ServeU.net Web Hosting

Acajoom mailing list is a popular plugin for sending newsletters from websites based on Joomla! CMS. ServeU.net web hosting hosts thousands of websites built with Joomla! CMS and we receive many questions on what are the optimal settings for Acajoom mailing list on our hosting service.

Here are some good advice:

Optimal settings for Acajoom News (the free version)

Acajoom News, the free version of Acajoom mailing list, sends newsletters in a process that is dependent on an open browser window. When you click the Send button, Acajoom News sends the newsletter as long as the web connection is open. If the web connection is closed for some reason, the sending process is cancelled, and no report is sent to the administrator. Consequently, you do not know who received the newsletter or not.

If you have a small mailing list of, let’s say a few hundreds of subscribers, this is probably not a big problem. Your emails will be sent within a few minutes and the risk that the web connection would be interrupted during this short time very small. If you expect to have more than 500 subscribers on your mailing list, you should go for Acajoom Plus or Pro (see below). But if you want to use the free version, here is the optimal setting for Acajoom News on ServeU.net web hosting:

1. Make sure you have set up at least one email account in the web hosting control panel (E-mail Manager).
   
2. Log in to your Joomla admin and go to Components > Acajoom > Configuration.
   
3. On the Mail tab, set the following:
   • Mail method: PHP mail function
   • From Email: [set here an email account that you have created in the Email Manager]
   • From Name: [the name you want in the From field of your mailings – only Latin characters]
     
   • SMTP Auth, SMTP password and SMTP host is not applicable, since you use PHP mail function.
     
   • Pause x seconds every configured amount of emails: 60
     
   • Emails between pauses: 30
     
   • Wait for input at pause: No
     
   • Script timeout: 0

Optimal settings for Acajoom Plus or Pro

Acajoom Plus and Pro versions offer the great advantage to run the newsletter sending process independent of an open web connection. Acajoom Plus and Pro versions will allow you to schedule the sending process for any time in the future. After saving your newsletter, Acajoom will wait for a cron process to trigger each batch of emails to be sent with the frequency set in the configuration. So here is the optimal setting for Acajoom Plus or Pro on ServeU.net web hosting:

1. Make sure you have set up at least one email account in the web hosting control panel (E-mail Manager).
   
2. Log in to your Joomla admin and go to Components > Acajoom > Configuration.
   
3. On the Mail tab, set the following:
   • Mail method: PHP mail function
   • From Email: [set here an email account that you have created in the Email Manager]
   • From Name: [the name you want in the From field of your mailings – only Latin characters]
     
   • SMTP Auth, SMTP password and SMTP host is not applicable, since you use PHP mail function.
     
   • Pause x seconds every configured amount of emails: 60
     
   • Emails between pauses: 30.
     
   • Wait for input at pause: No
     
   • Script timeout: 0
4. On the tab Schedule, set the following:
   • Scheduler max frequency: 1 minutes
   • Maximum emails per task: 30

Next step is to set up a cron task that will trigger the sending process. Every time the cron (or someone else) visits the url www.yoursite.com/index.php?option=com_acajoom&act=cron – any scheduled newsletters are sent. If you are not familiar with cron tasks, we recommend that you use the free cron task service at www.joobisoft.com to set up a cron task that visits the url index.php?option=com_acajoom&act=cron on your site. Read more about how to set up cron tasks for Acajoom here.

If you use sh404SEF, we recommend that you turn of SEF urls for Acajoom. To switch of SEF for Acajoom in sh404SEF, go to Configuration, tab “By component,” and choose “skip” for Acajoom.