Messages

61

General Help & How-To / Re: installing on a linux box

« on: January 11, 2014, 11:16:29 am »

Hi Ashley,

Yes, it is possible to set up a web server (e.g. Apache), PHP, MySQL and an email server/MTA at home, on either Linux or Windows, and run ListMailPRO there on a domain or subdomain pointed to your (preferably static) IP.

Often, though, internet service providers block outgoing connections to port 25, which is what most or all servers use to receive incoming email.  Your ISP may also have a policy about running web or other servers which you should check into.  You may need a business plan which could cost more.

An alternative I normally recommend is a dedicated server, such as available from 1&1 for as low as ~$60/mo, that allows you to host as many web sites and send as much email as you want.  A VPS may be a less expensive option, but they are somewhat limited and may suffer performance issues, depending on the provider and other users on the same server.

Regards

62

General Help & How-To / Re: Sign up does not work... Getting error message, "list not numeric"

« on: January 06, 2014, 10:45:12 pm »

Hi Ruben,

The site appears to be enforcing strict HTML or XHTML.

HTML elements with no content are called empty elements.

<br> is an empty element without a closing tag (the <br> tag defines a line break).

Tip: In XHTML, all elements must be closed. Adding a slash inside the start tag, like <br />, is the proper way of closing empty elements in XHTML (and XML).

HTML Elements - W3Schools

For some reason it's not putting a space before the slash like it probably should.

You could try putting the list value in quotes:

Code: [Select]

<input type=hidden name=list value="200">
or manually closing the tag(s) with an extra space, like this:

Code: [Select]

<input type=hidden name=list value=200 />
or

Code: [Select]

<input type=hidden name=list value="200" />
I have edited your post for your privacy.

Regards

63

General Help & How-To / Re: Am I being attacked by Russian Hackers and SPAMMERS???

« on: December 30, 2013, 11:33:27 pm »

Hi,

The same day that we installed LMP is when we got 100's of links from Russian sites linking to us.

I looked into these Russian sites that are linking to my server and a large number of them are porn sites. This never happened before installing LMP.

I'd say it was a coincidence.  For LMP to "trigger" anything a third party would need to know you installed it.  LMP does not show itself to search engines by default - all pages use a meta "robots" tag with a value of "noindex,nofollow" - and even if it did a search engine would need to find a link to it somewhere to find it.  The only way a third party could find LMP is if they browsed to the installation web address manually or were already accessing and monitoring the files on your web server, both of which I would say are unlikely, especially in as short amount of time as you suspect.  Plus, I don't see why a third party would care about an LMP installation or how they would find any benefit from linking to your site. It might be a deliberate or random attack against your web reputation.  You may want to look into disavowing the links at Google.

I did some research on autoresponders and found that hackers are finding their way into the SQL on the servers.

This can be true for any poorly-programmed web-based script that passes user-entered data to MySQL.

Does LMP use a perl script that's installed in the cgi bin or directory?

There are a couple optional CGI scripts included with the program.  They are normally accessed via an email address set up on your web host to "pipe" email to them to facilitate instant bounce processing or email signup.  The help files are at http://listmailpro.com/help/cgi

What mechanism does LMP have to prevent SQL Injection attacks?

Great care is taken to prevent injection attacks.  All queries with user-entered data are escaped to prevent MySQL injection, and have been since as far back as 2002.  With thousands of users, I have never had a report of anyone being hacked or exploited successfully through LMP.

In general, links from other sites do not indicate a vulnerability or exploit on your server.  ListMailPRO does not make any calls to external sites.

Regards

64

General Help & How-To / Re: Am I being attacked by Russian Hackers and SPAMMERS???

« on: December 28, 2013, 06:57:41 pm »

I can't think of any way installation of ListMailPRO would be related to incoming traffic or links from unknown sites.

There are no known vulnerabilities in the latest version available from the members area.

