Inside LabourStart

PHPlist is an open source newsletter manager.

My plan is that in 2010 we will consolidate all our lists (and the IUF’s as well) under the laborlists.org domain, which is running the open source PHPlist system.  We will not only save hundreds of pounds per year, but will also have the flexibility to create lists at will, which will come in handy as we get closer to our upcoming conference, and for specific campaigns.  We’ve lacked this flexibility and control in the earlier systems we used.  PHPlist also contains a double-optin subscribe mechanism, list segmentation, click tracking and other features.

Over the weekend, I moved the following lists to the new system: LabourStart Correspondents and these languages – Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, Chinese, Czech, Esperanto, Greek, Creole, Bulgarian and Finnish.  (None of these are being used at the moment.)  If you visit LabourStart in any of those languages (Czech is a good example) you’ll see the new ‘join our mailing list’ form at work.

I intend to begin moving the more complex mailing lists — the ones we use regularly — over the next few days.  Attentive readers will recall that I attempted this a couple of years ago without success — couldn’t get PHPlist to work, even with technical support from the company.  This time, for some reason, it worked without a hitch.  Thanks go out to Jasper Goss of the IUF Asia Pacific region who convinced me to give it another go, and suggested a very inexpensive web host in the USA which they have used for years.