Links in eMails are not working

ℹ️ Support
1

Hey guys!

If I include links in the content of my mails, e.g. http://www.test.com, the links in the eMail sent are changed to something linke this: http://www.my-domain.com/lists/lists/lt.php?id=LE0BB0gOTQI

Any ideas, what is going wrong here?

Thank you very much for your support in advance!

2

It looks like your configuration is converting all the links to tracking links… it is used to determine who clicked on which link. That is turned on be the default config.php settings. If the receiver clicks on that link, it will send them back to the phpList system, which registers the click, and then send them to the original link that you put in the source of your email.

1 Like
3

I cannot find any link-parts in the config.php
It currently looks like this:

<?php /* * ============================================================================================================== * * * The minimum requirements to get phpList working are in this file. * If you are interested in tweaking more options, check out the config_extended.php file * or visit http://resources.phplist.com/system/config * * ** NOTE: To use options from config_extended.php, you need to copy them to this file ** * ============================================================================================================== */ what is your Mysql database server hostname $database_host = "XYZ"; what is the name of the database we are using $database_name = "XYZ"; what user has access to this database $database_user = "XYZ"; and what is the password to login to control the database $database_password = 'XYZ'; if you have an SMTP server, set it here. Otherwise it will use the normal php mail() function if your SMTP server is called "smtp.mydomain.com" you enter this below like this: define("PHPMAILERHOST",'smtp.mydomain.com'); define("PHPMAILERHOST",''); if test is true (not 0) it will not actually send ANY messages, but display what it would have sent this is here, to make sure you edited the config file and mails are not sent "accidentally" on unmanaged systems define ("TEST",0); /* ============================================================================================================== * * Settings for handling bounces * * This section is OPTIONAL, and not necessary to send out mailings, but it is highly recommended to correctly * set up bounce processing. Without processing of bounces your system will end up sending large amounts of * unnecessary messages, which overloads your own server, the receiving servers and internet traffic as a whole * ============================================================================================================== */ Message envelope. This is the address that most bounces will be delivered to Your should make this an address that no PERSON reads but a mailbox that phpList can empty every so often, to process the bounces $message_envelope = 'listbounces@yourdomain'; Handling bounces. Check README.bounces for more info This can be 'pop' or 'mbox' $bounce_protocol = 'pop'; set this to 0, if you set up a cron to download bounces regularly by using the commandline option. If this is 0, users cannot run the page from the web frontend. Read README.commandline to find out how to set it up on the commandline define ("MANUALLY_PROCESS_BOUNCES",1); when the protocol is pop, specify these three $bounce_mailbox_host = 'localhost'; $bounce_mailbox_user = 'popuser'; $bounce_mailbox_password = 'password'; the "port" is the remote port of the connection to retrieve the emails the default should be fine but if it doesn't work, you can try the second one. To do that, add a # before the first line and take off the one before the second line $bounce_mailbox_port = "110/pop3/notls"; $bounce_mailbox_port = "110/pop3"; it's getting more common to have secure connections, in which case you probably want to use $bounce_mailbox_port = "995/pop3/ssl/novalidate-cert"; when the protocol is mbox specify this one it needs to be a local file in mbox format, accessible to your webserver user $bounce_mailbox = '/var/mail/listbounces'; set this to 0 if you want to keep your messages in the mailbox. this is potentially a problem, because bounces will be counted multiple times, so only do this if you are testing things. bounce_mailbox_purge = 1; set this to 0 if you want to keep unprocessed messages in the mailbox. Unprocessed messages are messages that could not be matched with a user in the system messages are still downloaded into phpList, so it is safe to delete them from the mailbox and view them in phpList $bounce_mailbox_purge_unprocessed = 1; how many bounces in a row need to have occurred for a user to be marked unconfirmed $bounce_unsubscribe_threshold = 5; $pageroot = '/lists';
4

Link tracking is a basic feature of phpList. There is nothing “wrong” with your links, this is how it is supposed to be. When you send a campaign, you probably want to know how many people click a link: you can see this in your statistics:

This data is gathered by these funny urls you see. The url is different for each link and for each subscriber, so you can even see which subscribers clicked which link exactly.

You can turn off link tracking if you want, however, that is something done mostly in situations where privacy is especially sensitive.

5

Hi,

I got exactly the same problem. Kindly help me out how to resolve this. How to disable link tracking?

This does not work:-
a href=“http://www.my-domain.com” with value as Some Text

–
Many Thanks,
Nikhil Bhalwankar

6

Hi, you understand what this means? I know tracked urls are ugly, but it’s a fairly fundamental feature of phpList, unless you have specific issues with privacy, I just don’t understand why you would want to do this…

7

And i’s what i’m looking for too.
The problem is that if i read the mail from my PC i’m sent to the original page.
If either i push the link of the some mail from my mobile i remain blocked on the link to the convertion page

8

To turn off

put this in your config.php file:

# Click tracking
# If you set this to 1, all links in your emails will be converted to links that
# go via phplist. This will make sure that clicks are tracked. This is experimental and
# all your findings when using this feature should be reported to mantis
# for now it's off by default until we think it works correctly
define('CLICKTRACK',0);

# Click track, list detail
# if you enable this, you will get some extra statistics about unique users who have clicked the
# links in your messages, and the breakdown between clicks from text or html messages.
# However, this will slow down the process to view the statistics, so it is
# recommended to leave it off, but if you're very curious, you can enable it
define('CLICKTRACK_SHOWDETAIL',0);
1 Like
9

Hi, you should not disable link tracking to solve that issue, not unless there is no other solution. Link tracking is one of the main reasons to use software like phpList: it gives you much of your campaign analytics.

10

I agree with @anna on this…
It may be an issue of security settings on your phone. Personally, using an Iphone, I’ve never had a problem with linktracking.

1 Like
11

Thanks a lot. it worked.

12

Yes. You are very correct. But currently, I am not using server with a static IP and a domain mapped in order to send the emails. I will be enabling the feature again when I go for a dedicated server with static ip.

13

phpList.com offer dedicated VPS, fully maintained for high volume senders, the price (for 500k start at $900) you get support tickets etc to resolve issues like this. If you are moving server at some point it might be worth looking into it. Mail me on anna@phplist.com for more info :slight_smile:

14

I had the same problem as @digitaloverdose and it seem to me that no one really understands what his (and mine) problem was. The tracking link ( http://www.my-domain.com/lists/lists/lt.php?id=LE0BB0gOTQI) was incorrectly generated: the directory “lists” was repeated two time!
I solved the issue correcting the website address in config/setting. It should be the domain address, without the directory lists where you stored the phpList script.