Oempro4 QuickStartGuide

Oempro4
Quick Start Guide
November 2008

Page 1 of 30 Oempro Quick Start Guide
Copyright © 2008 Octeth Ltd. All rights reserved.

Table of contents
Disclaimer of warranty......................................................................................................................... 3
Introduction......................................................................................................................................... 4
Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................................. 5
Pre‐requisites for Oempro4 ......................................................................................................................5
Installation wizard for Oempro4...............................................................................................................6
Logging into the Administrative Section of Oempro4 ............................................................................11
Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................................................... 13
Understanding the Oempro4 Interface ..................................................................................................13
Configuring the System Parameters .......................................................................................................27

Disclaimer of warranty
The information in this Quick Start Guide is accurate at the time of writing. This Quick Start Guide is
provided “as is” without express or implied warranty of any kind. Neither Octeth Ltd. nor its partners
assume any liability for inaccuracies in this Quick Start Guide, or losses incurred by use or misuse of the
information in this Quick Start Guide.
By installing and using Oempro, you agree on our Software License Agreement that can be found at:
http://octeth.com/oempro4/sla.php

Introduction
This is the Quick start guide for our flagship product Oempro4. Oempro4 is the leading email marketing
and list management software that provides high quality user interface with key features.
Oempro4 is developed from scratch with a better database and backend design & completely extensible
using the API and plug‐ins. Oempro4 comes with two editions:
1. Corporate Edition
This edition is the correct choice for individuals, business owners and marketing agencies. By
using this edition, you can run professional email campaigns for your own business or for your
customers.

This edition comes with 20 user accounts which means you can create 20 different user
accounts in Oempro4 and let them run their own campaigns, manage their own lists. More user
accounts can be purchased later on.

2. ESP Edition
This edition is the correct choice for ESPs (Email Service Providers) and anyone who is
interested in running a great email marketing business just like ConstantContact, Aweber or
Sendloop.com.

ESP Edition comes with unlimited user accounts and payment system integrated. You can create
(or let your website visitors to sign‐up as a user) unlimited user accounts, set different payment
plans for each user and track statistics from your management cockpit. ESP provides all required
features for running a successful email marketing business.
Chapter 1
In this chapter we will talk about the pre‐requisites for Oempro4, the installation process and the post‐
install functions of logging into Administrative Section of the Oempro4 system.
The manual is written with the help of Oempro4 ESP edition – the ESP edition has two extra features
compared to the corporate edition. (i) Unlimited user account creation (ii) Built in billing and payment
system.
Pre‐requisites for Oempro4
You must perform certain pre‐checks before Oempro4 is installed on your server. Oempro4 has specific
requirements which your server should meet as it is completely re‐designed from the scratch and has
comprehensive features which can help you to efficiently carry out email marketing.
Minimum Server Requirements:
You must have either a VPS or a Dedicated Server for Oempro4 to run efficiently and do its job based on
the features.
Operating System
• Windows
• Linux
• MacOS
PHP Settings
• safe_mode must be turned OFF
• enabled_dl must be turned ON
PHP Version:
You must have PHP version 5 or above
MySQL Version:
MySQL should be 4.11 or higher.

In case if you are not really sure about the server environment and whether you meet all the above
requirements or not then you should get in touch with your Server’s Administrator.

Installation wizard for Oempro4
Oempro4 installation wizard has been simplified and is only of a single step. Before we actually go
through the installation wizard let us quickly check the few steps and permissions required to be
implemented on few directories and files.
Step 1 – download the Oempro4 installable from client area
• First and the foremost step is to download the Oempro4 Installable from your Octeth Client
area.
• Once the Oempro4 is downloaded – please unzip the files and upload them to your web server.
• Oempro4 is ioncube encoded so you will also have to download the license file from your client
area. Now upload the license.dat file to your Oempro folder.
Step 2 – setting up the folder and file permissions
Oempro4 installation requires you to set the writable permissions on the folder called “Data” which can
be found in the root of the package.
Please change the CHMOD for the following directories to 777.
[installation_path]/data
[installation_path]/data/attachments
[installation_path]/data/email_templates
[installation_path]/data/imports
[installation_path]/data/languages
[installation_path]/data/media
[installation_path]/data/tmp

Step 3 – MySQL Database
Before we actually go through the installation wizard you should have the MySQL database ready.
Step 4 – Installation process
Please get the MySQL database ready before the installation wizard is executed and keep the database
details handy.
For this manual we are using “oempro4.octeth.com” as our installation url but you can also install it in
any subdirectory under your main domain – for example – www.domain.com/oempro
To check whether all our system requirements are in line and nothing is missing you can access the url –
http://www.domain.com/oempro/install/test.php
This will show you whether everything is fine or not – if the system requirements are meeting the
specifications then you should see the following screen.
The above screen confirms that the server is ok and Oempro4 can be installed without any issues.
To install our Oempro4 we will now point our browser to http://oempro4.octeth.com/install/ ‐ in your
case if you are using a subdirectory for Oempro4 then your URL will look like
http://www.domain.com/oempro/install/.

