You can set up news lists for your users to subscribe. X-Cart allows you to have multiple news lists for one store. Any registered or unregistered user can subscribe to all active news lists by entering his email into the appropriate field in the 'News' area and clicking on Subscribe.
Picture 1: 'News' area (Customer zone).
Note. The 'News' area is not displayed on the customer front-end unless there is at least one news list created.
Alternatively, a user can subscribe to just some of the news lists available at the store: a new user can select the news lists to subscribe to in the 'Profile details' form at the time of registration, a registered user can subscribe to and unsubscribe from the available news lists by modifying his profile. When a user subscribes to some news list, his e-mail address is automatically added to the mailing list for that news list. Besides, e-mail addresses can be added to the mailing list manually by the store admin. Admin also has the ability to export and import files with lists of e-mail addresses. If a user wants to discontinue his subscription to a news list, he can do it at any time by visiting the URL provided in each newsletter.
To set up a news list you need to:
create a news list (give it a name, provide a description and specify if the news list should be shown on the store site and be available for subscription)
create/update the mailing list for this news list
create messages to be shown on the site and to be included into the newsletters
Note. The option Reply-To newsletter email address can be set in General settings -> Company options (the address specified in this line will be seen by the news list subscribers as the sender's e-mail).
All news lists on your system are displayed in the 'News Lists' form. You can access it by clicking on News management in the Management menu.
Picture 2: News Lists form.
You can create, update and delete news lists and view news list details.
Click on News management in the Management menu. The 'News Lists' form will appear.
Picture
3: News Lists form.
Click on Add new.
In the 'News list details' form specify the short name for the news list and enter list description.
Picture 4: News list details form.
Use the drop-down boxes to select if the news list should be available for subscription and if messages should be shown in the site news.
Click on Save. The newly created news list will appear in the 'News Lists' form. You can view this form by clicking the News lists link in the corner of the 'News list details' form or in the "See also" menu after the new list was created. If you want to create more news lists, click on Add News list in the "See also" menu.
Click on News management in the Management menu. The 'News Lists' form will appear.
Click on the name of the news list the details of which you would like to view/modify. The 'News list details' form will be opened.
If necessary, modify the details and click on Save.
Click on News management in the Management menu. The 'News Lists' form will appear.
Select the news list you would like to delete. Use the Check all / Uncheck all links to select or unselect all the boxes.
Click on Delete selected.
Click on News management in the Management menu. The 'News Lists' form will appear.
Select or unselect the check boxes in the SHOW AS NEWS and ACTIVE columns for the news lists you would like to update.
• If you want a news list to be available for subscription, select ACTIVE for this list. Unselect ACTIVE to make a news list unavailable for subscription.
• If you want a news message to be displayed in the 'News' area, select SHOW AS NEWS and ACTIVE for the news list to which this message belongs and Show as news check box for this message. The 'News' area displays the latest message (The other messages can be viewed by clicking on the Previous news link).
• The 'News' area displays the message "No news available at the moment" if ACTIVE or SHOW AS NEWS check boxes are unselected for all the lists.
Click on Update.
After you have created a news list, you can edit its mailing list. The mailing list can be accessed by clicking on Subscribers in the section menu.
Picture 5: News list mailing list form.
The mailing list is a list of e-mail addresses of the news list subscribers. For each of the addresses there is a date since when the subscription is active.
Enter the necessary e-mail address into the appropriate field in the 'Add to the subscription' section.
Click on Add.
Select the e-mail address you want to delete. Use the Check all / Uncheck all links to select or unselect all the boxes.
Click on Delete.
You can export selected subscriber's addresses to a separate file:
In the 'News list mailing list' form select the addresses you want to export. Use the Check all / Uncheck all links to select or unselect all the boxes.
Click on Export.
If you have a list of e-mail addresses, you can import it into X-Cart.
In the Import list of subscribers section use the Browse button to locate the file you need to import.
Click on Import.
After you have created a news list, you can create messages for it. The 'News list messages' form can be accessed by clicking on Messages in the section menu.
Picture 6: News list messages form.
Open the 'News list messages' form. Click on the Add new button. 'News list message details' form will appear.
Picture
7: News list message details form.
Enter the subject of the message.
Enter the message body.
Use the drop-down lists to specify if HTML tags should be allowed in the message and if the message should be shown as news.
You can specify a few e-mail addresses to send the created message to (for test).
Click on Save. The created message will be added to the list of messages.
Repeat steps 1-6 to add more messages to the news list.
Open the 'News list messages' form. Click on the subject of the message you would like to modify. 'News list message details' form will appear.
Modify the necessary details.
Click on Save.
In the 'News list messages' form select the messages you want to delete.
Click on Delete selected.
After you create a new message, it appears in the 'News list messages' form. For each of your messages you can see its subject, the time of creation and status. Before you send a message, its status is 'Queued'. To send a message you should click on the Send button next to it. As soon as you send a message, its status is changed to 'Sent'. A sent message can be sent again by clicking on the Resend button.