Web Server Maintenance Notice

Written by Matt SimpsonNovember 12, 2005

This is a quick announcement to mention that the ListMessenger website http://www.listmessenger.com (including the forums and Members Area) will be down tomorrow morning for a few hours while we do regular maintenance and upgrades on the server.

The official upgrade slot is:
Sunday, November 13th, 2005 @ 6:00AM EST

We expect the upgrades will actually take roughly 5 hours to complete; however, the website and forums will be up and online most of this time. To ensure a positive experience for customers, the Members Area will be off-line until all upgrades are complete.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and appreciate your understanding.

ListMessenger Pro 2.0 Released!

Written by Matt SimpsonMay 17, 2005

Today marks the end of long development cycle and out of that development cycle we are delighted to present you with ListMessenger Pro 2.0, our next generation electronic mailing list management system. This new version of ListMessenger encompasses an inordinate number of feature requests provided by our customer base and will provide a stable and solid foundation for future releases of both our Light and Professional versions of our product.

Full details of the changes within ListMessenger Pro can be found in the changelog.txt file available on our website; however, the following is a list of major enhancements to the program:

  • Complete rewrite of ListMessenger 1.0 codebase.
  • Custom e-mail fields support.
  • E-Mail attachements and managment support.
  • Subscriber importing and exporting system.
  • Enhanced backup and restore system.
  • Unlimited group levels.
  • Select and send to multiple groups at once.
  • Duplicate e-mail address removal.
  • Subscribe and unsubscribe notifications.
  • New language files and language choice options.
  • HTMLArea 3.0 rich text editor for Mozilla, Firefox, Netscape and Internet Explorer.
  • Enhanced message archives.
  • Moveable public and private folders.
  • Upgrade from all previous releases of ListMessenger.
  • Fantastic User Guide (Manual) by Erik Geurts. *available shortly
  • Optional error logging.
  • No more pop-up window to send messages.
  • New custom ListMessenger icon set.
  • Much more.

Over the next week, we will be spending a lot of time upgrading the ListMessenger website to reflect the changes of ListMessenger, so we apologize that some of the information and demo is currently out of date.

For those of you interested in ListMessenger Light 2.0 news, we plan on releasing ListMessenger Light 2.0 in the coming weeks. This new release of ListMessenger Light will have many of the benefits of ListMessenger Pro with the usual limitations on the number of subscribers you’re able to handle, without the Backup & Restore and Import & Export tools, etc. More information on this will be available shortly.

You have also probably already noticed that we have updated our ListMessenger Forums with forums specific to ListMessenger 1.0 and ListMessenger 2.0. We will continue to support ListMessenger 1.0 users in the coming months with the understanding that our goal is migration from 1.0 to 2.0.

Thank-you for reading our ListMessenger announcements and we look forward to hearing your suggestions and feedback about our new release.

ListMessenger Pro 2.0 Hits The Streets, Tuesday!

Written by Matt SimpsonMay 16, 2005

ListMessenger Pro 2.0 hits the streets on Tuesday, May 17th, 2005. Yes, I said ListMessenger Pro 2.0 and yes, I said Tuesday, May 17th, 2005 and I delighted to be making this announcement.

After over a year an a half in development and a full version number increase I am pleased to announce ListMessenger Pro 2.0 which will be available on Tuesday, May 17th, 2005. ListMessenger 1.1 never did do this release justice and I’ve known that for months now, but wanted to make it a surprise for all ListMessenger users.

I realize that I have said this release will be released in the past; however, I can assure you that you will have it this Tuesday. The reason being… that it’s already done. Yes, I have the distribution file on my desktop now and it’s just about ready to go. We have some small house cleaning to take care of before we can release it which is why it won’t be available until Tuesday.

Here are a few of the many new major features:

  • Complete rewrite of ListMessenger 1.0 codebase.
  • Custom e-mail fields support.
  • E-Mail attachements and managment support.
  • Subscriber importing and exporting system.
  • Enhanced backup and restore system.
  • Unlimited group levels.
  • Select and send to multiple groups at once.
  • Subscribe and unsubscribe notificiations.
  • HTMLArea 3.0 rich text editor for Mozilla, Firefox, Netscape and Internet Explorer.
  • Enhanced message archives.
  • Moveable public and private folders.
  • Upgrade from all previous releases of ListMessenger.
  • Fantastic User Guide (Manual) by Erik Geurts.
  • Error logging.
  • No more pop-up window during sending.
  • New icon set.
  • Much more.

More details will follow in the next 24 hours as we upgrade our website and Members Area to reflect the new release. One other thing I wanted to mention was ListMesseger Light 2.0 will be on it’s way shortly as well. After I get ListMessenger Pro released, it’s just a matter of making some code adjustments for the Light version. Without giving a release date for ListMessenger Light 2.0, I would say it should be out shortly as well.