You should see the following screen after accessing the installation wizard. That’s it – just fill up the
related information shown on the screen and your installation will be completed. We will explain the
fields one by one below.

In the above screen you will see License details such as type, users, expiry date etc and some other fields
to fill in
Installation Settings
Application path Type the path where Oempro4 is uploaded – the full path must be entered
Example: /home/octeth/www/oempro4
Application URL Type the URL of your Oempro4
Example: http://www.domain.com/oempro4/
MySQL Host Type in the host name of the MySQL if it is different than “localhost”
MySQL Username Type in the username which is used to access MySQL Database
MySQL Password Type in the password for the MySQL username you entered
MySQL Database Type in the name of the MySQL Database you are going to use for Oempro4

Administrator Information
Name Type in the name of the person who will be administrating the whole system
Email Address Type in the valid Email address.
Username Type in the preferred administrative username
Password Type in the preferred password for the administrative username

In order to install Oempro on your server, you need to read and agree End User Software License
agreement which can be read on:
http://octeth.com/oempro4/sla.php
If you want a quick start, you can check “Install demo subscriber list for me” option to setup a demo
user account and subscriber list.
Once you click “Install” button, installation utility will create Oempro database tables and make Oempro
ready to use on your server.

If there is an error while the installation is being done you will be redirected to the installation page only
with the errors displayed on the screen – if everything goes smooth you should see the screen similar to
the one shown below.
The above screen will be displayed after the installation is completed successfully. You can make the
note of your Administration Area as well User Area.
Administration Area is to set the options of the overall system and User Area is used to create mailing
lists, import subscribers and launch campaigns based on the access levels the user has.
Once installation of Oempro4 is completed, please delete “install” directory.

Logging into the Administrative Section of Oempro4
Now that we have installed the Oempro4, its time to go through the basic setup of our system and get
ready. We will need to set all the system wide options in order to finalize the installation.
For this manual we have installed Oempro4 on http://oempro4.octeth.com domain name. In order to
access the administrative area of our Oempro4 system we will point your browser to
http://oempro4.octeth.com/admin/. You should see the following screen.

Login Menu
Username Type in the username which was defined at the time of installation
Password Type in the password for the username.
Verification Oempro4 system has a built in human verification test procedure of captcha
image. Please enter the displayed image

Now Oempro4 system will verify and validate the username and password information and take you to
the administrative area of Oempro4.

Once the system logs you on you should see the screen as shown in the below screen shot.
The above screen is the main administrative area of the whole system – this is very important in order to
setup the basic parameters of the Oempro4.

Chapter 2
In this chapter we will talk about the Oempro4 user interface, architecture and how to configure the
Oempro4 system.
Understanding the Oempro4 Interface
Before proceeding to the system setup and configuration let us understand the menus and the options
we have to deal with.
Top most navigation bar and menus:
The topmost navigation bar is an important section in terms of operational procedures of Oempro4
system. The admin section is majorly divided into 4 sections as seen in the below screenshot.
1. Users:
The users menu helps you to check the user accounts you have within your system – you can list
them – edit the accounts and make changes to their permissions and other related options.
2. User Groups:
This menu allows you to create different groups for your users. Each user group can have
different privilege settings, payment options and theme settings.
3. Payment Reports [only available in ESP edition]:
This menu is only available in the ESP edition as it has an integrated payment and billing module.
This menu helps you to get the details about the payment received from your clients signing up
for the email marketing service.
4. Settings:
This is the important most menu for all the system settings to be performed after the
installation is completed. This will help you to configure your default system wide email settings,
ESP settings, Preferences, branding related settings and plug‐ins.


Settings Menu
The settings menu is really important as all the system wide settings are configured and managed
through this interface.
If you move your mouse over the Settings menu you will get a drop down menu with the other
submenus.
Each of the submenu is important and let us check them out one by one.
Email Settings Menu:
This menu will help you set all the system wide email preferences – such as Default Email addresses,
bounce settings, load balancing and Email Sending methods.