I don't see how any SPAM or messages sent by ListMailPRO could cause such traffic.  Typically when people spam they send email with links to their own sites, not the site they're spamming from.. If someone managed to break into ListMailPRO and was using it to send email you should see some evidence of their activity, such as users on lists, messages in Sent Messages, bounced messages coming from your server, spam reports against your IP, etc.  Make sure you have a strong admin password and enable the option "Notify admin when a bad password is entered" on the Configuration page for best results.  It's also a good idea to have a strong FTP password as dictionary or brute force attacks against those are a common way in for hackers.

If it's just traffic you're seeing I would say it's most likely harmless.  Perhaps if you look at the external pages linking to your site you will find the cause or reason.

I have a fair amount of experience on the internet, so if you want hands-on assistance you could order General Support from http://listmailpro.com/support and I would spend some time investigating and do my best to explain what's going on, but I can't guarantee anything can be done because it sounds like it's the activity of a third party site we have no control over.

Regards

65

General Help & How-To / Re: How user sign up by mail (using free email)

« on: December 21, 2013, 03:47:22 am »

Hi,

What you need to do is set up the email subscription feature of ListMailPRO, as seen in the Online Help at http://listmailpro.com/help/cgi, then set up a gmail filter to forward email to the email address configured on your host.

If you require hands-on assistance please access the support options at http://listmailpro.com/support

Regards

66

General Help & How-To / Re: Multiple choice unsubscribe page - how to?

« on: November 06, 2013, 06:18:27 am »

Hi James,

Similar to multi-list signup, something like this should work:

Code: [Select]

<form method=post action=http://example.com/mail/signup.php>
<input type=hidden name=submode value=unsub>
<input type=checkbox name=lists[] value=1> List 1<br>
<input type=checkbox name=lists[] value=2> List 2<br>
<input type=checkbox name=lists[] value=3> List 3<br>
Email: <input type=text name=email size=32><br>
<input type=submit value="Unsubscribe Me!">
</form>
Some custom code would be needed if you wanted to pre-populate the email textbox, only show and/or pre-check lists the user is subscribed to, etc. How exactly would you like it to function?

I have removed the CAPTCHA requirement - it was a leftover from a short time when guests and non-owners could post.

Regards

67

General Help & How-To / Re: Copy Disappearing

« on: October 25, 2013, 11:22:11 pm »

Hi Charles,

There may be a simple solution to the problem.

First, do you have any "non-standard" characters in your message, such as "fancy quotes" which lean to the left or right?  This can cause what you describe due to a limitation in the PHP htmlspecialchars function.

Second, it's possible your browser is caching the page.  To fix that, in admin.php just above line 103 (v1.88) which says:

Code: [Select]

echo "<html>
Add a new line with this:

Code: [Select]

nocacheheader();
I will likely include that change in future updates.

If neither of those fix it, or if you want me to take a look or make the changes for you, please submit a support request of the type "Other / Bug Investigation" with your FTP and ListMailPRO information.

Regards

68

General Help & How-To / Re: PHP Warning: Variable passed to each() is not an array or object in

« on: October 12, 2013, 02:53:15 pm »

Hi Joni,

Try a search in these forums for "variable passed" as there may be others who have had the same problem in the past.  (Are you sure you set the required "list" variable?)

If you still can't get it fixed, we can take a look at your signup form HTML. Please paste the code with the ACTION variable modified to protect your privacy.  "example.com" is a good domain to use.  Put your code between (code) and (/code) with square instead of round brackets for best results.

Regards

69

General Help & How-To / Re: Error Message - Error opening ./attach/Export.CSV for writing.

« on: September 26, 2013, 03:44:02 pm »

This may also happen if you upload some old files using FTP, in which case the Export.CSV file would be owned by the FTP user and not the web server/PHP user.  To remedy that, delete Export.CSV via FTP and try again.

Regards

70

General Help & How-To / Re: Uploading 20,000 addresses into a List

« on: September 20, 2013, 10:34:24 pm »

For files that are too big to upload because they exceed the server limit, it is possible to upload them via FTP to the ListMailPRO folder then enter the filename on the import page.

