PHPList: 9000 members uploaded, 0 displaying.

July 11, 2008 1:54 PM

I've just uploaded a .csv email list of about 9000 people to phplist... but phplist shows the list as having 0 members. (Actually, I've gotten this result twice... with two different 9000 member lists.) Any guesses as to what I'm doing wrong... or what I should be doing differently? Thanks! (Host: Hostgator)
posted by darth_tedious to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Best answer: I've had trouble if the email address is not one of the first few fields in the CSV file. I usually just make it the first field, to be safe.

If uploading via "import emails with different values for attributes", make sure to check "test output" and "show warnings", then carefully read the results for clues as to what may be going wrong.

Be sure to select a list to add the members to (near top of "import emails" page--if you didn't select a list it might be possible the 9000 people are in your system but just not subscribed to a list?).

The other possibility is that phplist is choking on the CSV file somehow. I've had that happen if (for instance) I saved the file in Excel as "CSV" rather than "tab-separated .txt". The tab-separated is what phplist wants.

Also, save time by testing on a much smaller list--say 50 entries. When you get that working go back to the 9000. (There is some upper limit on file size, as a recall there are internal phplist limits but also often limits set by php or by the hosting service--and which may vary from one hosting service to another. So that might be your problem as well--if a small test file works but your 9000 file doesnt, you might try splitting it into 2 or 3 smaller files.)
posted by flug at 2:23 PM on July 11, 2008

if I remember correctly, when you upload people to phpList, they go into a general "bucket." They are accounts which are now eligible to be added to one or more of your specific lists, but new ones aren't on any list yet.

There should be an option to now add them to the list or lists you want from the list of all users.
posted by drjimmy11 at 2:26 PM on July 11, 2008

(or what flug already said)
posted by drjimmy11 at 2:27 PM on July 11, 2008

Response by poster: Excellent-- thank you. I'll try those changes.
posted by darth_tedious at 2:28 PM on July 11, 2008