a dummy address that will just throw the messages away, as bounces will also come back to this address (for addresses that no longer exist, for example). You can set this to a valid address if you want the users to be able to reply to a real person, or if you want to catch bounces so you can manually remove invalid addresses from the list. Future versions of phpLedMailer may include a bounce-to specific address that will allow the automatic removal from the list.
• Base URL (Optional)
  The is the URL of your site. Generally speaking, there is no need to fill this in. phpLedMailer will attempt to figure this out at run-time if you leave this blank, which is generally the preferred method.
• Send Chunk Size
  This defines how large a send 'chunk' should be. This basically how many people an email will be sent to with each refresh of the Send Items page. A good value for this is 10
• Pseudo Name for [userfield1] and [userfield2]
  phpLedMailer defines to 'user field's within the database and application to collete nonspecific data from the users. By default, these are called 'City' and 'State' (this is rooted in the fact that this application was originally designed for someone how wanted to college City and State information from subscribers). You can rename these items here. These fields are generally not used for anything except any reporting you may decide to do directly against the database.
• Send Validation e-mail
  If this checkbox is checked, then a verification e-mail will be sent when a user subscribers to the list. Otherwise, simply typing their name and e-mail address into the subscription box will fully subscribe them to the list. Users may enter false addresses, or someone else's address, so it is recommended that you keep this box checked.
• Mail Server Type (smtp or standard)
  This defines how e-mail will be sent. If you select 'smtp', then you must configure the 'smtp server' (below) to a valid smtp server. If you select 'standard', then phpLedMailer will attempt to send e-mails via the default method that php itself is configure to send them.
• Mail Server Name for SMTP (typically "localhost")
  This option defins the address of the smtp server -- only used if you select 'smtp' to the above option.
• Item list size on the Administration Pages
  This defines many items is shown per page in the administration interface, such as how many subscribers to list per page. A good value for this is 25.
• In Testing Mode? (no mail items are mailed)
  If this box is checked, then Mail Items will not actually be sent via your mail server. This allows you to test your setup without actually flooding your users with test e-mails. This box must be unchecked in order to send mail items to end users. Note: Even with this box checked, subscribe and unsubscribe verification e-mails are still sent. This box only applies to sending of the final mail items.

Utilities
The Utilities page of the administration interface for phpLedMailer includes several hopeful (and some critical) functions to help maintain your application.

• Import Addresses
  This feature allows you to import a large list of address, perhaps pulled from another mailing list application, without having to enter them one at time via the subscription page.
• Delete Addresses
  This feature is like the Import Address feature, except that it allows you to delete multiple subscribers at once. A common use for this would be removing e-mail addresses of e-mails that have been bounced back to you because they no longer exist.
• Delete old subscribe/unsubscribe queue items.
  When a user chooses to subscribe to your mailing list, and "Send Validation E-mails" is checked on the Configuration page, their information is actually stored in a queue table, until they verify their information. Often times users will enter false information or simply never verify their address. This function allows you to remove old queue items that are likely to never be completed. This is simply used to keep your database clean of no longer needed queue items, and is completely optional.
• Synchronize Database Layout
  This function will attempt to sync the layout of your database with the correct structure (defined in db_schema.php). This is exactly what the install script executes when you first install the application, so there should be no need to execute this unless the database structure has been corrupted, or there has been a patch/upgrade that requests that you run this. Be sure to backup your database before you run this function. Even with that, only run this if you know what you're doing!

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