phpList was initially launched back in 2000, the first Open Source email marketing software. Since that date a lot have changed on the product itself and the people who contribute to making it possible.

All these years phpList has improved in various directions in an effort to meet the needs of its users. “Trevelin” was launched in February 2017 providing a more intuitive interface for marketers and subscribers alike. Switching between the two offered themes is easy through the Settings page. None of phpList’s functionality is affected by the change of the theme, barring occasional regressions.

Since May last year Trevelin has been the default theme upon installation and the user had to switch manually to a Dressprow in order to use it. Maintaining both themes has proven quite a challenge; every aspect of phpList’s interface must be tested for each release twice over, once for each theme, in order to catch issues — particularly those relating to JavaScript.

Starting from version 3.4.6 in September 2019 Dressprow will no longer be included in phpList releases. Dressprow will still be available for installation via GitHub for everyone who wishes to use it. Patches to Dressprow theme are still welcome. phpList Ltd. staff, who manage the phpList release cycle, will no longer maintain Dressprow. If you wish to continue using Dressprow, please support it and consider becoming the theme’s maintainer. You can try both themes via the phpList installation.

Three months ago, a poll of the most used phpList theme was posted on the forum; no respondents indicated they used Dressprow. One piece of feedback provided by Dressprow users is that it requires fewer menu clicks to navigate admin pages due to its use of hover fly-out sub-menus. A design proposal for improving Trevelin’s menu navigation system has recently been provided, ready for implementation. If you would like to work on this improvement, please add a note in the mantis issue.