E-card -- A mod is required

[legend_neo]

HI again, i did a search but i cant find any Mod or something like that  .

The thing is sometimes e-card notification can be treated as junk mail so the send wil never know that the receiver has seen the card or not. So there must be some opition  that the sender gets an e-mail when receiver views the card ( like mostly e-cad sites does )
Also if there should be opition for changing text style and colour , it will be a real e-card look

looking forward to get something
thankxx 

[Joachim Müller]

an ecard is sent by email, how are you suppossed to add code that tracks if a recipient has read the email. This would only be possible by the use of web-bugs, but this is something we (the dev team) certainly won't implement. If you want to abuse ecards for user tracking and other "questionable" features that spammers use, you're welcome to modify the code, but there will definitely be no support from me (and I doubt the other dev team members will code something like this).
We have a bad feeling about emails being sent by coppermine, we want to reduce the number of emails sent to a minimum. Think of the global spam problem and what you can to to reduce it...

Also if there should be opition for changing text style and colour , it will be a real e-card look

You can change the layout and formatting of the ecard to anything you could think of, it's fully customizable, so what exactly is your question.

Why do I have a feeling of "deja vu" when reading your posting...

Joachim

[Tranz]

Plus, spam filters increase the spam score on messages that contain web bugs. So you're adding a function that increases the likelihood of it being useless since the recipient won't receive the ecard due to it being marked as spam. What a dilemma.

[legend_neo]

i know sometimes i asked stupid questions "may be most of the time "  But believe me i m trying my best to do more as i can and to ask less

If you want to abuse ecards for user tracking and other "questionable" features that spammers use,

I dont intend to spam aor anything . If u send e-card from any greetings website u will see there is always an opition to get an e-mail notification when card has been seen . So this is not always used as spam . Yes, with current settings of CPG (that is to send pic as a mail ) it is not possible but i guess if u can send the Pic it self u can also send the link to the pic ..and that link can be used for this purpose

Why do I have a feeling of "deja vu" when reading your posting...
Joachim

i have no idea what that supposed to mean, but certainly it will not be something good . I admit myself that my postings are not up to the mark. But me just a kid so please forgive me  

Also if there should be opition for changing text style and colour , it will be a real e-card look

by this i mean the text colour and style of the Message that the sender wrote ...

ideally .. i m thinking something like 4images have in there new e-card system.
(i m converting my site from 4images to CPG aftre using 4images for more than 6 months so thats why i posted this thread )
please ... have a look at this site and try sending e-cad , You will get my point
http://gallery.vano.org
i hope this explains what i was trying to say  ...

[StephanieM]

Been checking out the e-card stuff. On the whole it's nice, but it caters best to those who use HTML-formatted email as it tries to recreate the card in the email. Unless I'm missing something, this really lends itself to dangerous spam as you need not send a nice pretty picture, only something that calls itself a JPG.

For these (and similar) reasons I don't use HTML-formatted email and turn off all graphic downloads. Yes, the email looks spare, but the message I need to read gets through.

The way some e-card systems work (Vcard Lite and Vcard Pro by Belchior Foundry, for example) is to email only the link. The card is always recreated dynamically. This gives you a way to track whether the card has been seen. It shouldn't take a lot to do this, and by making sure people visit your site to read the card, you can track readership, notify senders, track image popularity and much more. No, I'm not a PHP coder so I won't offer to do it.

I have another problem with the generated link, but I'll put it in another post so it doesn't get buried here.

[Joachim Müller]

@Stephanie: good point, good explanation - thanks.

@neo: Look, there are two entirely different aproaches to ecards:
1) The ecard resides on the server, only a notification email is being sent
When you create an ecard, a record is being stored in a database table that contains the ecard message, the pic, the recipient and the sender data. All the recipient gets is an email telling him to visit a particular web page (by clicking on a url), where he can see his ecard online. As this particular website the recipient is sent to is being specifically created for him, there can be tracking on this page as well, and the visit of the page can be used to trigger a notification email to the original sender. Pro: tracking possible. Con: additional fiddling with database, increased use of webserver resources, invasion of user's privacy.
This type of ecards is being used by most applications that are dedicated ecard programs. This is not the way coppermine ecards work.
2) The ecard is sent along with the email, no storing of the ecard on the server
When you create an ecard, the full data the recipient is meant to see is being sent along with the ecard (full html mark up, plus pic). The server sends the ecard and then "forgets" about it.
This type of ecard is being used by coppermine (and of course some other apps as well). To handle the issue of some email clients not displaying the ecard email as expected, coppermine generates an additional link that is sent along with the ecard: it contains encrypted data that contains reference to the pic that was meant to be inside the ecard, as well as the text that goes along with it. The ecard is not stored, it is created "from scratch" when someone actually visits the link that is contained in the email.
Only later (after cpg1.2.x was released) people have requested some (limited) ecard tracking, so there's an option in cpg to store the sent ecards as well, but this is as far as we dare to go. We will not send further announcements.

