Overview
This article describes how to configure and manage an Announcement List.
Your domain must be Fully Hosted before you can use an Announcement List.
Configuring the list
- Navigate to the Announcement Lists page.
- Click the Add New Announcement List button. The 'Create a New Announcement List' page opens. The following screenshots have been split up for clarity:
- Enter the following:
- From name: Enter the name of your list or newsletter here.
- Email address on the list: Enter the email you want to create as the list email. Also, make sure that the dropdown menu to the right is populated with the domain you want the list to be created under.
- Default Announcement Subject: This is an optional field where you can enter the subject of your message.
- Confirmation Email Subject: When a user subscribes to your list, a confirmation email is sent to the user. Enter into this field any subject line you’d like to use for this message.
- Confirmation Email Message: When a user subscribes to your list, they receive a confirmation email with the details listed in the field to the right. The script is set up to automatically fill in the details between the double dashes (--) for this particular list. You can edit the notice as you like. Please note that HTML code entered here is not rendered properly.
- Unsubscribe Directions: This notice appears at the bottom of each announcement you send off in case the user no longer wishes to receive this email. HTML code entered here is rendered properly, however you need to make sure to check the Is this HTML? checkbox on the final page when sending.
The Confirmation Email Message character limit is 397.
- The remaining fields are optional URLs you can create to customize the user experience. Adjust them as needed:
- When complete, click the Create This List button at the bottom of the page.
Explanation of the variables in the 'Confirmation Email Message' box
The following lists the variables and where they are pulled from:
| Variable | Where it's pulled from |
|---|---|
| --their_email-- | This is the customer/user email you entered when editing the Announcement List. These emails were added in the Emails to Add section. |
| --listname-- | The name of your Announcement List. When you edit your list, this is the first field titled 'List Name'. |
| --ip-- |
If the user clicked the subscribe button on your website's Announcement List form, their computer's IP address will display here. If you manually added their email address in the DreamHost panel, a DreamHost IP address will display here. |
| --ref_url-- | This defaults to https://panel.dreamhost.com/index.cgi? |
| --url-- | This is a specific URL the customer/user clicks to confirm they wish to join the list. It looks like https://scripts.dreamhost.com/add_list.cgi?g=b8ccge71a6ae4767e70b2f8br77e02c2 |
Editing the list
- Navigate to the Announcement Lists page.
- To the right of the list, click the Edit button.
- The edits pages opens allowing you to make your adjustments.
- From Name
- Default Announcement Subject
- Confirmation Email Subject
- Confirmation Email Message
- Unsubscribe Directions
- Remove Bad Addresses
- All of the URL fields
- Click the Edit Announcement List button to save your changes.
You cannot change the list name after it's been created. You must delete it and create a new list with the new name.
"Remove Bad Addresses"
After you create the list and click the Edit button, you'll see a new option titled 'Remove Bad Addresses' where you can choose to remove email addresses from your list after a specific number of bounces.
You can also set it to 'Never' so no address is ever removed.
