Studio Newsletter Mailing List
After a significant amount of messing around with phplist, open source newsletter management software, I’ve finally got my mailing list set up and working somewhat to my satisfaction.
My studio newsletter will be sent out 3 or 4 times a year and contains information on my upcoming exhibitions, photos of work not yet available on my website or blog, and other noteworthy news from my studio.
To subscribe enter your email address below:
I will never share or sell your email address and will only use it for the purpose stated above. All emails sent will include a link to unsubscribe should you decide you are no longer interested.
This was a much bigger job than I think I anticipated. But maybe mostly because I’m a perfectionist and I found much of the wording of the subscription emails and forms that came with the software not to my liking. So I changed a lot of it. I also customized everything so it has my website header.
Of course all that meant mucking around with php code, of which I don’t really know. There were a few times I broken everything by deleting some necessary stuff - oops! But I think it’s all working again. Do let me know if you try to sign up but run into problems.
Posted by Lisa in: Being an Artist, Marketing
pamdora said,
March 27, 2007 @ 6:45 am
ick, I’ve been looking at php and MySQL recently because I can’t figure out how to back up my blog databse. A matter of fact, this week end I bought OReilly books on XHTML, CSS, and PHP and MySQL because I’d like to edit my template and I have no clue what all this stuff is doing. I’ve tried learning on line, but at for software, I do much better when I and sit down and read a book. Any recommendations on good ones? I liked the OReilly ones because they weren’t all gunked up with graphics and had some good quick reference lists. Now if I just had time to read! :)
cynthia said,
March 27, 2007 @ 7:33 am
You’re several steps ahead of me. I bookmarked the site the last time you mentioned the site, but am not ready yet. I subscribed to your mailing list and look forward to the first newsletter.
Diane Clancy said,
March 27, 2007 @ 10:12 am
I have just created my blog - http://www.dianeclancy.com/blog - this week so I am right in the throes of this too! I did back up my database though. I am using WordPress for the blog software and the instructions they gave were very clear - even though scary to be following … since I felt like a mistake could be deadly - at least to the blog.
But it is confusing. They have lots of online documentation, but there are a couple of different kinds and I have a hard time refinding what I had found before. And it is so endless what I could be learning … and I still want to paint!
What a good idea to get a book. Do you know the online tutotial - http://www.w3schools.com ? (I am not sure if it is ok to have active links in these comments or not … so I am being conservative here) They have facts, examples and an active little box where you can test code - for HTML, XHTML and CSS.
I have been redoing my site and learning by bits and pieces what I need to know - but perhaps I too should get a book and read it. Hard copy in my hand is very helpful to me!
I was curious how to start thinking about finding a newsletter program. Doing a newsletter has been on my list for while. Any thoughts would be helpful.
- Diane Clancy
Lisa Call said,
March 27, 2007 @ 10:46 am
Pam - I wish I could suggest some books to you but I don’t read programming books very often. With my background in computer science I just wing it and usually just figure it out. Although I probably wouldn’t recommend this approach to most folks. Books can be good - and the O’Reilly ones are probably some of the better ones - I see them a lot here at work and have some on my shelf even. I’d avoid any of the ones with the word dummy in the title - something about that really annoys me.
I use the w3schools website Diane mentioned quite a bit for a quick reference if I for get the syntax for things.
One of the things on my todo list is to get the plugin for the scheduled backups to work - for some reason it doesn’t work for me. I have to go in and do manual backups (as in I have to actually click a button - such work).
Diane - most people use something like constantcontact.com for their newsletters but I couldn’t see paying the fees given my ability to admin my own maillist software. Do some google searches for maillist software and other terms, check out constantcontact. That should get to started thinking about how you might want to approach it.
Cynthia - you are so far ahead of me on everything else: business license, purchasing huge piles of clay, online stores to sell your stuff… I want to catch up to you! Well maybe not the clay but I took a few clay courses as a graduate student in the evening - it was great fun - I made a big eyeball.
Daniel Sroka said,
March 27, 2007 @ 10:51 am
I hope phpList works well for you. I took a look at it for my own newsletter, and shuddered at the ugly, complex interface. I found an alternative, called Pommo (http://pommo.org/) which looks interesting: decent control and a much cleaner interface.
Anne Vis said,
April 1, 2007 @ 1:44 am
How recognizable, all these stories about struggling with programming! :-) It drives me crazy, so for my newsletter I found Vertical Response. They do almost everything for you and it does not cost a lot, so I can recommend them. (to see my latest newsletter: http://www.sunnysites.org/sunnysites/newsletters/html/newsletter2-2007.html)
I am also working with WordPress (for the blog), but this technical chip is probably not installed in me, for I took me forever to even customize it a little bit to the style of my site and then I found nobody could find my blog … So I was looking at the documentation and found that you need to burn a blog (through Feedburner)? It is still very confusing to me and does not seem to make any difference … I see you are way ahead of me with your blog! Congrats! :-)