OpenSourcery

Desparetly need this in Simplenews

The preview function you mentioned is definitely needed in Simplenews. Perhaps you could post a feature request in Simplenews issue que with a link back to this article.

Interesting discussion

There's a good page at drupal.org that covers this as well http://drupal.org/node/268404.

Mimemail seems to link externally to photos fine for me - I found mimemail only included images as attachments when I was using a filter than included line break converter (like Full HTML). drupal_mail performs a drupal_wrap_mail, so when mimemail later performs a checkmarkup, line break converter filter adds in a whole lot of break tags destroying the message.

html email template

I'm trying to get drupal to send a clean html email newsletter using the same module that you have used but can't find a way to remove the css added by Drupal. In other words, when i receive a test copy of the newsletter the source code has all the css from the website it is being sent from.

Is it a matter of creating a custom.tpl.php file and using the function phptemplate_simplenews_newsletter_body() to direct the output to that file?

Great article by the way.

code snippet

I have tried re-themeing the output using content templates module but the extra css still gets put in there. Would you be able to send me a code snippet showing how you get around around this? I would appreciate it very much as i have been stuck on this problem for the past few days.

@Joshua - Simplenews has a

@Joshua - Simplenews has a themeable function:

function theme_simplenews_newsletter_body($body, $title, $language) {
  $output = '<h2>'. $title ."</h2>\n";
  $output .= $body;
  return $output;
}

To override this, just put a function named phptemplate_simplenews_newsletter_body in your theme's template to override it:

function phptemplate_simplenews_newsletter_body($body, $title, $language) {
  // alter the following how you wish:
  $output = '<h2>'. $title ."</h2>\n";
  $output .= $body;
  return $output;
}

You can also use your theme's name instead of 'phptemplate'.

Oh - to get it working, you

Oh - to get it working, you need to clear the theme registry. Visiting the theme page should do it, or go to site configuration/performance and click on 'clear cached data' button, or you can use the drupal_rebuild_theme_registry() function.

Trying to implement your methods

Is it possible for someone with a VERY basic grasp of PHP to replicate your methods from this article? Does the code go in template.php or in a custom module? And when you say:

'As such, our new HTML email template went into a function named phptemplate_simplenews_newsletter_body().'

I presume there is a whole lot of code there which you didn't post, and earlier you mention 'with some additional work'. I realise this blog is meant for more experienced programmers but it is the only place I've found a solution to the HTML email newsletter nightmare in Drupal/simplenews.

Thanks though.

preview function

Preview is a nice function for simplenews indeed. However it can not work when a newsletter is send via mime mail and html emails are exactly the thing for which use for a preview will be used. But I'm open for suggestions.

Jonathan, nice solution for a simple html newsletter.

Body part

Hello,

Thanks for this great article.

A significant part is not working for me. The body part is gone in both the preview and the sent mail.

Any ideas? I'm using Simplenews 6.x-1.0-rc6

Thanks...

...for the quick response!

$body and $title not showing up

Theoretically, I love this post. It worked for 3 weeks and I was getting closer to perfection for my email newsletter, but my site stopped sending any emails. SMTP module was installed and magically the emails started working again (although I had to replace my template.php and repaste the code for the $body to print, so it had some issues being recognized, but I got it to work even though it declared some error in the code). It worked for 3 days then stopped sending emails again. I've got the email working by using the smtp debug (yeah!), but now the template.php code isn't recognized to print the $title and $body so only the footer message gets sent. What am I doing wrong? (I'm on Drupal 6.11).

This is the code that worked for 3 weeks and 3 days (now it isn't being recognized at all in template.php):

function phptemplate_simplenews_newsletter_body($body, $title, $language) {
// alter the following how you wish:
$output = ''. $title ."\n";
$output .= '' . $body . '';
return $output;
}

Thanks for your help.

Creating HTML Newsletter

Hi Joshua,
I'm Lau from Malaysia. Very interested with your posts. However, I'm still new to drupal and php and I don't have any basic on php yet. Is there any easiest way to do this? For example on open which file and adding new lines?

I'm so sorry for troubling you. I wish I could try this but I don't know where to start.

Hope to hear from you soon. Cheers!

Need exactly the same for drupal 5

Hi,

Really gr8 post!!

But I need exactly the same for drupal 5. How can i do that. Tried several modules but seems nothing worked for me. Plz help!!