Thread

So I run our neighbor community website.

I need to make it drop dead simple for someone, not me, to email HTML emails to a list.

Any suggestions on how to do so?

RSS feeds won’t work as the demographics are such they don’t “get” RSS.
Communicate doesn’t seem to work as there is no way to populate HTML for the emails.
[Is there?]

Members Function might work - but - I can’t have username/password as even that is too much of a hassle for this crowd.

+ + +

I had thought of a dedicated blog using the RSS feed to auto-email the Members in HTML.
[Then, writer of our emailed eNewsletter could simply write in the email-blog.]

Possible?

Thanks!

Why not use something like http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/champagne/
and leverage CampaignMonitor to do this?
You could easily set up a template for your mailings this way.

Inre: Communicate, depending on how comfortable your users are, if the email template is more of a fancy “frame” around a block of text, you can embed the majority of the design as part of the template. Then, the user simply has to enter the text (though they’ll have to know some basics potentially like

 
 <a>

tags, and when the email is generated it merges the message body with the template (which has a majority of the html design).

I was thinking that, but, isn’t creating the Template/frame simply a box/art/graphics/whatever around the text?

The <h2>, <b> etc tags would have to be created within that box wouldn’t it?

That’s the issue - the lack of a WYSIWYG and the lack of the buttons for tags in the Communicate page.

Only solution I think I found for these old folks was first writing within a “Blog”, then copy/paste text + tags into Communicate.

Thanks for your feedback - and if I’m wrong about my question about the Template would only create a box around the text - please - tell me!. 😊

The template can support any type of HTML you want. However, the message body (what the user enters) is just a plain text box. If your users really need handholding (WYSIWYG) or shortcut buttons (like you see above in this commenting) you’re out of luck unless there’s an extension or you want to customize.

Part of this is dependent on the design of the email.

However, training folks on some very basic HTML is not necessarily a bad thing either. They probably should know at least the basics else even a WYSIWYG interface may be unpredictable if a user has no clue about what links, etc., are.

“training folks”. LOL. Unfortunately, we’re talking the over 50/60+ crowd who believes email is the end all be all. I’ve been smashing my head on my desk for close to 7 years. I’m close to saying uncle!

Trust me, I’m in the same boat 😉

But spending that 1 hour (or “training the trainer”) is a lot easier than getting the phone calling with “what is less than h two greater than?” at 5am ...