thanks @mechtron , yeah im using these, actually i have found that a lot of "fake emails" where inserted in the website (bots probably), so this made the rank of the elive emails bad... i have been improving this with reCaptcha but turns out that bots learned how to jump it so easily (in other words, recaptcha is absolutely useless), so im trying with other techniques...
about exim4, i think im going to setup an entire server with an entire new conf, just for test & learn & practice and so, improve the actual configuration
emails to hotmail are very banned at the moment so let's see how this improves in the future
im experimenting and doing a lot of work on the website these days, trying recaptcha and other techniques, sometimes even the website doesn't works (i just enter in the forum now to see if somebody was reporting that the downloads was not working in the last hours, but nobody reported lol, the era on which people reported issues is gone)
yeah the website needs a rewrite, im actually working on that these days too, with some extra help and planning a new set of "pages" for the website (making sure to include some SEO, good images, good wording, etc...) I will keep the forum updated of the new pages
unfortunately sticking with wordpress, we depend on it because the template using, the elive-plugins written on it, the amazing newsletters or revsilder (or others) plugins, and of course all that availalbilty of plugins available
i dont really like much wordpress and especially its code quality, imho it could have been done much better, but is what we have and we need to use it so... also to switch to another platform could be a very big cost
i'm not sure if this is helpful, as i could be writing things not relevant...
there could be people who seems like they are not reading the newsletter because they don't receive it. if some mail systems are blocking elive mails due to some people marking them as spam, then it will block it for all the genuine readers on there as well? if yes, then there would be people getting 'kicked out' without knowing it? they won't have a real chance to reply to your question or query.
anyway, i could be off the mark... but what i can say is that i certainly don't get any newsletter or anything. is that because i need to subscribe? is it an 'opt in' or 'opt out' thing to get the newsletter?
you are probably subscribed if you confirmed your email in the past, like when downloading a version with the delayed-download mode (if you confirmed the email), or maybe you was not able to receive these emails... update: it was not, i manually added your email to the subscribers, but due to the actual problems you will not receive any emails until things are fixed, improved, and unblocked
UPDATE: things are getting worse, yesterday google (gmail), which was the most reliable email provider where elive can send, greylisted the emails from elive... the situation is so bad at the moment that I needed to disable entirely the emailing system on the website, like, removing the delayed downloads system, while I will continue working on improving it, like:
add more "verifiers of true email subscribed" (this means, before to send any email, like the confirmation or the downloads), which is extremely difficult and almost imposible to know since spam bots uses in a big percent REAL email accounts for that
cleanup the entire database of emails from fake emails (something also not easy, and extremely delicated to not delete real users), also remove the less-interested people from the newsletters too (people that never clicked in a link of the email notifications, for example)
setup an extra server for now to send emails from it, with an improved exim4 configuration (in other words: setup an email sending server), which can be imported in the future in the real server
improve the "anti-bots" tricks in the forms to avoid bots to use it (@PrinceAMD has a good idea about that using a generated-on-the-fly form from javascript only when specific device is detected, which is delicated too since no-ads browser extensions can remove some needed info)
to be removed from the blacklists in the email providers (also another slow step)
Boring and frustrating it is and looking at the issue ...... fundamental is the way Elive acquires (or tries to ...) donations.
Maybe we should try to do this in another fashion that doesn't require email.
Like offering a slow download for free and a fast one for donaters/contributors.
Something like some file-sharing companies do ..... think Keep2share, Publish2 or TezFiles fashion.
I'd be surprised if there isn't a js module for that somewhere.
Then keep the e-mail newsletter for very explicit user opt-in maybe even requiring a quarterly renewal confirmation ..... or just do it away altogether.
Do you read newsletters you receive through e-mail? I certainly don't!
A big sidenote here:
Elive's wikipedia entry was lost through lack of maintenance and this bot/spam issue clearly is the same.
It's clear that you are losing battle after battle there in keeping Elive alive.
Instead of complaining about the massive todo list ...... you should delegate those kind of jobs to others who are willing to do so.....and then make sure the work keeps getting done by keeping those volunteers motivated.
You absolutely need to get off this solo thingy, it's collaboration that keeps FOSS projects alive not technical prowess.
i'm a boring person. not much when it comes to being technical minded though, but if there's something 'simple' that a 'general' person can do, maybe i can help somewhat...
I haven't subbed to the newsletter since I first did, so maybe oct 2019, so this may already be done
How about a "Please only subscribe if you will read the messages" or something? Add a little extra too, like "We've been having many issues with emailing people due to people reporting as spam and not reading the messages"
yes thats the idea, i dont want to have subscriptors that -may- mark the emails as spammer, so is better to only enable them if they -really- wants to... now im making sure they are subscribed only if they confirm their email, but:
if you want to see the new behaviour (UX), try to download a 32-bit beta version (so inserting the email) with a different email address and see how it works, where basically:
receiving during the next hour the email(s) of the download
the next day you receive the confirmation for subscribe with some wordings that are meant to attract people to be subscribed (communication / persuasion improvements to do here?)
the next week you will receive an email asking you to help the project by making it more known (only if you confirmed your subscription, if im not wrong), more text to improve here?
these text needs to be short, clear, motivational, etc... any suggestion / improvement here welcome
