We're very pleased to announce the release of a new development version of phpList. To get your copy, go to the Sourceforge Download page .

Main changes in this version: UTF-8 support. 

This version can also handle sending your campaigns with the Amazon SES service.

Our hosted newsletter service already runs on this version, but to declare the download version stable, we want to add some finishing touches first, particularly in the UI and internationalisation side of the application. 

As always with development versions, it's for the bold and brave. Be careful, backup often and report issues you find in our bugtracker .

Some notes on the new version:

User Interface

The UI is a bit out in some places. We have for now concentrated on the functionality. We hope it doesn't hamper too much, and if someone wants to help out making some nice new interface, get in touch.

UTF-8

In the process of upgrading, your database will be converted to UTF-8. This may take a little while and if you have a large database, it may time out. You can either call the upgrade from the commandline, or you can load the page "converttoutf8" in the admin section to convert the rest of the tables. (ie, manually load /admin/?page=converttoutf8)

Amazon SES

We will add some documentation later, but the basics for configuration is as follows (place this in your config file)

define('PHPMAILER',0);

define('AWS_ACCESSKEYID','Your Access Key ID');

define('AWS_SECRETKEY','Your corresponding secret key');

define('AWS_POSTURL','https://email.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/');

Obviously, because you place your secret key in the config file, you need to make sure it is secure.

Using the SES functionality requires curl support in PHP.

After that, make sure to read the SES documentation to add your senders and set yourself up for mailing.