jackmcdade / submattic

Crazy simple, Node.js powered, whitelist-only email groups. For humans!

Submattic

Crazy simple, Node.js powered, whitelist-only email groups. For humans!

Requirements

1. Node.js & NPM installed on your dev server
2. A Mandrill account
3. A domain or subdomain with your MX records pointed at Mandrill

Installing

1. Clone the repo to your dev server.
2. Run npm install
3. Add and edit your groups in /groups/.yaml
4. Deploy to Heroku, Nodejitsu, or your Node hosting service of choice.
5. Point Mandrill's Inbound Email (*) wildcard domain route to the public root URL (e.g. http://example-url.com). You can choose to specially add each mailbox route explicity to avoid having exceess email (read: SPAM) hit your server unnecessarily.
6. Edit the config.yaml file and add your Mandrill API Key.

Usage

Create a group by adding a YAML file to the /groups folder. A file named gamenight.yaml would create the email list [email protected]. The file should contain a title (used in the subject lines) and a list of name/email keys for all the memebers. Here's an example of a group file:

title: Example
members:
  -
    name: Peter Pevensie
    email: [email protected]
  -
    name: Susan Pevensie
    email: [email protected]
  -
    name: Edmund Pevensie
    email: [email protected]
  -
    name: Lucy Pevensie
    email: [email protected]

Only emails from people within the group (this is white-listing) will be accepted and routed to the rest of the members. Full HTML/text content will be passed along.

Quick Start guides to hosting Submattic

We'll assume you have Submattic running locally already.

Running on Heroku

1. Create a Heroku account
2. Install the Heroku gem: gem install heroku or install the Heroku Toolbelt
3. Login heroku login and authenticate with your account info
4. Create the app: heroku create
5. Deploy: git push heroku master
6. Turn a dyno on to make sure the app is running: heroku ps:scale web=1
7. Visit the app to make sure Submattic is running: heroku open.

Running on Nodejitsu

1. Create a Nodejitsu account
2. Install jitsu, the command line interface for Nodejitsu's platform: npm install jitsu -g
3. Login jitsu login and authenticate with your account info
4. Deploy: jitsu deploy. Nodejitsu will ask you for some additional info, like your app's name, subdomain, and start script. The start script is app.js.
5. Visit <yourapp>.nodejitsu.com to make sure everything's running.

submattic's Issues

Tests

Add code coverage

Support a database

Instead of YAML files which need to be deployed by hand, optionally supporting a simple database would allow it to live autonomously.

Notifications

Group owner could choose to receive some notifications (possibly as a digest) on their group(s).

Simple GUI

If using a DB, might as well have a simple little GUI. Which inevitably would require authentication.

Logs

Log various activities

Support Attachments

Available in Mandrill's JSON package at msg.attachements.content.

Hash Commands

Support hash commands on the first line of the body content. Some possible examples:

• Subscribe
• Unsubscribe
• Request a full list
• Logs
• Schedule Email
• Use template
• List Help (show controls and some instructions)