Plugin architecture? If not, suggestions on extending functionality?
Hi.
I'm running mailing lists for a nonprofit organization. We'd like to create a customized newsletter. The idea is that subscribers would visit a configuration page, and check off the topics that they're interested in. Then, monthly or so, a customized newsletter would be generated for each subscriber and mailed out.
Since I'm already administering a Mailman server, it struck me that extending Mailman was the way to go. I'm only slightly familiar with Python, but it would be my seventh or eighth language, so that doesn't intimidate me.
What I'd like to do is write a plugin. However, I have been unable to find a description of a Mailman plugin API in dozens of web searches using multiple engines. I find *references* to such an API going back four years, but no actual documentation of one.
So: does the current Mailman support plugins? If not, what do you, the Mailman developers, think of extending the package to support custom newsletters? Any suggestions on where to start?
Thanks for reading.
Carl Fink postmaster@iconsf.org I-Con System Administrator and Postmaster <http://www.iconsf.org/>
Carl Fink wrote:
So: does the current Mailman support plugins? If not, what do you, the Mailman developers, think of extending the package to support custom newsletters? Any suggestions on where to start?
It "sort of" supports plugins for list membership management, but not for message customization.
What you are looking for is customer relationship/email campaign management software. Mailman is not intended to be used in that way, and trying to make it so is likely to be difficult and not very successful.
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
Carl Fink wrote:
What I'd like to do is write a plugin. However, I have been unable to find a description of a Mailman plugin API
While I agree with the previous poster that Mailman may not be the tool you're looking for, the answer to your question is: The place in mailman to look is at the pipeline module. What it sounds to me that you are describing is a pipeline step that does much more customization to the message at fan-out time. Look at the VERP stuff...
-Dale
participants (3)
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Carl Fink
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Dale Newfield
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Mark Sapiro