SPS Newsletter: September 2003

SPS NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2003

Welcome to issue #4 of the SPS Newsletter, with news and updates for the ever-growing community of SPS developers. As always, if you have questions, comments, gripes, or feature requests, or especially if you know of somebody who should be receiving this newsletter, let me know at sps-newsletter@clevernamehere.com

In this issue:

- v4.1.97 Released
- New Features: Email Integration
- Q&A: TMPL_INCLUDE
- Featured Site: MDRC
- Download SPS

V4.1.97 RELEASED

This month sees the release of SPS v4.1.97. The latest version is available from the distribution site, at

http://www.clevernamehere.com/sps/go.cgi?c=18o4uv4FDgyezXGvc9eW

NEW FEATURES

One of the core objectives of SPS is to treat email as just another output channel, so that mailings and web pages can be created and managed from the same content repository. Last month, we released features to support auto-generating mailing list messages. This month's three new features continue to improve mailing list integration.

Often content is stored in the database with rudimentary HTML tags embedded -- paragraph markers, bold or italics, and so forth. This can be a problem when auto-generating mailing list messages from the same content, if the preferred delivery format for email is plain text. Our first feature, the new DE_HTMLIFY feature in the MODULE_COMPLEX, solves this problem by stripping the HTML out of specified fields. The stripping is done in an intelligent way so as to produce plain text which mirrors the HTML as closely as possible. For more information, see the manual entry:

http://www.clevernamehere.com/sps/go.cgi?c=rUmpGiGvG0Rx_rTOsnfC

Filtering is done by the standard Perl HTML::FormatText module, also in the manual at:

http://www.clevernamehere.com/sps/go.cgi?c=k7ufpyQuxpr01cuWw1bl

Our second feature this month, also email-related, is an extension to the main administrative interface. Last month the Generator was extended to support *creation* of mailing list messages; this month the Publisher is extended to support *delivery* of the messages. What this means is that pending (status=DRAFT) messages can be delivered directly from the main Publisher screen, just like any other Publish job; there is no need to enter the dedicated mailing list interface and deliver them by hand (although that is still supported). Email is now fully integrated into the publishing process; it's no longer a separate task.

For our third feature this month, we introduce the GO framework. One of the big problems with mailing lists is tracking their effectiveness. It's easy to track the number of recipients, as well as aggregate site traffic, but what's the correlation between those two numbers? How many recipients click through from a mailing, and which specific links did they follow?

The new GO framework supports this sort of reporting. Technically, it's quite simple. As mailings are created, SPS generates links to a database-driven redirector. When users click the links, they get redirected to the actual destination, but the clickthrough is logged and reported. This has the advantage of tracking not just how many people visit a given destination, but exactly which links they follow to get there. (For privacy reasons, individual emails addresses are not tracked, just number of clickthroughs). Links can have associated publication, issue, and name fields, so that reports can be easily readable and very specific.

The links in this mailing, for example, are all GO-links, so we at Clever Name Here will be able to track which links our readers click. For more information about the GO framework, see the SPS Manual at

http://www.clevernamehere.com/sps/go.cgi?c=wbDyHaw9DEYL4W6lNfNX

The New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault has been beta-testing the GO framework, and has already gathered imporant information about their newsletter usage. They've agreed to make their templates and configuration files available; if you're interested, send your questions to webmanager@nycagainstrape.org.

Q & A

This month's question comes from Jebeze Alexander. Jebeze writes

"Is it possible to have SPS parse the TMPL_INCLUDE tag for TMPL_VAR
tags before including the file? By default, SPS does not seem to do
this. For example:
_css.tmpl">
If so, this would help us to dramatically reduce the number of
templates for the site."

Jebeze, The HTML::Template library we use doesn't support this -- TMPL_INCLUDEs get executed first, then TMPL_VARs.

However, you can probably solve this problem by using a MEDIA element with the LOAD_BODY parameter set in one of your QUERYs. See

http://www.clevernamehere.com/sps/go.cgi?c=RnsOYzOOE6O3evJBdHlb

This feature lets you specify a media element such as an include file, then indicate that the body of the media element should be loaded when the query is executed. You can then put the entire body of the include file into the page, just like any other variable.

FEATURED SITE

Our featured site this month is MDRC. A nonprofit research organization, MDRC publishes dozens of reports each year, nearly all of which are freely distributed via the Web.

MDRC's Web team faced a daunting challenge. Hundreds of publications, alerts, press releases and other updates were being manually published to the Web, consuming enormous amounts of staff time. Since all updates were manual, the public interface was of necessity very limited; in addition, only experienced, trained staff members could update the site, resulting in backlogs and delays.

MDRC decided to implement a redesign of its public site, and at the same time import its content into a content management system. They selected SPS as their platform, Clever Name Here for technology assistance, and Engine Interactive for their graphical design.

In just a three months of development, MDRC was able to re-launch its site. The new design is strikingly beautiful, and has a clean and simple interface. In addition, the site is entirely database-driven, with tables for authors, staff, publications, areas, sub-areas, projects, as well as some special tables. Simple administrative interfaces allow staff to update the parts of the site that they are responsible for, while workflow tools prevent changes from being published before they have been approved. Since departments can now maintain the site directly, the Web staff is freed to work on other development projects. The MDRC site now contains over 40 database tables, 50 templates, and 2,500 pages, and is updated weekly.

The MDRC site can be seen here:
http://www.clevernamehere.com/sps/go.cgi?c=U1pN0yf7cKHG7vfDJWI5

MDRC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan social policy research organization. It is dedicated to learning what works to improve the well-being of low-income people. Through its research and the active communication of its findings, it seeks to enhance the effectiveness of public policies and programs.

DOWNLOAD SPS

The latest version of SPS (currently 4.1.96) is always available for download at
http://www.clevernamehere.com/sps/go.cgi?c=18o4uv4FDgyezXGvc9eW

The SPS manual is distributed with the software, or can be viewed at
http://www.clevernamehere.com/sps/go.cgi?c=3STMrp0j2silgH_cXLLo

An online demo of SPS is available at
http://www.clevernamehere.com/sps/go.cgi?c=ke7bTcK0VNZDlFG5TSJ_
(user name "preview" password "preview")

SPS is free and open-source software distributed under the GNU General Public License
http://www.clevernamehere.com/sps/go.cgi?c=3VdkTqdfmpjl0u1RsZKM

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