X-Cart:News Management

What News Management module does

News Management module allows you to inform your customers about different kinds of news at your store (special offers, discounts, new products, etc):

• you can create messages about your store news using the 'News management' section of the Admin area;
• the messages appear in the 'News' section of the Customer area and/or get sent to those of your clients who are subscribed to your newsletter.

The module functions in such a way that any news message created with it is posted not independently, but as part of a news list. News lists are news categories that organize your news messages by topic. Setting up several news lists in one store provides more flexibility for your customers who subscribe to the store newsletter: they can subscribe not to all of your news, but just to the news lists in which they are interested.

'News' section

The 'News' section is a place in the Customer area which can display your latest news.

This section appears on the front end only when there is at least one news list which is active and needs to be shown as news.

Before you post any news messages, the 'News' section says 'No news available at the moment'. After you have added one or more news messages, the message added latest of all appears in the 'News' section. The news messages posted previously are available for viewing in the news archive (accessible by clicking the 'Previous news' link).

Newsletter

Newsletter is an information letter available to store users by subscription. In order to receive newsletter emails, a client needs to provide an email address and specify, which of the available news lists he or she would like to read. When you have news lists which are active and available for subscription, newsletter subscription is available to any visitors of your store site, no matter if they are registered or anonymous.

Anonymous visitors can subscribe by entering their email address into 'Your email' field in the 'News' section:

and select the news lists to which they would like to subscribe from the list in the 'Subscribe to newslists' form (This form is displayed as soon as an email address is entered in the 'News' section):

Note: The 'Subscribe to newslists' form can be protected by image verification. See X-Cart:Image Verification page for details.

Registered customers and new clients getting registered can subscribe to the newsletter using the 'Newsletter' section of the 'Profile details' form:

Note: The same form can be used by registered customers to change the set of news lists included into their newsletter subscription (to add more news lists or to unsubscribe from any news lists).

As soon as a client subscribes to a news list, his or her email address is automatically added to the mailing list for that news list so the client can begin getting the newsletter.

If you wish, you can enable notification emails to subscribers. Notification emails not only notify your new subscribers of the fact that their email address has been entered into a mailing list, but also provide a link allowing these subscribers to unsubscribe from newsletter emails.

An 'Unsubscribe' link is provided with each newsletter, so if any of your customers wish to discontinue their newsletter subscription, they will be able to do so at any time.

Roles in News Management module management

If you are an X-Cart GOLD administrator/provider or an X-Cart PRO administrator:

• You can enable/disable and configure the module News Management (See #Enabling and Configuring 'News Management').
• You can create and manage news lists (Check out #News lists)
• You have full control over mailing lists (Check out#Mailing lists). You can:
  • add email addresses to any mailing list (manually or by importing a file with a list of email addresses),
  • delete email addresses from a mailing list,
  • export email addresses from a mailing list.
• You can create messages for news lists, manage created news messages and send them to newsletter subscribers (See #News List Messages)

If you are an X-Cart PRO provider:

• You cannot post any news on the store site or send newsletters by yourself.

Enabling and Configuring 'News Management'

To begin using the module:

1. Enable News Management module (Administration menu->Modules).

When the module is enabled, you can see:

• News management link in the Management menu;
• News management options section in General settings/Modules options.

2. Adjust the module settings via General settings/Modules options->News management options.

• Newsletter limit to show: Maximum number of newsletters which can be displayed on one page in the 'News list' dialog box in the store's back end.
• Send a message to N subscribers per one pass when sending newsletters: Number of subscribers to which a newsletter message can be sent per one pass (Set this option if you wish to send newsletter emails in batches, N emails at a time).
• Interval in seconds between the passes: An interval between the passes in which newsletter messages are sent.
• Reply-To newsletter email address: An email address that appears in the 'From:' field of newsletter emails sent to customers (might be used by your customers to reply to your newsletter emails).
• 'Client is subscribed' notification to subscriber: If selected, an email notification is sent to a store site visitor who joins a newsletter mailing list that he or she has subscribed to a newsletter .

Plain text mail templates for this notification	HTML mail templates for this notification
mail/newsletter_subscribe.tpl mail/mail_header.tpl mail/signature.tpl mail/newsletter_subscribe_subj.tpl	mail/html/newsletter_subscribe.tpl mail/html/mail_header.tpl mail/html/signature.tpl

• 'Client is subscribed' subscribe notification to Reply-To newsletter email address: If selected, an email notification is sent to the Reply-To newsletter email address that a new client has subscribed to a newsletter.

Plain text mail templates for this notification	HTML mail templates for this notification
mail/newsletter_admin.tpl mail/mail_header.tpl mail/signature.tpl mail/newsletter_admin_subj.tpl	mail/html/newsletter_admin.tpl mail/html/mail_header.tpl mail/html/signature.tpl

• 'Client is unsubscribed' notification to subscriber: If selected, an email notification is sent to a subscriber who has unsubscribed from a newsletter that his or her subscription is terminated.

Plain text mail templates for this notification	HTML mail templates for this notification
mail/newsletter_unsubscribe.tpl mail/mail_header.tpl mail/signature.tpl mail/newsletter_unsubscribe_subj.tpl	mail/html/newsletter_unsubscribe.tpl mail/html/mail_header.tpl mail/html/signature.tpl

• 'Client is unsubscribed' notification to Reply-To newsletter email address: If selected, an email notification is sent to the Reply-To newsletter email address if somebody unsubscribes from a newsletter.

