phpList 3.5.6 released: 2 new features, 4 usability improvements and fixes

ARCHIVE

phpList 3.5.6 is now available for download, including a Reply-To header to for your campaigns, enhancements to campaign forwarding, improvements on how the updater handles plugin updates, and 3 other changes.

Changes in this release

A Reply-To header for your campaigns

This addition makes it possible for you to set an address different from the “From Address” for your subscribers to reply to.
The feature is not enabled by default and it is controlled via a Config Setting. Same as with other features handled this way, to enable it, you need to add the specific line from config_extended.php to your config file and set its value to True.
You can check more details on the pull request. The same formatting rules as in the from address would apply and the help text has been updated to state that –see here. Special thanks to our community member Duncan Cameron for implementing this feature.

Enhancements to campaign forwarding

Prior to this change, when using the “Forward” option within phpList, the from the address used would be the address of the subscriber forwarding the messages. That has now been updated to use the original from the address instead, and that is to avoid delivery problems when using services that require the From address to be verified. Additionally, on the Forward form, the subscriber has to enter their name (mandatory form), which is used for the From and Reply-To addresses, giving more incentive to the recipient to open and read the message, by letting them know that the message is coming from someone they know. Thanks to @duncanc for implementing this change, see details on the pull request.

Usability improvements and functionality enhancements

  1. Changed listing of campaigns in the “Statistics Overview” page to use “Sent Date” as a criterion for ordering – see the pull request.
  2. Improvements in how the automatic updater handles plugins.
    This change makes sure that the default suite of plugins included in phpList will also be updated during the automatic update, instead of just being restored from the previous installation version. See details on the changes here.

Fixes

  1. Avoid trying to replace message fields in the URL when using a web page for the content of a campaign. The URL may contain user placeholders and prior to this change, the [ID] placeholder is replaced by the message-id in earlier processing instead of by the user id.
  2. Additionally, when testing whether the entered URL is valid by fetching it, the URL needs to be encoded when included as a query parameter in a phpList page URL.Thanks to @melino for reporting this and @duncanc for implementing the fix. See details on the pull request.

Community-made

This release is the work of Duncan Cameron, Sebastian Wolter, and other Open Source community members who have submitted bug reports and valuable feedback, as well as phpList Ltd. developers. To get involved in phpList development, check out the developer resources pages.

Report any issues you find with phpList 4 core or REST API  to the corresponding repo on GitHub. Please read the contribution guide on how to contribute to these modules.

Support

Need help upgrading your phpList server to the newest version? Ask the community at discuss.phplist.org. Professional support from community experts, as well as manuals, source code, and developer resources, can be found at phplist.org. Report all bugs to the bugtracker!

Want to focus on campaigns and forget hosting headaches? Sign up at phplist.com for an account with everything included. Send from 300 free messages to 30 million messages per month — simple.

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