Status

Related: Webmail, Inter-User Messages

Bugs & Wishes

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Style adjustments

This is a micro-revamp to replace using the entire active theme stylesheet with a theme-specific newsletter.css file that contains just a subset of CSS rules that are appropriate for a newsletter.

Stylesheet generating process (subject to change)

1. There's a theme-specific stylesheet for newsletters - themes/<themename>/css/newsletter.css
2. which is generated from a Less file - themes/<themename>/less/newsletter.less
3. using values from themes/<themename>/less/bootstrap-variables.less, etc.
4. These can override a default file - themes/base_files/css/newsletter.css
5. which is compiled from themes/base_files/less/newsletter.less,
6. the values for which are defined in themes/base_files/tiki-variables.less.

This will produce an external or embedded stylesheet that styles HTML divs, etc. which doesn't seem to be best practice (see references following), but apparently has been working ok for past Tiki newsletters.

References about HTML email recommendations

Email Standards Project - https://www.email-standards.org/
A complete breakdown of the CSS support for the top 10 most popular mobile, web and desktop email clients on the planet. - https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/
Using CSS and HTML in Email Newsletters - http://groundwire.org/labs/email_publishing/using_css_and_html_in_email_newsletters/index.html
CSS in HTML Email - http://kb.mailchimp.com/campaigns/ways-to-build/css-in-html-email
A Bulletproof Guide to Using HTML5 and CSS3 in Email - https://litmus.com/blog/a-bulletproof-guide-to-using-html5-and-css3-in-email

Roadmap

Next steps would be to have more of the fancy CRM-like features, like click-through tracking.

Missing features:

• Per user/group newsletter administration based on category permission or on object permission.
  It should (shall) be possible for specified groups to provide an own group-newsletter created by a superuser, which then could (shall) be administrated by one or more specified group members / group admins whilst the newsletter admin of one group cannot (shall not) administrate or alter the newsletter(s) of another group.
  This could be accomplished by adding to the code the opportunity to categorise newsletters and to add certain admin-permissions like tiki_p_batch_subscribe_email, tiki_p_send_newsletters, tiki_p_subscribe_email, tiki_p_subscribe_newsletters, tiki_p_view_newsletter, tiki_p_list_newsletters to the category permissions (not tiki_p_admin_newsletters)
  There should be a distinction between tiki_p_admin_newsletters which includes the permission to create a new newsletter and the now not (yet) existing tiki_p_admin_newsletter which would limit admin permissions to the specific newsletter.
  see feature request (wishlist): item6469

• Personalised Newsletter
  There are various options to fetch the eMail addresses as list of receipients of newsletters in Tiki, although one important is missing:
  There is no standard option to create personalised newsletters, either from a Tracker or from a CSV file.
  A very common and important feature for newsletters (despite Tiki doesn't cover that) is the opportunity to send personalised newsletters with personal salutations like "Dear Mr. Doe", "Dear Ms Smith", "Dear Prof. Dr. Nevertheless".
  If a newsletter could fetch a limited number of field from a Tracker by using permanent field names - optionally but not necessarily a user tracker - it would be quite easy to create a personalised newsletter.
  Additionally it could be considered to either implement an option to self-subscribe to the newsletter via the Tracker - with the problem to handle self-unsibscribe by an unsubscribe link in the sent newsletter or to add oneself to the tracker by the subscription link.
  see feature request (wishlist): item6470

doc:Newsletters

Demo

Standards and/or other software

• phplist feature list

http://tiki.org/tiki-directory_browse.php?parent=34

Other links

Newsletter with text & html patch Has someone tested this?

Templates

• https://github.com/philwareham/responsive-email
• http://zurb.com/playground/responsive-email-templates
• http://htmlemailboilerplate.com/
• https://github.com/mailchimp/Email-Blueprints
• http://mobile.smashingmagazine.com/2011/08/18/from-monitor-to-mobile-optimizing-email-newsletters-with-css/
• https://github.com/seanpowell/Email-Boilerplate

Newsletters