Postcard Direct

Version Information

PD Version: 6.1.0
Last Updated: 3 May 2007

PD Admin Version: 2.0.1
Last Updated: 27 February 2005

Language Templates
Last Updated: 7 May 2006

Overview
Features
Examples
Sites using Postcard Direct
Additional Language Support
Documentation/Support
Mailing List
Download
Licence
Todo List
What's New in Version 6
PD Change History
Admin Change History
Language Templates Change History

Overview

Postcard Direct is different to all other postcard systems because it sends the postcard directly to the recipient. That means there is no database to maintain and no postcards to "pick up". Most other postcard systems:

Make the recipient access a web site and use some complicated random ticket number to view the postcard. Too bad if the web site is down, the recipient has been on holiday for a while and the postcard has expired or if they have email access only.

Store all your postcards in a database.

Make you fill out multiple pages before you get to send the postcard. Most users just want to select a card, type in a message and receipient and then send it off. Having hundreds of options is fine if you have plenty of spare time to fill out all the forms.

Note that Postcard Direct supports a "traditional" mode if you want to use the store/pickup method. For flash and java cards, this is the most reliable method as there are too many restrictions and incompatibilities in email clients to support these types.

Postcard Direct has been designed and tested to run on Unix, Windows and Mac systems. It will probably run on other operating systems that support Perl.

Features

Sends the image and midi file direct to the recipient through MIME encoded mail.
It can handle remote images (from sites you authorise) to be used as postcards.
Allows the user to upload their own image to use as a postcard.

Postcards can be sent at a later date.

Handles any type of multimedia object you want to include in your postcard, eg: Flash, RealAudio, MP3, Quicktime etc
Full multi-lingual support.
Fully customisable through HTML templates. Every page from the input form through to the sending page is separate from the script, so that your web designers don't have to hack any perl code. Comes with many predefined templates from java cards through to cards where you can select colours.
Has a very strict email address checker to reduce the likelyhood of misuse and typos.
Allows a set of checks for banned email addresses and/or bad words in the postcard message.
Supports as many postcard designs as you want to define.
Keeps a full log of all postcards sent allowing you to see which features and options are most popular and to better tailor the design for the users needs.
Multiple recipients can be specified and a bcc option is available.
The sender can select whether to receive a copy of the card.
Read confirmation for all card types.
Include files can be specified to pull in set chunks of text like poems.
Freeform fields allow the easy extension of the templates for specific purposes, eg: colour selection.
Has an easy to use admin interface to edit all templates and generate usage reports.

Examples

Type	Description	Example
Thumbnail	This is the most common setup for postcards, where the user chooses a postcard to send from a set of thumbnails.	View
Additional Fields	This example shows how you can add additional fields to any of the forms.	View
Java Postcards	This example is that same as the thumbnail example, except the postcards display with a Java Applet.	View
Flash Postcards	This example shows a page of two flash thumbnails.	View
Traditional Postcards	This example shows how to send postcards in the "traditional" way, ie: recipient is sent an email to "pick up" their card.	View
Multi-Lingual Postcards	This example shows how easy it is to offer postcards in multiple languages.	View
Image Upload	This example allows you to upload your own image to use as the postcard.	View

Administration Interface

The Administration Interface allows you to change your configuration, edit all your templates and manage the image/card caches. It also has an option for viewing summaries of the postcard log.

For this demo, use:

Username: pdadmin
Password: demo

Note, you will not be able to save any changes in demo mode.

Access Demo Admin

Sites using Postcard Direct

Here are just a small sample of the sites using Postcard Direct. The link will open in a new window.

Academy of Model Aeronautics Postcards	Aircraft Postcards	All Occasion Greeting Postcards
BAA@C Postcards	Brasileiros em Montreal	British Library e-cards
Bruce McMillan - Children's Book Author	Cartes virtuelles DDM	Cartes¨Postales Virtuelles de Montréal-La Cluse
Cartolinopoli	CartoonSoup eCard Toons	Cavalry Technologies Postcards
Clownloach.net eCard	Costello Syndrome Ecards	Cyberhalides
Cyberspace Ashram LoveCards	Discover Bangalore Postcards	Dousma Beheer Dutch Ecards
Drachenstein Postcards	Easy Postcards	Family Oosten Postcards
Foundation Aprisco Postcards	Foundation Expo '88 eCards	Global Traveller Postcards
Great Dane Postcards	Hokkaido Kagayaku-Net Postcards	Hondengedichten Flash Cards
Horse Greeting Cards	I Love to Travel Postcards	Inverlochy Castle Hotel Postcards
Isabelle Delmotte Postcards	J & J Postcards	Jesus Army Postcards
Joshua24 Christian E-Cards	LeslieFieger.com Inspiration eCards	Luttelgeest Postcards
MODA e-cards	Maine Antiques	Make Your Day Light Cards
Mallorca.com	Marbella Java Postcards	Met de Beste Wensen
Nature and Travel Postcards	Old Postcards of Warren	Oranje-kids E-kaartjes
Pender Island Postcards	Postales en español	Postcards of Holiday World Travel
Postcards of the Hawkesbury	Puppet Team Hamburg Postcards	Quadrand Cards
Rangerville Postcards	RevivalSermons.org Postcards	Romantic Equations Postcards
Russian Christian Cards	San Gavino.Net Postcards	Send Funny Cards
Sneaky & Creepy E-cards	Street Sweeper Postcards	Sulgrave Manor Postcards
The Austin 7 Club Postcards	This Funs For You Postcards	Tribalcog Postcards
grtz.net e-cards

Please email me if you wish to add your site to this list, or find a broken link.