Thinking about purchasing ListMessenger Pro now but are thinking of waiting? Either way is fine; however, there is always Free Lifetime Upgrades with ListMessenger so have no fears!

Enjoy and good night.

Release Testers Required

Written by Matt SimpsonMay 15, 2005

I am currently looking for a few people to help me test the upgrade application from previous versions of ListMessenger to this new release. I’m looking for people to test this today if at all possible and you must be running one of the following versions of ListMessenger:

ListMessenger Pro 1.0
ListMessenger 0.9.4
ListMessenger 0.9.3
ListMessenger 0.5.0

Your database must contain over 50 valid subscribers, you must have previously sent over 5 messages using ListMessenger and you must be able to send one newsletter out to your subscriber group today to test with.

I apologize for the requirements; however, I have specific issues I’m looking for and very small mailing lists aren’t that useful to me at this time.

Alternatively, if you have a very large mailing list 2,000 + subscribers and you’re not able to send out a mailing today, but would like to test the upgrader, that would be great.

Those interested (if anyone) please contact me via e-mail: msimpson at listmessenger dot com

General Community Update

Written by Matt SimpsonApril 15, 2005

A few things I felt it is important to update everyone one.

New Update: Wednesday, May 4th, 2005
I just got back from a Medical Conference for the past week. I’m home for a few days and then I have to leave again for my cousin’s wedding. During this time I’ve been working on ListMessenger on/off. I’ve got the new setup engine done and all that remains is the upgrade program, which I am currently working on. Thank-you for your patience.

1) The next release of ListMessenger is going along very well. The application itself is now complete and is being tested by a few select individuals. The only thing left to do is to write the new installer / upgrade system so I don’t expect this will take much longer. Again, I do not want to set a release date; however, if I were to hinder a guess I would say Sunday, April 24th, 2005 would be a good date. I’ll just reiterate that this is not a release date, but just a date that I would expect it to be completed.

2) I have updated ListMessenger Pro 1.0’s internal packages and fixed a number of smaller issues that have been causing a higher number of support issues lately. The updates to ListMessenger Pro 1.0 include:

  • An upgraded PHPMailer class which does not have SMTP problems.
  • PHP5 readiness by default (renamed $this to $string).
  • Removal of invalid index.php file in the public images folder.
  • An update to the Import tool which moves import files from the servers tmp directory to your ListMessenger tmp directory before reading them.

There is no need to upgrade ListMessenger 1.0 if you are not currently experiencing any problems. The issues that were fixed are generally minor and usually effect users immediately. No version number was incremented (i.e. 1.0.2) because in ListMessenger 1.0 if I increment a version number change I had to upgrade the installer and since this was a maintenance release, it just wasn’t worth it. In the next release of ListMessenger I have implemented a build numbering system you will always know where your release stands.

3) I will be away this weekend and unable to provide technical support to users. I am leaving Friday at 12:00PM EST and will return Sunday evening. Please feel free to leave messages on the forum and I will address them when I return.

ListMessenger 1.1 Beta 2 Available

Written by Matt SimpsonFebruary 28, 2005

ToDo

  • Upgrade Program to upgrade / migrate ListMessenger 0.5 – 1.0 (working on)
  • Documentation (working on: Erik is doing great at this.)

(completed list is at the bottom of the message)

Announcement

Well after another long stretch of development, I’m pleased to announce that another beta release of ListMessenger Pro 1.1 (Beta 2) is available for download in the Members Area of the ListMessenger website. This beta release is available to anyone who has previously purchased ListMessenger Pro 1.0.

This beta completes the new ListMessenger administration interface and adds a lot of new features to ListMessenger in general. Because of all the new features, this beta release was required to ensure the product is as stable and sound as possible prior to the final release. What this beta does not include is the upgraded end-user tools which allow people to subscribe from your website, and it also does not include an upgrade path from previous versions of ListMessenger. The end-user tools and upgrade system are currently in development and will be included with the final release of ListMessenger.

I would also like to remind you once again, that this is in fact a beta release and I implore you not to use this as your production system. Please do not overwrite your ListMessenger 1.0 installation with this beta release.

I would also like to remind you that all ListMessenger Pro upgrades are available at no cost and upgrade support is also provided via the forum for the final release. On that note, installation support is generally not provided for installing a beta release; however, you are encouraged to express opinions, comments or problems in the forum as well. The forum is available 24 hours a day at: http://forum.listmessenger.com

Finally, I would like to take a moment to sincerely thank all ListMessenger users who are eagerly, but patiently awaiting the final release of this version. It has been one heck of a journey to get this far and this release has been in development for over an entire year.