Email Settings :: Email Addresses
System Email From Name Enter the from name which will be used to send the system generated
emails to the users using your Email Marketing Service
System Email From Email Enter the from email address which will be used for all the system
Address generated emails being sent to your users.
System Email reply to name Enter your reply‐to name so that users will send their replies to the
concerned admin or the person.
System email reply‐to email Set the reply‐to email address
address
Send Alerts to Set the email address where all the alerts can be sent – such as sign ups,
payment alerts etc.
Report Abuse to This is required in the case of ESP version as the service provider will have
to have an email address for the abuse related complaints received from
the subscribers.
Send Complaints to Set the email address which can receive the complaints about
organization using your email marketing solution.
Feedback loop email Set the address which can be used to receive and gather the feedback
address generated from the subscribers.

Email Settings :: Bounce Settings
Catch all email address To track and handle bounces on your system, you will need to define a
domain catch‐all email alias on your server and point it to the bounce system
module of Oempro (described in following section). This allows your
server to point all incoming bounce reports to Oempro. In this field, enter
the domain that you have set the catch‐all. Example: octeth.com
Soft to hard bounce Set the threshold value so that Oempro4 can decide after how many
threshold bounces an email address should be considered as a soft or hard bounce.


Email Settings :: Load Balancing Settings
Status You can enable or disable this based on your server configuration and to
lower the load of the outgoing email volume.
Emails to send Specify how many emails should be sent per interval
Seconds to wait Specify how many seconds the Oempro4 should wait every after a
specified number of emails are sent out.

Email Settings :: Email Sending
There are about 5 types of sending method Oempro4 supports – we will list them below and their
respective options as well.
SMTP This method is used to send emails using the SMTP authenticated
method. When you select SMTP sending method you also have to define
the few options.

You can tick the Octeth.SMTP.com service and fill in the related
information or can have your own server’s SMTP details.

Host Address:
Enter the SMTP host address – example: mail.host.com
Port:
Enter the SMTP port – by default port 25 is used as a standard smtp port.
Security:
Select the SMTP security method – whether it uses encrypted mail
transport or not – if encrypted whether it has to be SSL or TLS mode.
Timeout:
Set the timeout value – in case if the server isn’t able to connect to the
smtp then after so many seconds it will time out and stop the connection
to smtp host.
Authentication:
Select whether the authentication is required or not – if it does then you
will also have to provide the username and password details.
X‐Mailer Header:
You can set the X‐Mailer header and can customize it as per your service
name – such as XYZ Emailer
Local MTA If you select the sending method as Local MTA then you will have to deal
with the following options

Local MTA Path:
Specify the path where your local MTA [Mail Transfer Agent] resides on
the server. Ex: /usr/sbin/sendmail
X‐Mailer Header:
PHP Mail Function You can select this method to send email campaigns using the PHP’s
default mail() Function method. You need to set anything for this sending
method except x‐mailer header.

X‐Mailer Header:
Power MTA This allows you to set the options for the PowerMTA. PowerMTA is a high
performance commercial MTA that lets you send millions of emails per
hour.

PowerMTA Virtual MTA Name
Set the virtual MTA name that you have defined in your PowerMTA
configuration file.

PowerMTA Pick‐Up Directory
Set the PowerMTA pick‐up Directory where PowerMTA monitors and
uses to receive emails for delivery.

X‐Mailer Header:
Save to disk This option allows you to save your outgoing emails as raw email files.

Directory to be saved
Specify the directory where you want to save the raw email files.
X‐Mailer Header:

ESP Settings Menu:
Oempro4 can allow you to offer Hosted Email Marketing Services to your clients, and ESP settings menu
is important in order to extend your Oempro4. You can also configure the payment gateways to collect
the payment from your clients based on the plans they select for the email marketing service.
ESP Settings allows you to configure how the user signups are handled and the payments.

ESP Settings :: User Signups
User Signup You can enable it or disable it from the drop down menu. Once this
option is enabled, you will be able to accept new user sign‐ups through
your website. The sign‐up page can be found under /user/signup.php
Fields to show You can select the fields which can be displayed at the time of the user
sign up – these fields are basically to gather the information from the end
user.
Language Select the language from the drop down menu
User Group Select the user group which can be used to group the user sign ups from
your website. In this way, you can limit permissions or sending activities
of new users.