Additional Language Support

As Postcard Direct is fully template driven, supporting multiple languages is very easy.

The list of currently supported languages are:

Language	Language Code	Status	Translator/s	Download
Bosnian	ba	Complete	Jasmin Fazlinovic	tar file \| ZIP file
Danish	da	Complete	Mogens Mechta	tar file\| ZIP file
Spanish	es	Complete	Marc Antonsen	tar file\| ZIP file
German	de	Complete	Kai Gradert and Frank Tremmel	tar file \| ZIP file
Finnish	fi	Complete	Marko Kokkala	tar file \| ZIP file
Italian	it	Complete	Sergio Fumich	tar file \| ZIP file
Japanese	ja	Complete	?	tar file \| ZIP file
Dutch	nl	Complete	Peter Dousma	tar file \| ZIP file
Norwegian	no	Complete	Thore Danielsen	tar file \| ZIP file
Portuguese (European)	pt	Complete	Helder Almeida	tar file \| ZIP file
Portuguese (Brazilian)	br	Complete	Eduardo Hutter	tar file \| ZIP file
Russian	ru	Complete	Roman	tar file \| ZIP file
Swedish	sv	Complete	Bert Magnusson	tar file \| ZIP file
French	fr	In Progress	Suzanne Brind'Amour	tar file \| ZIP file
Hebrew	he	In Progress	Daniel Jackler	tar file \| ZIP file

Note that the download includes just the language files.

There are instructions if you want the details of which files that need modifying for new translations.

If you are able to offer your translation services, please contact me

Documentation/Support

The Installation and Configuration Documentation contains information on how to install, configure and operate Postcard Direct.

There is a FAQ available. If this does not answer your question, post it on the Support Forum.

Mailing List

If you want announcements of new versions and bug fixes for Postcard Direct, you can subscribe to the mailing list

Download

The following formats are available for downloading:

PD Package (English only)

PD Package (Multi Language)

This package includes all languages. See language list below for translation status or individual language download.

Scripts

This package includes just the scripts.

Auto-Installer

Also you can use the Auto-Installer which in over 95% of cases, should have Postcard Direct up and running on your site in less than five minutes.

There is an Installation Service available if you don't have the time or experience to do it yourself.

Please read make sure you have read the licence details before downloading. If you are profit making company, you will need to purchase a commercial licence.

Licence

Peter Sundstrom (the Author) grants to the possessor of this copy (the Licensee) a royalty-free, nonexclusive license to use, copy, and modify the code of Postcard Direct and any related documentation (the Software) for academic, research, individual and any other non-commercial sites only and subject to the following conditions: - By using or copying the Software, Licensee agrees to abide by the terms of this Agreement.
- Title and copyright to the Software remain with the Authors and Licensee agrees to preserve the same.

- Licensee acknowledges that the Software is still in the development stage and that it is being supplied "as is", without any accompanying services from the Author. The Author MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. By way of example, but not limitation, the Author MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR THAT THE USE THE SOFTWARE WILL NOT INFRINGE ON ANY PATENTS OR OTHER RIGHTS. The Author shall not be held liable for any liability nor for any direct, indirect or consequential damages with respect to any claim by Licensee or any third party with respect to this Agreement or any use of the Software.

- Licensee may distribute the Software or any derivative work based on the the Software to third parties provided (1) all copyright notices and this Agreement appear on all copies, and (2) no charge is associated with such copies. Unless Licensee labels the derivative work with the notice "No Grantback", Licensee agrees to grant the Authors a royalty-free nonexclusive license to use, copy, modify and distribute any modifications to the Software owned by Licensee and distributed to third parties as a derivative work under this Agreement.

- If Licensee distributes a derivative work, then Licensee also agrees to (1) notify the Author of the distribution, and (2) clearly notify users that such derivative work is a modified version and not the original Software.

- Any Licensee wishing to make commercial use of the Software should contact the Author to negotiate an appropriate license. Commercial use includes (1) integration of all or part of the code into a product for sale or license by or on behalf of Licensee to third parties, or (2) distribution of the code to third parties that need it to utilize a commercial product sold or licensed by or on behalf of Licensee.

- Licensee agrees to abide by all applicable laws of the United States, including, but not limited to, copyright and export control laws.

- The Author has the right to terminate this license immediately by written notice upon Licensee's breach of, or non-compliance with any of its terms. Licensee may be held legally responsible for any copyright infringement that is caused or encouraged by licensee's failure to abide by the terms of this license.