Plain text mail templates for this notification	HTML mail templates for this notification
mail/newsltr_unsubscr_admin.tpl mail/mail_header.tpl mail/signature.tpl mail/newsltr_unsubscr_admin_subj.tpl	mail/html/newsltr_unsubscr_admin.tpl mail/html/mail_header.tpl mail/html/signature.tpl

Note: 'Client is subscribed' and 'Client is unsubscribed' email notifications are available only for cases when clients subscribe to or unsubscribe from a newsletter by themselves. No notification is sent when a client's email address is added to or removed from a mailing list by the store administrator.

3. Click the Save button.

News Lists

Creating news lists

Before you can create any news messages, you need to create one or more news lists. News lists are categories in which specific news messages are created.

Examples:

'New Arrivals' could be a good name for a news list intended for messages like 'Newest & hottest products for your Mac' or 'Over 50 new items in Books category'.

'Coupons and Special Offers' could be a good name for a news list intended for messages like '20% off of any order Dec 20 - Jan 1' or 'Buy 2 books - get a 3rd one FREE!'.

You can create as many news lists as you need in any of the languages supported by your store.

To create a news list:

1. Go to the 'News Management' section of the store's back end (Management menu->News management). You should see a dialog box titled 'News Lists'. The first time you enter the 'News Management' section, this form will be empty:
   
   
   
   On your subsequent visits, after you add some news lists, the 'News Lists' dialog box will contain a list of existing news lists.
2. In the 'News Lists' dialog box, click the Add new button. This should open a form titled 'News list details'.
   
   
   
   
3. Use the 'News list details' form to provide information about the news list being created:
   • Each news list can exist only in one language, so you need to specify the language of the news list being created. Use the 'Language' drop-down box to select a language.
   • Use the 'Short name' field to provide a title for the news list.
   • Enter a description for the news list into the 'List description' field.
   • Use the 'Active' drop-down box to enable/disable the news list.
     
     News lists which are enabled ('Active' = Yes) are available to customers. Depending on the 'Available for subscription' and 'Show messages in site news' options, such news lists may be available for subscription or may show messages in the 'News' section of the Customer area.
     
     News lists which are disabled ('Active' = No) are not available for subscription and do not appear in the site news ('News' section or news archive) regardless of the 'Available for subscription' and 'Show messages in site news' options.
4. Use the 'Available for subscription' drop-down box to specify, whether the news list should be available for subscription
5. Use the 'Show messages in site news' drop-down box to specify, whether the news list messages should be shown in the site news.
   
   
   
   
6. Click on Save. The news list should be created. After an automatic page refresh, you should see an information box with a confirmation message.

To view the newly created news list added to the list of news lists within the 'News Lists' dialog box, click the News lists link in the 'See also' menu at the top of the page. Your 'News Lists' dialog box with the added news list will look like this:

After you have created a news list, you may want to set up its mailing list or create messages that will be sent to the news list subscribers or shown as news on your site.

Managing news lists

You can view/modify the details of any news list (rename, edit the description or change the status), as well as delete any news list if you are not going to use it any more.

All the operations on existing news lists can be performed using the controls of the 'News lists' dialog box in the 'News Management' section of the store's back end (Management menu->News management).

To view/modify the details of a news list (rename, edit the description or change the news list's 'Available for subscription' status):

1. Open the 'News lists' dialog box.
2. Use the language selector at the top of the 'News lists' dialog box to select the language of the news list which you wish to view/modify. This should produce a list of all the available news lists for the selected language. News lists in other languages will not be displayed.
3. Find the news list whose details you wish to view/modify and click on its name. The details of the news list should be opened in the 'News list details' form.
   
   
   Note: The language selector in this 'News list details' form should be inactive, as it is not possible to change the language of news lists. Also you cannot change the language of the page, while you are editing a news list.
4. If necessary, edit any of the news list details.
5. Click the Save button to save the changes.

The updated details should be saved. An information box with a confirmation message should appear.

If you need just to enable/disable a news list, or change a news list's show as news status, you can do it directly in the 'News lists' dialog box:

1. Open the 'News lists' dialog box.
2. Use the language selector at the top of the 'News lists' dialog box to select the language of the news list(s) whose status(es) you wish to change. This should produce a list of all the available news lists for the selected language.
3. Find the news list(s) whose statuses you wish to change.
4. Select the check boxes in the ACTIVE column for all the news lists that need to be enabled (unselect to disable).
5. Select the check boxes in the SHOW AS NEWS column for all the news lists whose news messages you wish to be displayed on the store front end.
6. Click the Save button to save the changes.

The statuses should be updated. An information box with a confirmation message should appear.

To delete one or more news lists:

1. Open the 'News lists' dialog box.
2. Use the language selector at the top of the 'News lists' dialog box to select the language of the news list(s) you wish to delete. This should produce a list of all the available news lists for the selected language.
3. Select the check boxes next to the names of the news list(s) you wish to delete.
4. Click the Delete selected button.

The selected news lists should be removed. An information box with a confirmation message should appear.