Also a special thank-you goes out to a forum user and now moderator Erik Geurts, whose dedication and assistance within the ListMessenger community does not go unnoticed and is greatly appreciated. Thanks Erik.

Completed

  • Done… Upgrade End-User Tools
  • Done… Add Notifications To End-User Tools
  • Done… Put out ListMessenger Pro 1.1 Beta 2
  • Done… Auto-Unsubscribe Link
  • Done… Text-Message Spell Checking Integration
  • Done… Control Panel Item – Import & Export
  • Done… Control Panel Item – Backup & Restore
  • Done… Online Files Window when Composing
  • Done… Control Panel Item – Templates
  • Done… Control Panel Item – File Management
  • Done… Subscriber Stats
  • Done… HTMLArea ImageManager Plug-In
  • Done… Timezone Offsetting Ability
  • Done… Just updating comments, and installer.
  • Done… Migrate the Preferences page into the Control Panel.
  • Done… Finish add / edit / delete subscribers.
  • Done… Fix pop-up calendar bug for Safari support.
  • Done… Fix resume bug in sending system.
  • Done… Queue listing page.
  • Done… Fix move subscribers bug when deleting a group.
  • Done… Fix deleting subscribers bug (didn’t delete custom data).
  • Done… Upgraded ADODB classes to 4.60

ListMessenger 1.1 Update 6

Written by Matt SimpsonOctober 4, 2004

Despite working a great deal of hours over this weekend, I wasn’t able to get even a beta available for release of the next version of ListMessenger. Since this next version is a complete re-write of the original, the code base has changed which will not allow me to migrate older code. The new sending engine, which was what I worked on all weekend, is pretty much complete and is at least a twenty times improvement over the 1.0 version.

I am working hard to deliver this upgrade, thank-you for your patience.

On a separate note, I’m never going to do such a big upgrade again. There’s just too much in getting it ready for production, despite what I think sometimes when I “have a great idea”. I’m making it my goal for future releases to be more frequent, but less complex and less features.

ListMessenger 1.1 Update 5

Written by Matt SimpsonSeptember 28, 2004

I thought that I had better put out another release announcement to let everyone know the progress on ListMessenger 1.1.

I have been working diligently on the next release since my return from PHPWorks 2004 (PHP Conference) in Toronto on Sunday. I plan to have no less then a beta version of ListMessenger 1.1 available on the weekend, which will be available to all ListMessenger Pro customers. I will send out a notice to the ListMessenger mailing list when the release is available, as well as post another announcement.

In other news, users should be aware of a possible service outage of the ListMessenger website, members area and forums on Thursday evening and/or Friday morning as we will be upgrading our production server. We do not expect the outage to be long and we appreciate your patience.

ListMessenger 1.1 Update 4

Written by Matt SimpsonAugust 27, 2004

With all the e-mails and questions I receive regarding ListMessenger 1.1, I felt it best to just release another announcement explaining the delay and the timelines I expect for this release.

Please be advised that ListMessenger 1.1 is indeed under development and that it is indeed very late. This is not because of programming complexities or any issues relating to the program, but because I simply have not had the time to complete it. I have roughly 15 to 20 hours of programming left to complete it which really isn’t all that much; however, the deadlines that I am under at the University are preventing me from spending that time on ListMessenger. We’ve had two large, top priority projects dumped on our lap last minute and it’s very frustrating for me and unfortunate that it has hindered the development this much.

The number one top priority project was completed on time by September 1st and the second top priority project is required to be completed by September 15th. I am going to spend as much time as possible during the next two weeks on ListMessenger; however, development will be delayed until the end of September. So in other words, you can expect that ListMessenger Pro 1.1 will be released by the end of September, 2004; however, my hope is that it is released sooner than that.

I would also like to take a minute to state that I really sincerely do apologize for the inconveniences and delays of users waiting to upgrade. I completely understand your frustration and I just want you to know that I feel the same way.

The sooner this version is out, the better the following version will be! I always look at it that way, but at the same time, I don’t like to release stuff early.

ListMessenger 1.1 Update 3

Written by Matt SimpsonJune 28, 2004

I’m decided to release some teaser screenshots of ListMessenger 1.1. There’s still some development work that needs to be done before I can seed it for beta testing.

Development has slowed due to members of my wedding party that I haven’t seen in a long time coming down to visit and I have one more coming this weekend. I also am going to be doing a server upgrade shortly so this will take a bit of my time away from development. I’ll be sure to post as soon as I have any further information.

Screenshots:

Sadly, I couldn’t find the 4 screenshots to include here. Sorry.

Matt Simpson