Post Office setup

This is probably a dumb question (well, a few questions likely). I have someone who would like to incorporate a newsletter into their site (and have it incorporated on a splash page while her site’s being built - a la Blast by Hipsterweaver), so I want to test it out on my own first.

I have the Post Office stack and setup a test MySQL database (this is my first time using MySQL, so you’ll need to dumb down any of your responses). For some reason, I can’t get the PostOffice demo to open to get me started either.

So, the first question is DB Server name. The default is ‘mysql.domain.com’. Much of the documentation i’ve seen says to have this setting as ‘localhost’ but that obvisouly doesn’t seem like the format this stack is looking for. I’m just curious if anyone had a sample screenshot of their settings that I could see (minus passwords or anything like that).

The other dumb question is, assuming I figure out how to set it up and can get users registered, how do you manage sending out the actual newsletters? Do you just export the database users into an email list or something?

I’m with In Motion Hosting, if that helps. (I’m sure I’m missing other details that would be useful, so let me know what I can provide).

Thanks, Jason

(Edit - Or should I just MailChimp/Sendy? I asked my client if she thought she’d have less than 2000 subscribers, in which case, Mail Chimp is free).

Just use mailchimp. It is free for the first 2000(?) recipients I guess. And the newsletter form is generated automatically.
Cheers, Jannis

Thanks. Yeah i just tried out a test account with MailChimp and it was super easy to setup. I’m going to recommend this (or Sendy, if she thinks she’ll have a lot of subscribers). My Sunday afternoon is now open!

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