Using Email Editions
Email editions take advantage of the The Alerts Application framework and our Mailchimp Integration to send news stories from a given section directly to your subscribers inbox. Alerts are triggered by new stories being posted to a given section on that day. For example, if an email edition is to be sent out from the ‘Sports’ section, a new story must be posted within the Sports section (assigned to one of the categories that the Sports section covers) on or after midnight on the day that the email alert is to be sent out. If no new story is posted within that section for that day, the email edition will not go out.
Email editions have templates, so users receiving them will need to be able to receive and read HTML emails. These templates can be changed just like any other template, and Ellington ships with a set of default templates for email editions. These live in ~/templates/ellington_default/alerts/email_editions/. There are two template necessary for email editions: a default.html template and a default_text.html template. Just like any other template, Ellington will look for customized templates (those that live in your ~/templates/yoursite/) before using the Ellington_default templates.
In order to add a custom template to e-editions, you will need to create both a custom.html template as well as a custom_text.html template for plain text subscribers. Failure to do so will result in email editions not sending.
To set up an email edition
- Click the plus sign next to “Email editions” in the admin news application. (yourdomain.com/admin/news/emailedition/)
- Fill out the form with your email edition information.
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Alert List: Create this list either via this page or from the Alerts application located at /admin/alerts/. Users can sign up for email editions from the public-facing alerts page (located at yoursite.com/alerts/) or you can direct them to this subscription from the section page via a link in templates.
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Section: This designates which section the email edition will pull it’s content from. Any and all stories that a section pulls for a calendar day will be displayed on an email edition.
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Email edition template: If you are applying a custom template to this e-mail edition, insert the template filepath here. If not, the default email edition templates will be used.
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Enabled: This determines whether an e-mail edition is active. If this checkbox is not selected, the edition is inactive and no emails will be sent.
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Delivery Options:
- Time: The time must be in 24 hour Hour:Minute:Second format. For example, to send an edition at 2:30pm, you will need to enter “14:30:00” in this field.
- Day of Week: If a day is checked, the email edition application will check for any new stories posted that day and mail them in an email edition.
- Timeframe: The Timeframe default is set at ‘Published Today.’ Any content published from 12 midnight up until the time the Email is sent, will be included in the e-edition.
Additional timeframe options include:
- Published in the last 12 hours: Any content published with the previous 12 hours of the time selected to send the e-edition out.
- Published in the last 24 hours Any content published with the previous 24 hours of the time selected to send the e-edition out.
- Published in the last 7 days: Any content published with the previous 7 days of the time and day selected to send the e-edition out. 7 days = 24*7
- Published in the last 30 days. Any content published within a 30 day timeframe. 30 days = 24*30. This selection will send out weekly, ie. each ‘Friday’ 30 days of published content content will send out, unless you disable the e-edition until the week you wish to send it out. For example: To create a Newsletter that goes out out on the last friday of the month, just deselect the ‘Enabled’ box until the week that you are ready to send the newsletter(e-edition.)
The maximum number of stories that an Email Edition can have is set to 30, but that’s customizable via a settings file. Contact your Project Manager to adjust settings file.
Creating Monthly Newsletter
The ability to hand select content to appear on your monthly newsletter can be managed by creating a category and section called newsletter.
- Create a category called newsletter.
- Create a section called Newsletter.
- Assign Newsletter content to the newly created category
- Make sure it is set to publish within the 30 days you want to send the newsletter.
- Check the ‘Enable’ box to activate the ‘send email’ function on the week it is to be sent out.
For example, when creating a sports story that the editor would also like to include in the newsletter, they can select both Sports and Newsletter categories to make sure the story appears both in the sports section of their website, and appears in the ‘Newsletter Section,’ which is the content section the Newsletter pulls from. When editor is ready to send the ‘Newsletter’ email addition, they will select the ‘enabled’ box.
Previewing your e-mail edition
Once an email edition has been created you can preview what the email edition will look like by clicking the “Preview” button at the top right of the email editions page.
This view will display a complete preview of the HTML email a user would receive. This allows you to both trouble-shoot any templates and also check what content will be mailed out.
Email Edition Drafts
Email Edition drafts allows an editor to check on the status of e-editions. Status filters include Pending, Late, Sent.
This model will allow you to review all pending e-editions and the time they will be sent out, in a single glance. Once they are sent, the status will be set to ‘Sent.’ If, for any reason, an edition did not get sent, the status will be set to ‘Late.’
Using the drop down menu, select the edition that is Late and ‘Resend Selected emaileditions.’
Please note: If you want to make changes to the time the edition is to be sent, make those changes, on the edition in the ‘Email Editions’ Model, not in drafts.
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