The plain English version of the above, is that you are required to purchase a Postcard Direct licence if your company/website is commercial, ie: a profit making entity. It does not matter what use Postcard Direct is used for, a "free" postcard service on a commercial website still requires a licence.

Postcard Direct licence purchase details

To Do List

This list contains a number of items that are on the development list for Postcard Direct. They are listed in no particular order and are not a guarantee that they will eventually be implemented.

Spelling check of popular email addresses to pick up typos where people will type in something like "homail.com" instead of "hotmail.com"

Update of templates to include Javascript to be able to preview midi.

Support for SMTP authentication.

Different sorting orders for the Usage Report.

What's New in PD Version 6

New Features

Stored cards can be scheduled via cron.

Upload file types can be restricted to a specified list.

Improved error messages/diagnostics.

A sender can now select to send a copy of the postcard to themselves.

The sender can choose a read receipt.

Multiple recipients can now either be comma or new line separated.

Restrict the maximum number of recipients when sending to multiple recipients.

pdglobal.txt is no longer needed. It is now incorporated into the default configuration file.

Removed wrap text option as this is better controlled via the HTML table attributes.

Addition of the <pd_include> tag to include text files. Useful for inserting static text like poems into the postcard.

Added $future_card_age to configuration file to set the maximum date in the future that a card can be sent.

The pdadmin usage report now reports on bcc, sendcopy, send date and the freeform fields.

The PD admin interface has new menu options to view/manage the image/object caches.

The colour selection form template now displays the colours in the drop down selection.

Cards to be picked up (traditional mode) can now display a message if the card has expired or doesn't exist.

A new form template (form-all.txt) has been added, which has most of the various features turned on.

Input error template redesigned.

Various stylesheet tweaks.

Bug Fixes

Workaround for empty page after doing an image upload.

Fixed problem recognising bad words if edited via the admin interface.

Some of the strict checks for valid username/emails have been removed as they would often be triggered on valid name/email addresses.

Fixed missing website name in the error message if a remote site was not allowed.

Miscellaneous Changes

Form template extension changed from .html to .txt to be consistent with all the other templates.

All variable names in the configuration file have been changed to lowercase as this makes them more readable and less likely to mistype.

PD Change History

You can view the full change history.

You can view which files have changed between versions.

Version 6.1.0 - 3 May 2007 - see changed files

Added a new <pd_includes> tag to inserts a list and description of include files in a similar way to the design and midi lists.
HTML emails now specify the character set. This should help with non-English text.

Version 6.0.8 - 5 Nov 2006 - see changed files

Corrected log order of bcc and receipt fields.
Added missing section to delete the date email header.
Added a 'X-Origin' header to the postcard email header to help assist with postcard abuse.

Version 6.0.7 - 27 Oct 2006 - see changed files

Ensure the Date email header is generated by the mail server. This helps reduce scores in spam filters.
Changed midi to parameters to loop.
Fixed line breaks when sending from preview.
Added receipt field to the send log.
Ensure banned email checks each individual address when multiple addresses are specified.

Version 6.0.6 - 15 Sep 2006 - see changed files

Fixed a security hole where the showcard parameter could be used to read abitory files.

Version 6.0.5 - 3 May 2006 - see changed files

Fixed a bug that caused stored cards to be sent to the wrong address if a new card with the send copy option was selected and SMTP sending option was set. See support forum for details.
Ensure that the showcard link (when using traditional mode) works when the referer (anti-leech) settings are used.
Fixed a bug that caused the Bad User list to be ignored.
Ensure the Date is removed from the email header to help prevent being classified by some anti-spam software as spam email.

Version 6.0.4 - 26 April 2006 - see changed files

Fixed a bug to correctly recognise $site_url setting. This was a previously a problem for people using 'traditional' mode postcards.
Fixed a bug with the formatting of email addresses that caused some mail servers to reject BCC mail. This also effected the "Send me a copy" feature.
Bug fix to recognise $sender_name and $sender_email settings from the configuration file.

Fixed a bug which prevented the correct messages being displayed for non English languages.

Version 6.0.3 - 27 February 2005 - see changed files

Fixed a bug which was preventing the send date to be correctly recorded in the log file.
Fixed a bug which prevented the correct messages being displayed for non English languages.

Version 6.0.2 - 3 February 2005 - see changed files

Minor mod to allow the date selection dropdown lists to work with older Perl versions.

Version 6.0.1 - 31 January 2005 - see changed files

Date::Simple module modified to work with older Perl versions.

Version 6.0.0 - 28 January 2005

Released

Admin Change History

Version 2.0.1 - 27 February 2005

Fixed a bug which was causing non English language selection to be lost.
Fixed a bug which had an incorrect link for midi files in the usage report.

Version 2.0.0 - 28 January 2005

Released

Language Template Change History

7 May 2006

Danish templates added by Mogens Mechta.

27 February 2005

Dutch templates updated for PD6 by Peter Dousma.

23 November 2004

Swedish templates translated by Bert Magnusson.

3 October 2004

Spanish templates updated by Marc Antonsen

Ginini Technologies Software