phpList is perhaps the world's most popular open source email campaign manager but now with increased commercialisation of the brand and software; will that continue to be the case? It is free to download, install and use, and is easy to integrate with any website providing your knowledge of HTML and the PHP programming language are up to the task. Books on the subject as well as eMail campaign strategies are readily available from most book stores as well as the phpList website.

Useful Resources

Perhaps the most useful resource that I refer to for applying hacks is phpLists own Forum (prior to 3.0.0) followed by the online documents regarding installation issues.

Todate phpList has been extremely easy to setup and configure with no issues that seem to plague a few of the other people downloading the software. Similarly upgrades have been easy to apply though it must be noted that I did not document my ammendments to the original code (from the earlier releases). That has now been corrected.

Design

From a design perspective phpList straight out of the box though functional is not aesthetically pleasing especially if you are looking to integrate a newsletter system into your own website. Blending though is quite straightforward providing you know your way around the basics of HTML and your present page layout permits the inclusion of the Subscriber and its associated pages.

For sometime I was only interested in modifying the public face of phpList in order that anyone signing up to the newsletters would not end up thinking that they had jumped to another site and to provide consistency and feel across the website Vis-à-vis page links and formatting. I then noticed the Platinum Mailer Admin Theme (PMAT) whilst perusing the forums oneday which I duly downloaded and installed. However as good as it is, it does not integrate with my existing backend services so I decided to revert to the out of the box version and modify that to suit my purposes.

What I have done to the basic downloadable version of phpList is NOT a theme that can be applied by replacing files as you would with PMAT. It is a blended integration that retains all of phpLists functionality wrapped in the shell of my own website.

I have been designing and writing affordable websites for small businesses and the "Not for Profit" sector for more than ten years and corporate intranets since the mid 1990's. I've had over 35 years of work experience in IT management and information services.

Please be aware the hacks that I have made available have only been applied to phpList versions from v3.0.0 to address my own requirements. There is no guarantee that they will work with your installed version, however you are more than welcome to download and test on your site.

DO NOT apply phpList v3.0.x and above related hacks to phpList v2.10.19 and below. Use the link to view available hacks for v2.