Newsletter and send email in HTML

[ovidiu10]

Hi,

 

i need some help with one problem. I can not send newsletter and emails in HTML from osc Rc2

I installed bulkmail engine and easy html editor

I have also configured Use MIME HTML When Sending Emails to true, but when i'm sending emails or newsletters with HTML code... i only receive the code, not the images or links!

 

If you guys can tell me what contribution is the best for sending newsletters i will really appreciate. Thanks!

[steve_s]

Hi,

 

i need some help with one problem. I can not send newsletter and emails in HTML from osc Rc2

I installed bulkmail engine and easy html editor

I have also configured Use MIME HTML When Sending Emails to true, but when i'm sending emails or newsletters with HTML code... i only receive the code, not the images or links!

 

If you guys can tell me what contribution is the best for sending newsletters i will really appreciate. Thanks!

I would install one the the WYSISYG editors like fckeditor from addons

 

Steve

[Xpajun]

I've set up U HTML (it's in the addons somewhere) but it's not without problems:

 

It does send html emails is one thing going for it but:

 

Not from send email in admin (though it could be set up I suppose)

 

Has problems with html confirmation emails with the PayPal module

 

With a bit of work you can write up a pretty good email template for the news letters (I'm currently working on one that has the same design as my store) to send

[ovidiu10]

Thanks for help!

I installed FCKeditor_1.2_1 and now i can send newsletter in HTML!

 

The only problem that i have right now is that when i hit preview in admin everything is messed up (the html page doesn't keep the right format), and i know that the code is ok because i used the same code with phplist (a program to send html newsletter).

 

Any idea?

[npn2531]

Thanks for help!

I installed FCKeditor_1.2_1 and now i can send newsletter in HTML!

 

The only problem that i have right now is that when i hit preview in admin everything is messed up (the html page doesn't keep the right format), and i know that the code is ok because i used the same code with phplist (a program to send html newsletter).

 

Any idea?

 

Creating HTML emails is a challenge. What you see in the editor, be it Dreamweaver, FCKeditor, or whatever, is not neccesarily what comes out the other end on the recipients computer. People spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to make html email look right on different email programs.

 

There are a few tricks you can do. A basic and pretty effective, though crude, is to first create the newsletter as a HTML only webpage, editing it live online with whatever editor you choose. When you get the webpage looking like you want, then compress the email to one single looong line in your editor. By compress, I mean use the delete key at the beginning of every line to put it at the end of the line above it. This will eliminate all the odd white space you see in the email. Cut and paste that one long line of HTML into the newsletter editor in OSCommerce.

 

Also - Eliminate the header in the email. This means you will pretty much be writing the email in inline CSS, but this will also help eliminate the annoying extra space that keeps getting put at the top of the email.

 

here are a couple of helpful links:

 

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/cssemail

 

http://premailer.dialect.ca/ (a great tool for converting email to inline CSS)

 

By the way, how did the Bulk Mail Engine work?

[ovidiu10]

I will try to do what you said. I will come with some answers.

Thank you!

 

Bulk Mail Engine is working great ;)

[ovidiu10]

Still not displaying the correct page. I eliminated all blank spaces from the code also. I think that is something wrong with my newsletters.php

 

If anybody have a optimized html page for newsletter please send me the code and i'll make a print screen to show you how is displayed in my newsletter.

 

Thanks!

[npn2531]

Still not displaying the correct page. I eliminated all blank spaces from the code also. I think that is something wrong with my newsletters.php

 

If anybody have a optimized html page for newsletter please send me the code and i'll make a print screen to show you how is displayed in my newsletter.

 

Thanks!

 

THere is nothing in the newsletters.php or the bulk mail engine that is capable of adding or deleting html or of altering how html is rendered for display. My experience with html email is that it's always an issue with how it is written. Html editors can do odd stuff and different mail programs simply render the html differently. It is a matter of finding the right coding that works. Inline CSS seems to be what works more consistently across platforms that other methods of coding HTML, and be sure and use your editor in a consistent fashion.

[npn2531]

PS- another way to look at is this:

 

When you create a document in an Editor, FCK editor, Dreamweaver, etc, you can line up the text or space out the text of coding as you see fit. For example you can 'cascade' or 'tier' the <table>, <tr>, <td> to make it readable. When you close and then reopen the editor your document looks the same. If you double-spaced your code before you closed your editor, it is still double-spaced when you reopen your editor. When you go and 'view source' on your website your code will be double-spaced if you double-spaced it in your Editor. In other words, there is coding embedded by the Editor in your document, that web Browsers, IE, FF, etc, ignore when rendering the webpage, but use to display the code when you 'view source'.

 

The mail programs on people's computers, Outlook, Opera, etc, however do not, for some reason make this distinction. If you press 'return' in your Editor, then the mail program counts that as a line break, just as it is displayed on your Editor. It will do this for the header as well. If your header has four lines in your Editor, the mail programs render this as if you had 4 <br> in the <body> of the final email.

 

That's why putting all, I mean everything, in your email on one line gets rid of the unexpected line breaks. You are backing out of all the times you pressed 'return' while creating your email.

[Xpajun]

How I did my html newsletter:

 

First I downloaded and installed U HTML Emails and got that working - as I said in my previous post there are issues with PayPal and it is not installed in admin>>email either although you can do with a bit of thought or work. But it does allow you to build your own templates for html emails.