ESP Settings :: Payments
Currency Set the Currency
Tax Set the percentage of tax


Preferences:
Under this menu you can set the preferences related to Google Analytics, media library, captcha system,
file upload related options and previewmyemail.com related options.
Preferences :: General
Administrator Area Login Captcha You can enable or disable this option for human verification
procedure for Administrative Area. This will help you to over ride
the automated bots which can attack your system by
automatically trying combinations of passwords and username
pairs. With captcha you can stop them doing it.
User Area Login Captcha You can enable or disable this option for human verification
procedure for User Area. This will help you to over ride the
automated bots which can attack your system by automatically
trying combinations of passwords and username pairs. With
captcha you can stop them doing it.
Google Analytics Source Keyword You can set the source keyword for your email marketing service
for Google Analytics
Google Analytics Medium You can set the medium keyword for Google Analytics so that you
Keyword and your clients can track the statistical data based on the method
of marketing.

Google Analytics integration allows you to continue tracking recipient activity on your website
after clicking a link inside your email. This lets you to see how many of your recipients continued
visiting on your website and how many of them purchased or signed up.

Preferences :: Media Library
Media Library Upload Method If this option is selected the users will be able to upload the
[Upload to server] images or any other data or files to the server itself.
Media Library Upload Method If this option is selected then anything uploaded by users will be
[Upload to database] stored in the database and will be rendered from the database
whenever required.
Media Library Upload Method If this option is selected the media or any other data files which
[Amazon S3 Account] are uploaded by the users will be stored on the Amazon S3
account.

Amazon S3 Account Access ID
Specify the account access ID

Amazon S3 Account Secret Key
Specify the Account Secret Key provided by Amazon

Amazon S3 Account Bucket
Specify the account bucket

Amazon S3 Account Media Library Path
Set the media library path

Amazon S3 Account URL
Set the account URL


Preferences :: File uploads
Import File Maximum upload size Specify the maximum upload size for the import file which will
be used for importing the member data to the Oempro4
Database.

The size is defined in bytes.
Attachment file maximum upload size Specify the size of the attachment which can be embedded
with the email campaign.

Media Library maximum upload size Specify the size of the files which can be uploaded to the
media library



Preferences :: PreviewMyEmail.com Integration
PreviewMyEmail.com Integration You can either use it as a system wide account or allow the
Method users to specify their own account.
PreviewMyEmail.com Account URL If the system wide account is enabled then you will have
define the account URL
PreviewMyEmail.com Account API Key Specify your account API key to use the previewmyemail.com
service.

PreviewMyEmail.com is an online service that helps you to preview your HTML email designs on
popular email services and email clients with a single click. Once you send your HTML email
design to PreviewMyEmail.com, your email will be previewed on Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007,
Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, Lotus Notes, Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL, Hotmail and other
popular services and in just a few minutes, you will receive screen shots of your email. For more
information, please visit PreviewMyEmail.com website.
Rebranding Settings
Oempro4 provides you the re‐branding facility in order to re‐brand the look and feel as well the product
name as per your needs and requirements.

You can change your user interface colors for each user group separately. This option is defined
while creating or editing your user groups. By just entering a few user interface parameters
(colors, etc.), Oempro will adjust the new user interface colors based on your selection.

Re‐branding Settings
Product Name You can change the product name to whatever suitable for
your email marketing service
Forward to friend page header URL You can customize the forward to friend header by defining
the header file url.
Forward to friend page Footer URL You can customize the forward to friend footer by defining the
footer file url.
Report abuse page header URL You can define the abuse page header url.
Report abuse page footer URL You can define the abuse page footer url
User Signup page header URL You can customize and define the user sign up page header url
User Signup page footer URL You can customize and define the user sign up page footer url
Subscriber area logout URL You can define the custom log out URL when the subscribers
of your email marketing service they log out.

Plug‐in Manager
The Oempro4 architecture is flexible and can be extended to be integrated with different applications.
Using the API technology you can create plug‐ins for Oempro4 as well Octeth will be developing several
plug‐ins over the period of sometime which will extend the functionalities of Oempro4 platform.