Regards

71

Email Web Hosting / Re: Amazon SES

« on: July 02, 2013, 01:01:38 pm »

It is recommended to use PHP mail for hosts with limits as the required delays can be set.  I might recommend setting for 480 per hour.  The calculation would be 1/(480/60/60) so 7.5s or 7500ms per email. Currently PHP mail is not included in the Test Mail Settings feature as it doesn't commonly fail.  To test it you might manually Add a User on the User Database page with the Welcome Message enabled.  If you receive the welcome message after adding the user, it's working.  You might check the source/headers of the message to find the Return-path header.  If this does not show your bounce address set on the Configuratoon page, setting $phpmailf=1; in config.php could fix the problem.

Regards

72

Development, Suggestions / Re: A way forward for ListMail

« on: June 26, 2013, 11:39:18 pm »

Yep, I've been quietly working on the site and program for the past few weeks.  A new tech support system is now up and running.  I've added and planned for some new features, have been wrestling with cross-browser CSS quirks, and am simplifying and improving things and plan to continue until the whole program is brought up to speed, optimized and more easy to manage and add to. There is much to do, so it could be a few weeks or more until I have an update to announce, but it is surely coming. 

73

Email Web Hosting / Re: Amazon SES

« on: May 15, 2013, 05:33:08 am »

I notice Amazon SES does mention they allow up to 2000 emails per day free, however I'm not sure if SMTP is supported with that offer, which would be required for use with ListMailPRO.

DreamHost allows 100 per hour and HostGator allows 500 per hour.  For each of these I would recommend disabling SMTP in ListMailPRO and instead using the PHP mail() option, as this feature allows delays to be set to stay under the limits.  For HostGator I might recommend a delay of 7500 ms (7.5s) per message, which equals 480 per hour, or a little higher to provide room for system messages, signup welcome emails, email sent from your email client, etc.  It would also be important to not send around the same time as the Dailymail scheduled task if you have any followups or scheduled messages configured.  A host with no such limitations is best, however is a little harder to come by these days.  I might suggest finding a smaller, newer web hosting company as they are less likely to have been plagued with abuse which would encourage such limits.

Looks I need to update the email hosting page and search around to find some more email-friendly web hosts.

74

Email Web Hosting / Re: Amazon SES

« on: May 14, 2013, 10:51:40 pm »

I had a look at Amazon SES.

It looks like they support SMTP-based sending, so it might work with ListMailPRO if ListMailPRO is hosted on a capable web server and configured to send using the Amazon SES SMTP server.

A current (v1.88) limitation of such a configuration might be that some ListMailPRO messages, such as Welcome, Confirmation and some system emails are not sent with SMTP, even if it is configured, but the internal PHP mail() function.  That function will send based on server settings, which if one is in full control of a web server might be able to be configured to Amazon SES as well, but could be tricky or cause problems.    This may change in a future update, when SMTP might be able to be configured to be used for everything.

SES appears to be limited to 10,000 messages per day to start, with increasing limits as time goes on and as your messages are judged to be of high quality.  Pricing appears to be $0.10 per thousand emails.  So at 10,000 per day you'd be spending $30/mo.  Some email-friendly web hosts offer the same amount of email for less, and in my experience deliverability is not usually poor from a well-configured server without a bad reputation.

With larger lists your costs will be more, i.e. for 100,000 per day you're looking at $300/mo.  For such volume I would normally recommend a dedicated server, such as from 1and1.com, which can be had for as low as ~$60/mo.

All total, I am skeptical that deliverability with Amazon SES is much better than can be achieved by a responsible publisher from a normal web host or dedicated server, or is worth the potential additional cost.  However, I am always open to further feedback.

Regards

75

Server Optimization, Tweaks / Re: Exim optimization

« on: May 11, 2013, 05:18:13 pm »

Scott,

Could the issue have been related to specific recipients, such as those at Yahoo, as noted by a poster in the original Exim Optimization thread?

Regards