Developing an HTML Ezine

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Intended Audience

A custom template, makes it easy to author newsletter content in plain text and publish styled newsletters with no knowledge of HTML.

Newsletter Owners usually need assistance help to setup a custom newsletter template. This page is written for the designer who is confortable with web page markup, and has not developed a newsletter template in our system.

Designers who concentrate on art for web pages should plan on working with a WebValence layout person to develop the markup (HTML) for the template. Contact support@webvalence.com for assistance.

This document also assumes that the customer is using our Email Marketing Standard system. For Email Marketing Pro, templates can be designed in HTML using standard best practices for email newsletter design and the HTML file uploaded directly from the designer's desktop.

Backup and Settings

If you are updating an existing newsletter with a previously designed template, backup the present template before making changes. From the Setup > Advanced page, copy the contents of the editable forms and save them as HTML files on your hard drive before proceeding.

If you are updating an existing newsletter published in plain text, or published with no template, backup is not required.

From the Setup > General page, set the newsletter to HTML Format with a WYSIWYG template. The WYSIWYG template enables an content HTML editing feature that the newsletter owner can use to do minor styling of content fields.

Articles and Features

Newsletter templates normally include one or more articles. An article is usually composed of a title, an optional graphic, and body text. The position and shape of the article is controlled by the HTML template, normally with table markup.

Newsletter templates might also include features such as sidebars, promotionals, and so forth.

We recommend that designers help the Newsletter Owner to define a standard layout for newsletter editions. The standard layout normally includes one or more articles, a sidebars, and a footer.

Recommended procedure:

1. Design a newsletter template as a graphic for customer approval.
2. With customer approval, slice up the graphic and mark up the page with standard images and standard HTML.
3. Identify all of the editable parts of your markup, that is the parts which might change from one edition to the next.
4. Update the editable parts with template fields, as described in the next section.
5. Implement the resulting template on the Setup > Advanced page.
6. Test the template with Editions > New Future and Editions > Future preview.

Entering Editable Fields in the Template

To enter a field in the template, type a field entry of the form:

~field:fname~

where fname is the name of a supported field in the newsletter system. Names of all the supported fields are listed from the Setup > Advanced page.

A typical feature article can be entered into the template with three fields as follows:

<img align="right" src="~field:edGraphic~" border="0">
<h3>~field:edTitle~</h3>
<font size="3" face="arial">~field:edBody~</font>

This markup will all the newsletter owner/editor to edit the feature article when each new edition is composed. To assist the newsletter owner/editor, you can customize the form labels for each of the fields in the template from the Setup > Advanced page.

HTML Markup Suggestions

While our newsletter system provides support for Cascading Style Sheets, keep in mind that some Email clients don't support CSS, and barely support HTML. We recommend that you use straighforward HTML with tabular layouts.

Implementing and Testing the Template

Introduce your Template in the newsletter system via the Setup > Advanced page. Paste the template in the HTML field and save your changes. Use the Setup > Preview page to view your template.

For a more thorough test, use Editions > New Future and Editions > Future preview functions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I developed my newsletter template for Outlook. Why can't I just send that as my newsletter?

A: You can, but we don't recommend it because:

• risk of transmitting a virus in your newsletter
• no opportunity to preview and test Email your newsletter
• no customer readership stats are collected

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