Melon's Post Office - free newsletter service

[Melooon]

Melons Post Office

                 

  Iv been operating my newsletter for the past few years and in that time I've never really found a satisfactory newsletter sending system thats easy for me to use and that I could also recommend to other web crafters. The system Iv been using has been complicated, flawed and prone to get me banned by my e-mail provider since it breaks their TOS..

Well that all changes today, because I'v scraped together a brand new newsletter service, and you can use it too! It handles mailing list signups, verification codes, unsubscriptions and e-mail formatting, and bulk sending, all from a hopefully pleasing UI.

It also supports everyone site templates that you can create over here! 

To get started making a newsletter just visit letters.melonland.net (it will auto login with your forum account).



Notes:

This service is in super-hyper-testing phase, there may be bugs and issues, please report them ASAP if you find them. I would also really welcome feedback, suggestions and opinions about the service as a whole!

Most main features are listed on the site homepage. 

Here are some extra bullet points of details you might need to know:

• All newsletters are sent from "letters@melonland.net", with a Reply To: of your forum e-mail.
• Your subject is prefixed with your name to keep them identifiable e.g. "[melon] Newsletter Issue 01"
• Some features are donator-only (such as multiple mailing-lists) our forum-donator link is still very basic, so if you are not flagged as a donator here yet, send me a PM and we can sort it out! (Donators are anyone who as made a Ko-Fi donation/order or Gift Shop donation!)
• There is a 1 hour delay on all newsletter sending giving you time to cancel if you need!
• Signups are currently anonymous, meaning you cant see who follows your newsletter, this is by design but open for discussion!
• There is no in-built way to import or export your mailing-list atm, however if you'd like to have your current list imported or request an export of your list, PM me and we can discuss.

Thanks!

I look forward to hearing what people think 

[candycanearter07]

hey thats pretty cool! is it for mailing lists too?

[Melooon]

is it for mailing lists too?

If you mean Downtime style mailing lists where people can chain reply, then nope; its just for newsletter mailing lists where one person sends a letter to many people who subscribe to their list.

[dream]

This is sooo awesome ahhh. I just created a newsletter called dream journal!

Limited time offer

Each subscriber to Dream Journal is eligible to receive
one (1) free taco coupon^1
1void where prohibited, taco may be digital, while supplies last

                 

Additionally, I promise my subscribers the world! So act fast! It's not too late to join before I send my first edition letter!

How to subscribe to the Dream Journal newsletter:

• Find your computer mouse (it's probably near one of your hands)
• Move said computer mouse so that its cursor hovers over THIS HYPERLINK
• Yes!! That's it! Now left-click the hyperlink!
• AHHH WHERE'D YOU GO?
• CAN YOU STILL HEAR ME? HEY COME BACK!

[candycanearter07]

ah, screw it. ill make one if only to provide stupid facts ^^

[dream]

Requesting the ability to import and export from post office my lists page.

Also I get 421 Misdirected Request sometimes. I get stuck. I switch browsers or use incognito to work around it.

[Melooon]

ability to import and export

Do you mean import/export subscribers?

At the moment it doesn't allow export simply from a privacy perspective; this is open to discussion, it just seemed like a safe way to start things off.

I don't think I can ever add an inbuilt import system, simply because there would be no way to stop people importing a bunch of unverified emails and then absolutely destroying the anti-spam credibility of the melonland.net e-mail domain by bouncing hundreds of them. However, this can be done manually by me if someone has a large trustworthy list they would like to import.

421 Misdirected Request sometimes

Apparently this is mostly a Chrome issue; I did issue a test fix, so lemmy know if it persists!

[JINSBEK]

This is very cool. I might use this to make a subscription webcomic--I'm not confident about updating a webcomic site on a fixed schedule, but a drop-in webcomic whenever I make one sounds great.

[TheFrugalGamer]

This is very neat! I don't really have any ideas for a newsletter myself*, but I will happily sign up for everyone else's and look forward to getting goodies in my inbox!

*Actually, I just have a lot on my plate atm and feel like I wouldn't have the capacity to keep up with it. I dunno, maybe in the future?

[Melooon]

The letters site now supports "Quick Join"! If you are logged in and have verified with any other newsletter in the past, you will see an option to instantly join a newsletter, bypassing the e-mail verification step! 

[invader_gvim]

This is very cool. I might use this to make a subscription webcomic--I'm not confident about updating a webcomic site on a fixed schedule, but a drop-in webcomic whenever I make one sounds great.

I'm doing the same thing for my website since its filled with stuff my family are making. I'm gonna choose to update my website on the first of every month because its fun to pretend my website is a magazine my family makes and people subscribe to. Honestly I might even take the metaphor further and start making my website organized more like a magazine. We shall see.

I had read this really cool article on a discord server. It's about metaphors in website design. I really like the idea of converting my website into a bookshelf now. I should find a kewl sound of a page turning for when buttons are clicked on...

[ConnorTheVGFan78]

Hi, I have a suggestion regarding the feature that lets you cancel sending a newsletter from the Outbox. 

Recently, I tried sending out a newsletter only to realize that after sending it out I made a few minor formatting and spelling errors. (oops)

I guess I could have let them slide, but the errors were really bothering me and I really wanted to go back and fix them. So, I cancelled sending out the newsletter and went back to my drafts, only to discover...nothing was there. The newsletter that I worked so hard crafting for a few days evaporated into the void. All because I wanted to go back in and fix a few things.

Thankfully I was able to go into my outbox, view the cancelled newsletter, and copy and paste it into a new draft.

But, what if I didn't have to do all that? What if a cancelled newsletter could automatically be sent back to drafts, so that it could be fixed and worked on more?

Is there anyway a feature like that could be implemented? An automatic "Send it back to Drafts" when a newsletter's send-out is cancelled, rather than having to manually create it again? A feature like that could really be a big time saver, whenever someone needs to go back, fix something, and re-send a newsletter.

[Melooon]

An automatic "Send it back to Drafts" when a newsletter's send-out is cancelled, rather than having to manually create it again?

Done! Canceled newsletters will now be returned as a draft in your drafts list

Thanks for the feedback, this is the sort of practical thing thats really hard to predict when you're planning but becomes really obvious once you start actually using a tool!

[Melooon]

Reposting a PM incase anyone would like to discuss too:

I really don't want people replying to my newsletters, mostly because it sends it to my personal email, which should be hidden!

I have a better idea- maybe adding the personal email, the one you are using for the forum to be hidden, while the second one being the public email address that you want people to send to!

and the public email address, is the one that the Melon's Post Office should be using by default.

You should also make it so if I don't want people replying to the mail entirely, you can make it so if the user replies, it immediately gets sent to the void by the server. It would also put the "Please do not reply to this email" text on the bottom.

So yes it will include your e-mail as a reply-to - It could be changed so that if your e-mail is hidden it wont do that, but then if people reply it will go to my inbox (melonland default) and thats no good  Equally I don't think its fair to have emails go to a "void" inbox, the web revival is about connections and links, not ignoring people.

I think the best recommendation is to have an e-mail you use for web revival stuff and use that on this forum as well as your sites/newsletters.

[GlitchyZorua]

arghhhh alright