Eileen wrote:
Last, for anyone interested, I've found CMandrill to be very easy to use and effective (uses the Mandrill API to send email rather than SMTP).

Thanks Eileen,

I too have been testing Mandrill and was contemplating adding CMandrill for better control and visibility, but I've always been reluctant to use free plugins. I think I'll jump in now that so,done else is using it with ES etc.

I'm curious about your second point about selecting templates. Can you elaborate? I know with Mandrill you can select per component templates, but is there some other functionality that I haven't read about yet? Like I say, I'm just curious!

@Mark I'm also reluctant to stray from known quantities but have found CMandrill easy and bug free. NOTE however this is a developing site that has only seen about 10 ES user accounts create/deleted through testing workflow and a number of components for a short-lived site for supporting a local fundraising event. I expect a few hundred users for the next two months, I'll let you know how it goes

Re: templates I've actually integrated my Mailchimp and Mandrill accounts. Mailchimp has a fairly robust facility for creating templates with variables for fill-in. I haven't investigated (actually used) Mandrill's capabilities directly as I don't have the need at that level (nor the time). You can check this out to see how to connect accounts.

Thank you Eileen!

I managed today to get a Mailchimp template pushed into Mandrill and working with CMandrill - nice and easy :-)

I've noticed though that my EasyDiscuss notification emails seem to no longer be responsive, in that it appears as if it has been put into a table and has made the other template elements tiny. Apart from that, all working well.

Oh, have you just linked CMandrill to a particular template pushed over from Mailchimp into Mandrill? You're a step ahead of me (or another way to say I still have other things to finish before I catch up to you Well if so that would make my request to stackideas moot.

If that's the case and you're now noticing a lack of responsiveness, one possibility is that you're using a class of Mailchimp templates that were not designed to be responsive. They do have "mobile" templates that are responsive and which I guess would work well if you pushed them over and linked to CMandrill.

And I just noticed you're also very interested in getting events working with ES --- me too!!! Here's two more cents for you. I'm working with Ohanah for my "short-term" event site and I've found I'm spoiled with Stackideas support. Not getting the same initiative or attention over their, regarding responsiveness to problems or proactively accessing and responding to customer requests. For example, there's a very long line of requests to handle multiple ticket prices and they've been putting it off for some time. Problem is apparently an "architectural' one. While I totally understand how that could happen, haven written both good and bad software myself, it doesn't bode well for the "have ohanah build a ES App" path rather than "have stackideas create the event platform". The latter still opens up opportunities for add-value apps later.

Eileen O'Donnell wrote:
Oh, have you just linked CMandrill to a particular template pushed over from Mailchimp into Mandrill? You're a step ahead of me (or another way to say I still have other things to finish before I catch up to you Well if so that would make my request to stackideas moot.

Yes, that's exactly what I've done!

I've only got a global template setup at the moment in CMandrill, but as far as I can tell, it looks pretty straightforward to setup component specific templates using the class name and function name parameters. See:

https://compojoom.com/support/documentation/mandrill/ch03s03

Aside from having the ability of setting up separate templates for EasySocial, EasyBlog, JReviews etc, we can even setup specific templates for certain emails from a template, for example a template with a special offer in registration emails!

At the moment, all of my emails, including EasyDiscuss etc are being sent via CMandrill/Mandrill using a Mailchimp template, which is great. The only site emails not getting the template are emails generated by Admin Tools. It's more than likely due t the fact that Admin Tools is ordered first in Plug-In Manager. It's not an issue as it's only admins who see those emails.

If that's the case and you're now noticing a lack of responsiveness, one possibility is that you're using a class of Mailchimp templates that were not designed to be responsive. They do have "mobile" templates that are responsive and which I guess would work well if you pushed them over and linked to CMandrill.

Thank you Eileen, time to check out some more templates

And I just noticed you're also very interested in getting events working with ES --- me too!!! Here's two more cents for you. I'm working with Ohanah for my "short-term" event site and I've found I'm spoiled with Stackideas support. Not getting the same initiative or attention over their, regarding responsiveness to problems or proactively accessing and responding to customer requests. For example, there's a very long line of requests to handle multiple ticket prices and they've been putting it off for some time. Problem is apparently an "architectural' one. While I totally understand how that could happen, haven written both good and bad software myself, it doesn't bode well for the "have ohanah build a ES App" path rather than "have stackideas create the event platform". The latter still opens up opportunities for add-value apps later.

I want EasySocial events yesterday!

What made you choose Ohanha over JEvents? I've asked the latter about EasySocial integration and they've asked what i would want. I'll have a think and before I reply to them. I'm also considering trying to create something basic using JReviews as an interim measure.

@Mark THANK YOU for saving me time and providing a reference to let me catch up with you on use of templates over mandrill this will be very effective for marketing/sales purposes and to personalize the user experience.

I'm also using JReviews I think it's very fortunate that this template e-mail solution works all-around.

You would never have guessed why I'm using Ohanah. The Ohanah site is unique in that I only had a couple of days to put it together and it's only live for a couple of months supporting a fundraising event. I needed to get something up-and-running in just a few days and with Ohanah I got a bundled template that fit my needs and promised impeccable integration with Ohanah. Funny thing is I wasn't getting it for its event capabilities but really for ticketing the event; I would rather have gone with TechJoomla's JTicketing 1.5 stable for ticketing in this case but it's not ready yet. The 1.5 version enables you to create an event absent an event calendering system. In any "event", my plan has always been to wait for stackideas for events. This time around I don't have a team of people working with me but with stackideas you feel that you do.

In response to my inquiries about JTicketing, TechJoomla stated "When EasySocial comes out with Events, We will support it within around a month from their stable release". They do have a track record with me for keeping their reasonable commitments. I'm using their JGive product which is integrated with ES and am pleased.

Thanks for sharing Eileen