mntletter

This is a minimalist email newsletter tool written in Node.js.

Why? Because I needed something really tiny and self-hosted to keep interested people updated about MNT projects, and I didn't want to feed email addresses into commercial third party services.

Requirements

Only node.js 8.8+. Install using npm install.

Configure by creating config.json:

{
  "port": 1234,
  "confirmSecret": "someRandomSaltyString",
  "baseUrl": "http://letters.exampler.org",
  "emailSignature": "\r\nUnsubscribe: {{=it.baseUrl}}/lists/{{=it.list}}/unsubscribe?email={{=it.email}}",
  "adminEmail": "admin@example.org",
  "adminPassword": "..."
}

Data

All data including lists, subscribers and mailings is stored in a single JSON blob, db.json. You can edit this to create new lists:

{
  "lists": {
    "test": {
      "name": "test",
      "title": "Test list"
    }
  }
}

Post a Mailing

Find the editor for your list's mailing at an URL like: http://letters.example.org/lists/<list_name>/mailings/new

Substitute <list_name> for the actual name of your list.

Deployment

Set up a user, install nvm (and node.js 8.8) for this user. Then, create an init or unit file (if you use systemd), for example (/etc/systemd/system/mntletter.service):

[Unit]
Description=mntletter email newsletters

[Service]
ExecStart=/home/mntletter/start.sh
WorkingDirectory=/home/mntletter
Restart=always
StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog
SyslogIdentifier=mntletter
User=mntletter
Group=mntletter

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

You could use Nginx to reverse proxy it on a subdomain:

server {
    server_name letters.example.org;
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:1234;
    }
}

License: MIT

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.