Configuring the System Parameters
We have seen in previous topics that how the Oempro4 user interfaces are configured and how it can be
extended and one can scale it up to new levels.
Now let’s go through the very important and major aspects of Oempro4’s system modules which are not
only important but should be configured accurately in order to have the system function properly.
System modules are system executable files (files that cannot be executed through your web browser).
These modules handle the sending of your campaign emails, auto responders, bounce handling, process
of spam complaints and accepting the subscription/unsubscriptions by email.
There 6 system modules in Oempro4. These system modules are stored in “cli” directory under Oempro
installation directory as displayed below:
Module Description and their respective functions
bounce.php This module handles the bounced back emails and segregation of the soft
and hard bounce based on the other bounce parameters specified within
the Oempro4 system
fbl.php This module helps you handle the spam complaints received from the
email recipients. You will need to be enrolled in email service Feedback
Loop Programs (FBL).
requests.php This module helps Oempro to handle the subscription and un‐
subscription requests through emails..
send.php This module manages the email campaign queue and send process
sync.php This module helps Oempro to synchronize the data from the third party
MySQL database(s) with subscriber lists.
transactional_send.php This module helps Oempro to manage the autoresponder and other alert
and notifications related or scheduled email sending processes.


Now let us check out the few easy steps in order to setup these modules using the CRON [automated
tasks] and email piping techniques.
The installation steps for the modules mentioned here are only for the Linux and Mac OS X Operating
Systems. Installing these modules on the Windows environment is different and you will need to talk to
your server administrator to set them up.
In order to finalize the Oempro4 setup you will now need to setup the 3 CRON jobs on your server.
CRON jobs allow your server to execute certain tasks repeatedly without the human interaction with
those tasks.
CRON tasks can be setup from the control panel’s such as cpanel, plesk, ensim etc. and can also be setup
from the shell.
In this guide we will describe how to setup CRON using the shell commands.
1. Login to your server either via Telnet or SSH
2. Type the following command to edit the existing CRON jobs. Hash sign [ # ] is not the part of the
command here.

# crontab –e
3. Add the following new CRON jobs by typing it out.

* * * * * /path/to/oempro/cli/send.php >/dev/null
* * * * * /path/to/oempro/cli/sync.php >/dev/null
* * * * * /path/to/oempro/cli/transactional_send.php >/dev/null
4. Now Save the file and crontab should report – Installing New Crontab
That’s it – you are done with the CRON setup and the server will execute the three jobs every minute.
The next step is to set “email piping” on your server that means forwarding received emails to
Oempro’s system modules directly. The email piping is the name for the technique of sending email
message as an input to a program rather than appending the message to the mailbox file.
Email piping setup is different for every mail server. Therefore, the description written below may not
be working for you. We strongly recommend you to contact your server administrator to learn more
about how to setup email piping on your server.
In this manual we will be explaining you to setup the email piping based on the plesk control panel
systems running the Qmail.
Setting Email Piping For fbl.php and requests.php
1. You will need to login to your server using Telnet or SSH
2. Once you are logged in you will have to change the permissions for the web root directory which
is called httpdocs which includes the Oempro directory to 755 [executable]

# chmod 0755 /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs
3. Now change the permissions of all the files under /Oempro/cli/ directory to 755 [executable]

# chmod –R 0755 /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/oempro4/cli/*
4. To setup SPAM complaint handling, create an email alias pointing the fbl.php system module.
We assumed that you are going to use spam@domain.com for SPAM complaint tracking:

# vi /var/qmail/mailnames/domain.com/.qmail-spam

5. This will show you the text editor on your screen – please type in the following command to set
the email piping.

|/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/oempro/cli/fbl.php

6. Now save the file and exist.
7. Follow the same procedure for requests.php if you want to accept subscription and
unsubscription requests by email.
Setting Email Piping For bounce.php
As mentioned in previous sections, in order to track bounced email addresses, you will need to set
“catch‐all” email address on your server. This can be done easily through your control panel (plesk,
cpanel, ensim, etc.)
Once catch‐all email address defined, you will need to set email piping for that email address and pipe it
to the following path just like described above.
|/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/oempro/cli/bounce.php
The reason why catch‐all method is being used that, this maximizes the compatibility with almost all
bounce delivery reports even they are not in RFC standards. Oempro will set a unique “return‐path”
email address for every email being sent through the system and the domain of this unique return‐path
email address will be the one you have set in “Settings > Email Settings” section.
Thank You
Thank you for choosing Oempro as your email marketing solution.
Any Questions
We will be happy to hear from you and answer your questions. You can contact us in various ways:
Pre‐Purchase Questions
Please send your pre‐purchase questions to sales@octeth.com
Support Requests, Technical Questions
Please login to your client area (http://octeth.com/support.php) and fill‐in support request form that
can be found under “Request Service” link
Community Discussions
Please visit our forums at http://octeth.com/forum/ to get in contact with other Oempro users and
exchange information each other.

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