*How to install Dada Mailing LIst Manager on SME-7.5.1* *Dada Mail is a general purpose mailing list manager, targeted to be used for small to medium organizations such as businesses, non-profit organizations and personal sites. It is written in Perl and installs easily on SME-7.5.1 (it will not run on SME-6.0.1 because of Perl version requirements).*
*1) Download the installer script:* wget http://216.125.212.249/tg/dada-installer.tar.gz *2) Unpack the installer script:* tar xvzf dada-installer.tar.gz *3) Run the installer script:* ./dada-installer.sh That's it. Move through the web-based configuration panels by using the information shown when the installer finishes and you should be in business. If you want to incorporate a nice HTML editor in your HTML Message panel, follow the directions posted here: http://216.125.212.249/tg/CKeditor-Dada-Integration.txt Geek Review: I have been using phpMyNewsletter<http://gregory.kokanosky.free.fr/v4/phpmynewsletter/index.en.html>for quite a few years and am very happy with its performance. The Dada Mail project caught my eye last weekend and I decided to try it out to see (1) if it would run on an SME server, and (2) how its features compared to phpMyNewsletter<http://gregory.kokanosky.free.fr/v4/phpmynewsletter/index.en.html>. Given that I haven't worked with Perl-based cgi-bin apps in quite a few years, it took some time to get the file/folder permissions, ownership and paths established. If you read through the installer script, you'll find that the data storage folder is located in the web root (/home/e-smith/files/primary/html/dadafiles). I recommend that you change this to a location inaccessible from the outside world (such as /opt/dadafiles). The ownership on this directory isn't as important as the permissions. I simply copied my trial installation steps from the command line history and figured it was good enough for my testing purposes. Feel free to modify the installer script to suit your needs. While Dada Mail has a fairly extensive feature list, it runs a bit slow. I attribute some of that to the pitiful little box that I installed it on (P-III, 256MB RAM). But, before I try it on a production machine, I'm going to do more testing. The basic mail templates also need some tweaking (in my opinion). I just didn't like the standard format of the messages, so I'm experimenting with that aspect. Installing CKeditor <http://216.125.212.249/tg/CKeditor-Dada-Integration.txt>is really a nice bonus, particularly because it's so easy to embed. I'm not ready to make a Dada Mail vs. phpMyNewsletter comparison other than to mention that Dada Mail uses Sendmail (Qmail) while phpMyNewsletter uses the PHP mail() function. It also bears mentioning that phpMyNewsletter runs on earlier versions of SME, whereas Dada Mail will not. If you want to kick in some $$$, you can get access to Dada Mail Documentation (and some additional features). Otherwise, you'll have to stumble through the many layers of configuration panels on your own. -MD
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