 

After a hunt and a read around the web regarding newsletters and html emails I cam across one of the big boys in newsletters and they have 30 free newsletters to download so I downloaded one, looked at the coding of it, and adapted it to suit my own email layout. The templates are a mix of tables and css and renders in most email browsers (you can always have a web copy for those that have problems with html emails)

 

 

In my newsletter manager I only have the following coding:

<p class="date">friday november 27th, 2009</p>

                 <h2>HEADING</h2>

                 <p>NEWS</p>

                 <p>MORE NEWS.</p>

                 <p class="top"><a href="#top">Back to top</a></p>

                 <h2>HEADING 2</h2>

                 <img src="newsletter/images/mainpic.gif" width="326" height="125" />

                 <p>MORE NEWS.</p>

                 <p class="top"><a href="#top">Back to top</a></p>

                 <h2>HEADING 3</h2>

                 <p><img src="newsletter/images/smallpic.jpg" width="161" height="151" alt=" " align="right"> MORE NEWS</p>

                 <p class="top"><a href="#top">Back to top</a></p>

 

The paragraphs and headings are controlled by css script and my template is loosely based on template 5 at the above link

 

 

But (the reason I've written this) it works very well (Well I was impressed anyway) I just need to do some more tweaks now to include the second column into the newsletter manager.

[npn2531]

Thanks for the links to the 30 newsletters. Sometimes I feel like I'm re-inventing the wheel to write a simple HTML email, so it's nice to find something like this someone or a team of someones put some serious effort into.

 

PS that newsletter would work better like this:

 

<p class="date">friday november 27th, 2009</p><h2>HEADING</h2><p>NEWS</p><p>MORE NEWS.</p><p class="top"><a href="#top">Back to top</a></p> <h2>HEADING 2</h2><img src="newsletter/images/mainpic.gif" width="326" height="125" /> <p>MORE NEWS.</p><p class="top"><a href="#top">Back to top</a></p><h2>HEADING 3</h2><p><img src="newsletter/images/smallpic.jpg" width="161" height="151" alt=" " align="right"> MORE NEWS</p><p class="top"><a href="#top">Back to top</a></p>

 

LOL

 

oh wait, I see you have no table, td, tr, or div tags. Maybe that why it works .

[Xpajun]

Thanks for the links to the 30 newsletters. Sometimes I feel like I'm re-inventing the wheel to write a simple HTML email, so it's nice to find something like this someone or a team of someones put some serious effort into.

 

PS that newsletter would work better like this:

 

<p class="date">friday november 27th, 2009</p><h2>HEADING</h2><p>NEWS</p><p>MORE NEWS.</p><p class="top"><a href="#top">Back to top</a></p> <h2>HEADING 2</h2><img src="newsletter/images/mainpic.gif" width="326" height="125" /> <p>MORE NEWS.</p><p class="top"><a href="#top">Back to top</a></p><h2>HEADING 3</h2><p><img src="newsletter/images/smallpic.jpg" width="161" height="151" alt=" " align="right"> MORE NEWS</p><p class="top"><a href="#top">Back to top</a></p>

 

LOL

 

oh wait, I see you have no table, td, tr, or div tags. Maybe that why it works .

 

 

It's set out that way to make it easy to find the places to add your news into

 

The table, td, and tr tags are in the template as in:

              <td align="left" valign="top" width="380" class="mainbar">
                 '.$HTMLNewsletterContents.'
              </td>

 

which is part of a table that also has the (as yet unfinished) other column in.

 

Note the content of that table is the code to insert the contents from the newsletter manager and on execution would look thus:

              <td align="left" valign="top" width="380" class="mainbar">
                 <p class="date">friday november 27th, 2009</p>

                 <h2>HEADING</h2>

                 <p>NEWS</p>

                 <p>MORE NEWS.</p>

                 <p class="top"><a href="#top">Back to top</a></p>

                 <h2>HEADING 2</h2>

                 <img src="newsletter/images/mainpic.gif" width="326" height="125" />

                 <p>MORE NEWS.</p>

                 <p class="top"><a href="#top">Back to top</a></p>

                 <h2>HEADING 3</h2>

                 <p><img src="newsletter/images/smallpic.jpg" width="161" height="151" alt=" " align="right"> MORE NEWS</p>

                 <p class="top"><a href="#top">Back to top</a></p>
              </td>

 

BTW div tags along with head tags and a few others are a no-no in html emails css will also get stripped unless done as per those templates

 

So don't give up on the table yet :D :D

[npn2531]

I''m going to try one of those templates. Thanks for the tip.

[Xpajun]

You'll find this interesting as well

 

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/

[npn2531]

You'll find this interesting as well

 

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/

 

 

That's a great chart! Thanks again

[ovidiu10]

Thanks for all this information! Now i'm going to try and i hope that i will do this baby to work.

[silklink]

Driving me nuts :'(

 

I have also set the config to send emails via MIME HTML, yet when I send a newsletter or email to a customer all I get is code - like this:

 

<p> This is a test <input type="image" src="/CN247_001.jpg" /></p>

 

The headers of the email (in Outlook) are:

 

MIME-Version: 1.0

X-Mailer: osCommerce

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

 

 

For other typws of email, such as Contact Us and Order Confirmation, the email is in plain text, as expected, and reads OK. These emails have the following header:

 

MIME-Version: 1.0

X-Mailer: osCommerce Mailer

Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

 

 

I am using FCK Editor for my newsletters and to send emails.

 

Any pointers would be much appreciated

[npn2531]

When you use the FCK Editor, you have the option of pasting in info as plain text or as html. If you paste in html code with the html editor set to plain text, you will get exactly the stuff you posted. It is one of the icons in the tool bar above the edit screen, just click it to switch to html mode.

 

Also, you need to provide the full web address of images and links for the recipient to be able to read them.

 

ie:

 

src="/CN247_001.jpg" won't work in an email but

 

src="http://www.mywebsite.com/images/CN247_001.jpg"

 

would, assuming CN247_001.jpg is in the top level images folder.