I am getting the following error when both trying to preview a campaign in the back end, and also in the email itself when I send a test email:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, root@austin.directrouter.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

I think it has to do with permissions. My host, Rochen, tells me that 644 for files and 755 for folders is the only vaild permission for PHP based sites on their server.

Does this mean that I won't be able to use Joomlamailer on this site?

Hello meggio,

I don't think it's a permissions problem because if it was joomlamailer would throw an error and inform you that there is a problem. 644/755 permissions should be good enough.
Do you have access to the error logs? This might give us an idea what exactly went wrong. If not, would you mind sending me a superadmin login and ftp credentials to your site? Then I could figure out at what point exactly it fails. pete@freakedout.de

Kind regards,
Pete

Still struggling with this issue:
I've been in communication with MailChimp. At first my client set up the list incorrectly and the account was not approved. I fixed it, and now MailChimp tells me that the account is approved.

However, the joomlamailer dashboard tells me that the account is not approved.

I'm suspecting that this is the reason I'm getting a server error when I try to send a test email, or preview a campaign.

Am I right? How do i get joomlamailer to upgrade my approval status when MailChimp says the account is approved.

The plot thickens...

1. Still the Joomlamailer dashboard says I'm not approved, though MailChimp says I am.

2. Cannot preview from inside MailChimp

3. I *can* successfully send a test email if I do not edit the templates: i.e., send the default with the Joomlamailer logo. I *cannot* send a test mail using a template I have edited. That is, I can send it, but what I get instead of my campaign is a server error message, styled with my new background color.

Hello meggio,

It doesn't have to do with the approval status of your account. The approval only comes into place if you send a campaign to an amount of recipients you have never addressed before. Then the MailChimp crew steps in to verify the validity of your campaign. You can use all features of joomlamailer also with unapproved accounts. It might happen that if you send a campaign through joomlamailer it gets paused and reviewed by the MailChimp crew but that happens after joomlamailer has finished.

However, the API returns for your account: ["is_approved"]=> bool(false) Either your account is not approved or there is some error on MailChimp's side. I'm afraid that's all I can say about that.

Anyway, in your case the problem was that the access to certain folders was not permitted due to your htaccess configuration. I have adjusted the settings slightly to allow access to these folders.

That's also the reason that unfortunately your template modifications were lost. It couldn't be saved. I have restored the pre-installed template. Sorry about that.

Kind regards,
Pete

Thank you, Pete. Can you tell me what adjustments you made to htaccess, just in case this comes up again?

Sure.
In /public_html/.htaccess I added line 26, 27, 28 and I removed |tmp from line 37.

In /public_html/tmp/.htaccess I commented out line 1 and 2.

Kind regards,
Pete

I'm getting so much closer, but not there yet...

I can see the preview now, and I can receive mail with an edited template without getting the server error.

Problems:

1. The email comes through without the header that I applied through the template editor, and instead of showing company name I provided, it displays "My Company"

2. Clicking on "Display in a browser" in the test email brings up a blank page.

3. I uploaded a custom template (via FTP) and when I use this template to send test email, the email doesn't come in. The email takes about an hour to get to me, and #1 and #2 above apply to the custom template as well.

An evolving situation...

Mailchimp had me generate a new API and reinstall Joomlamailer (in order for Joomlamailer to show the account as approved.)

After doing so, the account still says not approved on the Joomlamailer back end, and the banner image does not show in preview or in the test email. But now, the alternate text for the banner does show.

Here's what I did:

I disabled my old API and generated a new one.

I uninstalled Joomlamailer.

I cleared my Joomla cache.

I reinstalled Joomlamailer.

And Joomlamailer is still telling me that the account is not approved.

I contacted MailChimp support, and they wrote this back:

"We just took a closer look and confirmed 100% that the ECIB account is entirely active.

"Unfortunately being in MailChimp support we are unable to troubleshoot any specific third-party plugins too closely. I definitely thank you for your patience and very much appreciate your understanding.

"At this time we would recommend contacting the creator of this individual plugin directly. "

So I have a situation where Joomlamailer tells me it's a MailChimp issue, and MailChimp tells me it's a Joomlamailer issue. What to do???