Major new features in v4.0
Sub/unsub/confirmation reports: Lyris List Manager can now keep track of subscriptions, unsubscriptions, members put on hold, email confirmation rates, and can send the list
administrator reports at any time interval they wish. In the list info web page, you will find a choice to send short, normal or detailed reports on a scheduled basis. You can choose more than one,
so that you receive daily, weekly and monthly reports. You can also use the new "report" email command to request reports for any time period. The email reports can include a short overview, a
chart of activity per day, even the email addresses affected by subscribing/unsubscribing/holds, as well as telling you how long a member was subscribed before they unsubscribed or were held. You
also have the option of receiving this information as spreadsheet and database readable .csv (comma/quote) files. To receive periodic reports, see Subscription Reports. To
receive reports via email commands (including the new .csv reports), see Report.
Much improved admin "add" command: You can now add any number of people to any number of lists with one "add" command. You can specify whether a member added to several lists should receive
one hello document (from each list added to) or just one hello document, or no hello document at all. You can specify that the user should have to confirm their subscription independently to each
list added to, or have the user receive only one confirmation message, and when they confirm to that one list they are confirmed to all the lists they were added to. We have also added support for
multiple line commands to Lyris@, in the form of the characters << and >>, so that you can issue a command such as "add listname <<" then type a carriage return, paste a huge list of email addresses,
and end the email message with ">>". This makes it much easier to paste large text files into Lyris List Manager email commands. See Add.
Confirm once to many lists: As mentioned above in the "add" command, administrators now have the power to add one person to several lists at once and the person only needs to confirm once
for all the lists they were subscribed to. You can also easily specify that a person added to many lists only receive one hello document. There is also a new mail merge tag
$subst('recip.whatlists') which will insert what lists the person is a member of, which is very helpful when you want to send a single confirmation or single hello document that applies to several
lists. See Add and Recipient Fields.
MIME digests: Members can now opt to receive their daily Digest as a traditional text digest, or in the MIME digest format. The great advantage of MIME digests is that they preserve all the
varied encodings and attachments from the day's messages, whereas a single text digests cannot. Also, many email programs are adept at viewing MIME digests and do a very nice job of it. You can set
yourself to receive MIME digests by sending email to listname-mimedigest@… See Member Type.
Much faster web interface: The Apache "mod_perl" technology has been incorporated into Lyris List Manager, so that the web interface runs about four times faster than previously.
German, French, and Japanese versions: The web interface is now natively translated into German and French. When you install Lyris List Manager, you have the option of choosing the default
web interface language that you prefer. In addition, you can switch to any other supported language by specifying "?lang=xxx" on the Lyris List Manager URL, where xxx is "francais", "deutsch" or
"italiano" (for Italian). It is also very easy to create new translations of Lyris List Manager without any programming ability. All you need to do is edit one of the lyrlang-XXX.txt files for your
language. If you translate Lyris List Manager to another language, please send your translation file to us so that we may include it for others to use. Also, a native Japanese version of Lyris List
Manager is now available through ActiveWave technologies. A link to the Japanese version is available on the Lyris Home Page: http://www.lyris.com/. See Choosing Your Language
.
Incoming mail processed by priority: All mail that is sent to Lyris List Manager now receives a prioritization number. Incoming mail is processed according to that prioritization number.
This means that low priority incoming mail, such as returning bounced email messages, are handled after all higher priority tasks are accomplished. This feature is significant because a very busy
server, where incoming mail may be backed up, will still have all important incoming mail processed immediately. Users will usually not notice that there is a backlog on the server, since their
email is processed immediately. See The Lyris@ Server Address.
Built in web server: Included with Lyris List Manager is the Apache web server on both Unix and Windows platforms. This allows a much easier installation of Lyris List Manager (you no
longer need to have your own web server) and delivers much improved speed for the web interface thanks to the included mod_perl technology for Apache. Note: You can still use your own web server if
you prefer. The new Apache web server technology is optional.
HTTP fetching of ads: Support for HTTP fetching of documents, such as from an ad server, or any CGI script, which can be embedded in any email message. This means that sites using Lyris
List Manager can now transparently support the email advertising from a third party advertising broker. This feature also allows you to extend Lyris List Manager mail merging to include any outside
data that you want to put an email messages. For example, if you have a web CGI script that returns a customer's current bill amount, you can use this technique to insert their bill amount into
Lyris List Manager email messages. See Http Fetch Field.
In memory message processing: All incoming email messages (except list postings) can optionally be processed entirely in memory, without being saved in the incoming mail database. This
results in a big efficiency improvement and means that the incoming mail database grows at a much slower pace. However, this also means that users have less incoming mail to look at when they go to
the incoming mail web page and some sites prefer to keep a full log. This feature is especially useful for large Lyris List Manager sites, where previously the incoming mail database grew very
quickly, necessitating fairly frequent downtime to pack the incoming and outgoing mail databases. See Incoming Mail Processing.
New mail engine scales to much faster delivery speeds: A brand-new 3rd generation email sending engine is built into this version of Lyris List Manager. We now sell Lyris List Manager in
versions that can deliver much higher speeds than were previously available.
Rebranding option: We now sell a version of Lyris List Manager that can be totally re-branded to the a new product name and will not there any distinguishing marks of Lyris List Manager
whatsoever. Instead it will bear all the brand name marks that you give it. You can change the lyris@ address to be something else, such as AcmeServer@, and have Lyris List Manager respond as your
product name, such as: From: "Acme Server" acmeserver@yourcompany.com Note: This is a higher cost option. See the Lyris List Manager home page for pricing information.
Linux version now available: Lyris List Manager list manager is now available on Linux, supporting most of the major distributions (Red Hat, etc.) Installing on Linux is a simple matter of
running an automated installation program.
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