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ProcessWire the perfect CMS for HTML Emails

mrjasongorman

By mrjasongorman,
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mrjasongorman Full Member

mrjasongorman

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I recently had a revelation when building HTML emails, what's the difference between HTML emails, and HTML web pages? Other than the horrible table syntax, the result is the same, it's still HTML.

This got me thinking why not use a CMS to help generate the HTML emails based on a template? Just like we using a CMS to help generate HTML web pages.

We started by setting up ProcessWire (our usual CMS of choice) and added the relevent fields for the sections of the email. Then we took a previous email moved the content into ProcessWire and hooked up the code to pull that content back into the correct places. Repeater fields allowed us to have repeatable sections that are easy to add too, change order of or remove, giving us huge flexibility when a client changes their mind last minute. The speed of setting up and dealing with ProcessWire allowed us to go from concept to working prototype within a day.

To use the emails, we just view source of the generated page, and copy and paste into the email system. Sometimes Litmus inliner is required to allow the email to work in Outlook, but we can run it through that before pasting into the email system. Future development could be integrating a css inliner into the generation step, to avoid using litmus inliner.

Hope this helps show how ProcessWire can be used in a different scenario.

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adrian Hero Member

adrian

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I do something similar, but instead of styling the page for the email, I have a separate template file for emails that builds the html for the email using tables and inline css and sends that directly to the list of subscribers. In my case, a monthly enewsletter is composed of several different articles (each a separate child page). The template for these child pages has a field to select what month/year the article belongs to. The email sending script queries matching articles, compiles, and sends.

The possibilities are endless really :)

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elabx Hero Member

elabx

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I did a "hotel review" app that sends emails to clients and catches responses nicely in a PageTable!! I also use PW fields to configure the survey page (add hotel logo, color styles, headlines). The users just have a list under root, each one representing a hotel, displaying the responses nicely inside brackets next to the title. New hotel for review? Just add a new page and configure! Happy clients with minimum effort and straightforward interface! 

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mrjasongorman Full Member

mrjasongorman

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Nice to hear others are using this technique too. For my case the emailing system we were required to use has an "editor" but it's terrible, with PW i can add condition switches in the CMS to arrange partials in the email to a particular order etc. So much potential.

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pwired Hero Member

pwired

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I did a "hotel review" app that sends emails to clients and catches responses nicely in a PageTable!! I also use PW fields to configure the survey page (add hotel logo, color styles, headlines). The users just have a list under root, each one representing a hotel, displaying the responses nicely inside brackets next to the title. New hotel for review? Just add a new page and configure! Happy clients with minimum effort and straightforward interface! 

This is really cool !! Have still to learn this.

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