pennyblack

Important: Pennyblack is no longer being maintained! It still resides here for historical reasons.

Penyblack is a newsletter module based on the feincms.org CMS building toolkit. E-mails can either be sent as mass mails (e.g. monthly newsletter) or as part of a customised workflow (e.g. user clicks on a link and in response to that your application sends out an e-mail). Conditional data and variables can be filled in to a newsletter using the django template language. SPF (sender validation) and bounce management can be activated if desired. Key data like bounce rate, opening rate and link clicks is tracked and presented in the admin menu. Sending bulk e-mails is easy on memory. 20’000 and more addresses wont crash your server. From the outset we developed Pennyblack to easily integrate into existing web projects.

Installation

Notice: This is a first draft of an installation guide. It's not finished and complete.

1. Make sure you have a working django project setup.

2. Install Pennyblack over pip:

   pip install pennyblack
   

3. Make sure that the FeinCMS and Pennyblack Apps are added to your installed apps in your settings.py:

   'feincms',
   'feincms.module.medialibrary',
   'pennyblack',
   'pennyblack.module.subscriber',
   

4. Add a newsletter url to your urls.py:

   url(r'^newsletter/', include('pennyblack.urls'), name = 'pennyblack'),
   

5. Install dependencies (over pip):

   • pydns==2.3.4
   • pyspf==2.0.5

6. Import Pennyblack and add a newsletter template to your models.py:

   from pennyblack.models.newsletter import Newsletter
   from pennyblack.content.richtext import TextOnlyNewsletterContent, \
      TextWithImageNewsletterContent
   
   Newsletter.register_templates({
     'key': 'example',
     'title': 'Example Newsletter',
     'path': 'example_newsletter.html',
     'regions': (
         ('main', 'Main Region'),
         ),
     })
   
   Newsletter.create_content_type(TextOnlyNewsletterContent)
   Newsletter.create_content_type(TextWithImageNewsletterContent)
   

7. Add Pennyblack Models to south migration modules in your settings.py:

   SOUTH_MIGRATION_MODULES = {
       'pennyblack': 'project_name.migrations_pennyblack',
       'subscriber': 'project_name.migrations_subscriber',
   }
   

8. Run schemamigrations and migrate:

   ./manage.py schemamigration --initial pennyblack
   ./manage.py schemamigration --initial subscriber
   ./manage.py migrate
   

Dependencies

• Python
  • django
  • feincms
  • pyspf
  • pydns
  • pil
• Project Settings
  • TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS
    • django.core.context_processors.request
  • FEINCMS_ADMIN_MEDIA
  • feincms medialibrary musst be installed