[Jake Ortman]

I'd like to see some sort of way to shorten the URLs, ala
tinyurl.com, etc... to make it more feasible for use in
text-based emails. It would require a bit more
programming, I think, and possibly more user admin, but
when the click thru tracker gets a URL, instead of doing
a URL like it does (I can't remember the exact syntax
but something like domain.com/cgi-bin/mail.cgi?
f=redirect?url=http://blahblah.com/blahblahbl.html), it'll
read the URL and create a unique random key for it so
the url could be just a bit shorter:
http://domain.com/cgi-bin/mail.cgi?r=\[randomkey]. I
would think that would also make it easier to tie to a
specific mailing as well, but I could be wrong.

[Jake Ortman]

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Another reason this needs to be done:

AOL is agressively filter non-"compliant URLs", and I'm getting
these from AOL/Netscape.net account when I send off
messages from my list. After I removed the redirect code for
the URLs, it appears to work fine (at least no bounces):

This message was created automatically by mail delivery
software.

"A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or
more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address
(es) failed:

xxxxxxxxx@aol.com
SMTP error from remote mailer after end of data:
host mailin-04.mx.aol.com [205.188.157.25]: 554
TRANSACTION FAILED:
(HVU:NR) This email is rejected for containing one or more
URLs which do not follow RFC guidelines. For additional"

(that's verbatim, and it doesn't include anything after "For
Additional). My guess is because some of the URLs in the
mailings get turned into stuff like this:

http://dada.utterlyboring.com/cgi-bin/mail.cgi?f=r&url=http%
3a%2f%2fwww%2ecafeshops%2ecom%2fortydotcom%
2f&mid=20040118020007&l=ub

or

http://dada.utterlyboring.com/cgi-bin/mail.cgi?f=r&url=http%
3a%2f%2futterlyboring%2ecom%2farchives%2f%32%30%30%
34%2f%30%31%2f%31%35%2fascii_movies%
2ephp&mid=20040118020007&l=ub

My guess is that all those ascii characters in the URL are
making AOL mad, especially with all the URL spoofing problems
that have been going around (and god-forbid AOL would let
their members figure out how to use the net themselves).

[Justin J]

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AOL's idea of RFC is different from the rest of the free
world it seems. These:

are RFC's. This is AOL's RFC's:

http://postmaster.aol.com/guidelines/standards.html

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/

Gah.

But, it does seems that the urL

http://dada.utterlyboring.com/cgi-bin/mail.cgi?f=r&url=http%
3a%2f%2fwww%2ecafeshops%2ecom%2fortydotcom%
2f&mid=20040118020007&l=ub

is breaking:

"* AOL will not deliver e-mail that contains a hex-encoded
Universal Resource Locator (URL). (Ex: http://%6d%6e%3f/\)"

Which the redirect url isn't; it just hex encodes the url to
redirect to, since that's how you encode query strings.
AOL's regex is broken (big surprise)

But I do understand how this is a problem... I have to
figure out how to make Yet Another database type. The new
version of Dada MAil (2.8.12) will have a generic data type
which will make this (truncated redirect url) a whole hella
lot easier, but it's going to have to wait a bit)

[Jake Ortman]

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I didn't say pleasing AOL would be easy, I'm just saying that
it probably should be done :-)