User Guides

These guides cover extended topics regarding KarmaCMS. You may also want to look over our Frequently Asked Questions page if you cannot find what you are looking for here.

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Mailing Lists

Mailing lists make it easy to send email to groups of people without a lot of micro-mangement. You simply need to send a single email to a single address, and it goes out to everyone on the list automatically.

Invalid addresses are automatically removed after two bounces, and you can configure the list to send you a nightly report of new subscriptions and unsubscriptions.

To Create a Mailing List:

  1. Go to the main section of the Admin Area (not the CMS).
  2. Click "Mailing Lists" from the menu on the left.
  3. Enter the name of the new list under "Create List".
  4. Click the [Create] button to create the list.

Adding People to the List

To add an email address to the mailing list:

  1. Select the list from the drop-down box under "View/Modify List".
  2. Click the [View/Modify] button.
  3. Enter an email address in the box at the top that says "New Subscriber" and click the [Subscribe] button.
  4. The new address will appear in the subscriber list.

To add multiple addresses to the list:

  1. Right below the "New Subscriber" box (see the previous section), there is a link that says "Batch Subscribe". Click it.
  2. Here you will see a large box that allows you to enter several addresses at once.
  3. Enter the email addresses and click the [Subscribe] button.

Warning: Adding people to your list who did not explicitly request to get mail from you is considered spamming. Spam complaints will result in the immediate loss of all email privileges.

Assigning Posting Permissions

Before you can send a message to your list, you must give yourself (and optionally others) permission to post to the list. To do this:

  1. Go to the Mailing List section of the general Admin Area (not the CMS)
  2. Select your list from the drop-down box under [View/Modify List].
  3. Subscribe your own email address to the mailing list if you have not already done so.
  4. Click the "Preferences" link at the very top of the page.
  5. At the top of the next page you will see a section called "Whitelist". Enter your own email address in the whitelist box, then scroll down and click "Set Preferences".
  6. Repeat these steps for any other people you wish to give posting permissions to.

Sending a Message to the List

To send a message to the list:

  1. Give yourself permission to post. You must subscribe yourself to the list and put yourself on the whitelist as described above, or else your message will be silently disgarded.
  2. Using your regular email program, type up a message and send it to "listname@yourdomain.com". For example, if the name of your list is "news", you would send the email to "news@yourdomain.com".
  3. Your message will go out immediately. If you do not get a copy within 10 minutes, you should contact your administrator because something may be misconfigured.
  4. If you do not see your message go through, do not send your message again in hopes that it will automatically start working, as that may cause your message delivered multiple times. Contact an administrator for assistance.

Website Auto-Subscription Box

Once you have created a mailing list and tested it to make sure it is working, follow these steps to get the signup box on your site:

  1. Go to the CMS section of the Admin Area.
  2. If you have not installed the Mailing List module, do so now.
  3. Click the "Add/Edit Content" button for the Mailing List module.
  4. Click the "Add New Mailing List" button.
  5. Enter a name and brief description of the list.
  6. Go into the Main Preferences and add your Mailing List module as a Teaser.

To put your Mailing List signup box on another site:

  1. Go to the CMS section of the Admin Area.
  2. Click the "Add/Edit Content" button for the Mailing List module.
  3. Click [View/Edit] next to the mailing list signup box that you are going to be putting on the other site.
  4. At the bottom of the page you will see a section that contains the offsite code. Copy-and-paste this code onto the other site.

Viewing List Subscribers:

To see who has signed up for your list:

  1. Go to your Admin Area
  2. Click "Mailing Lists" from the menu on the left.
  3. Under "View/Modify List", select the list you wish to modify for and click the button.
  4. You will now see your list of subscribers.

Unsubscribing People

To unsubscribe someone from your list:

  1. Go to your Admin Area
  2. Click "Mailing Lists" from the menu on the left.
  3. Under "View/Modify List", select the list you wish to modify for and click the button.
  4. You will now see your list of subscribers. Next to each subscriber there is a link that says [Unsubscribe]. If you click it, that address will be removed from the list.

To allow people to automatically unsubscribe themselves, simply inform them to send a blank email to:

listname-unsubscribe@yourdomain.com

(Replace listname with the name of your list.)

Setting List Preferences:

There are several preferences you can set for your list. To set list preferences:

  1. Go to your Admin Area
  2. Click "Mailing Lists" from the menu on the left.
  3. Under "View/Modify List", select the list you wish to modify for and click the button.
  4. At the top of the next page there is a link called "Preferences". Click it.
  5. You will see various preferences that you can set for your list. Do not set any preferences below the top section unless you are certain of what you are doing. Contact your hosting administrator if you have questions.

Mailing List Etiquette

Never add people to your list without their permission. Unless someone personally requests to be on your list, you should not put them on. Doing so is considered spamming, and is highly frowned upon.

Out of courteousy, each email that you send to your list should contain simple instructions for automatically unsubscribing. A single sentence like the following will suffice:

To unsubscribe from this mailing list, simply send a blank email to listname-unsubscribe@yourdomain.com.

(Replace "listname" with the name of your list, and "yourdomain.com" with the name of your domain.)

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