Quite frankly: I don't care what features you would like to see in your customized coppermine install; as a project manager I try to see this from a global scale: do we want such a feature you're requesting to go into the future core code? The answer is "no", so I won't look into it any more. Like I said: you need it - you code it (or hire someone who will code it for you). It doesn't matter to me if you actually have the budget to do so or if you're just a student without any money. After all it's my choice what I'm ready to do and what not. It also doesn't matter to me what solution other "competing" gallery apps have come up with in this respect, as I simply don't see the point in sending even more email or even encourage users to do so by giving them tools that will.
On my email client I have set up a rule to delete all ecards sent to me, just because I'm fed up with them. Ecards used to be nice years ago (when the www was young), as well as guestbooks, web rings, link exchanges etc. Today, nobody needs those features any more - they're just deprecated.

Joachim

P.S. in cpg1.4, the ecard will be sent both as html and plain text email, so either way, the recipient will be able to see the ecard, one way or the other. The spam score should be reduced this way as well.

[StephanieM]

Ahhh... Thanks. That explains why the URLs for the link are so horrendously long. Hopefully they're within the HTML spec, as they choke my email client. But I'll chase that down with them.

Nice implementation.

[legend_neo]

with my little understanding, i do understand the difference between the tow differnt ways of sending e-cards. But anyway thanks for ur such a detail reply. I appreciate Ur support on writing a detail reply.

All what i thought was that the other method looks a bit better that atleast users can have meggase in different text colour and style. But i guess i was wrong. The present way is THE BEST one.

Quite frankly: I don't care what features you would like to see in your customized coppermine install; as a project manager I try to see this from a global scale:

Yea , in many posts of urs  i got ur similar reply  " I DONT CARE "  so U seems not to be caring ur users much. And certainly why would u. U r the Project manager. U have all the rights to do anything.

you need it - you code it (or hire someone who will code it for you). It doesn't matter to me if you actually have the budget to do so or if you're just a student without any money.

Certainly The Best way of having ur request done. But again why would u care if i m just a student & have not such resources. Do u think that many ppl here knows coading and could do many thing on there on ?? NO  If i would know that much knowledge of php would u think i will post threads like  " Admin E-mail on user registration  " I realy dont know Much , and may be thats the main reason i alwasy post silly threads.
Any way , thankx for your support.
Hoping to done work better on my own

[Joachim Müller]

Yea , in many posts of urs  i got ur similar reply  " I DONT CARE "  so U seems not to be caring ur users much.

I do care about people, that's why I work on an open source project. If I was only looking for something to brush up my ego, I would be spending my time with more pleasant things (in real life, not the internet). Especially because I care for users, I'm doing support, but only to a certain extent: I try to help users getting their coppermine install to run as expected. I will help them add small extra features or customize the look of their gallery, but I will not code features that are only helpfull for the user who actually requested it. What do you think is better: spending an hour to code a feature for a future coppermine release that thousands of users will benefit from, or spending an hour coding something for only one user (that even will make life harder for others, as their email account is being flooded even more)?
Working on coppermine is not rocket science, and improving coppermine won't solve the world's problems, but it will make some people just a little bit happier (both those who run a coppermine site and those who visit it) - hopefully.
I'm not a saint, and my contribution to the project is both for selfish reasons (the money, the fame, the women) as well as for the reason that I do care for people.
I find it insulting of you to think that I didn't care for users, it's just that I don't care for individuals who try to ask more from me than what I'm ready to give; maybe you should think twice before posting such things...

Joachim

[StephanieM]

Wow, thread drift...

[Joachim Müller]

  oops, you're right. Locking this thread now.

Joachim