| Who here hasn't tried to create and and send | | | | That's why when I tried to copy and past the |
| an HTML newsletter by email. It sounds easy | | | | html source code in the past it had just |
| enough. Create an html page, copy the code, | | | | shown up as HTML. |
| paste it in email and voila. Well it does, | | | | |
| until you actually try it. | | | | When I saw the content type for the text |
| | | | emails it was: |
| For a long time, I too tried to figure out | | | | |
| how to send an html email newsletter. I tried | | | | Content-Type: text/plain; |
| just about every way to send it. One of the | | | | |
| ways was to save the html page and then | | | | When I saw the content type for the html |
| attach it as an html file with the email. I | | | | emails which displayed very nicely, it was: |
| tried just copying the source code of the | | | | |
| html file and send that in. I even tried | | | | Content-Type; text/html; |
| saving the webpage as an email file and that | | | | |
| didn't work either. After trying a few more | | | | WOW. I mean I couldn't belive it that after |
| ideas I decided it's best to just use plain | | | | all this time it was that one small line that |
| text until I can figure out how to send it | | | | had stopped me and probably countless others |
| correctly. | | | | from successfully sending html emails. |
| | | | |
| As luck would have it though I did find out | | | | But how would you tag your email as html? |
| how to finally send an HTML newsletter by | | | | |
| email. I was working on an email comments | | | | It depends on how you're sending it. |
| form with ColdFusion, a web programming | | | | |
| language, one of features included sending | | | | If you plan on sending your html email |
| data in HTML format. I thought why not try | | | | newsletter with a web programming language, |
| it, it might just work. So I copied the code | | | | such as Cold Fusion then you can use cfmail's |
| of an html webpage and then emailed it to | | | | type="HTML" feature, which will automatically |
| myself, and voila. | | | | set the Content-Type to text/html and display |
| | | | the email as an HTML Newsletter. |
| But had I really figured it out though? There | | | | |
| had to be something else in the code which | | | | If you plan on sending it with ASP.NET, then |
| ColdFusion added that allowed the newsletter | | | | the below line should clear it up: |
| to display correctly. I looked at the html | | | | |
| code for the email and there was nothing | | | | YourMessageName.BodyFormat = MailFormat.Html |
| different about this email. It was the same | | | | |
| code as all the other html newsletters that I | | | | Or if you plan on using PHP then it should |
| had tried and tested in the past. Except that | | | | look something like this |
| this one displayed correctly and the others | | | | |
| didn't. Odd. Why didn't the newsletter work | | | | "To: The Receivers Name \n" . |
| when I tried to copy, paste and email it. | | | | |
| It's the same email and the same code so it | | | | "From: The Senders Name \n" . |
| should work just as fine. Something was | | | | |
| missing. | | | | "MIME-Version: 1.0\n" . |
| | | | |
| A couple of days later I went back to look at | | | | "Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8"); |
| the code for the email thinking that maybe I | | | | |
| had overlooked something. The source code was | | | | Most, if not all web programming language |
| still the same, nothing had changed. So what | | | | include a feature which allows you to send |
| could it be? That's when I stumbled on to a | | | | html data. |
| small line that would change everything. | | | | |
| | | | Tip: Make sure the code or software that you |
| The line I'm talking about is the | | | | use to send email has support for MIME, which |
| content-type, which is part of every email's | | | | allows you to send non text emails, HTML etx. |
| header file. I'd read about content type, but | | | | |
| most of it had to do with XHTML webpages. | | | | So now you know the secret. It's not the |
| After a little bit of research here's what I | | | | code, it's the email's content type which |
| discovered: | | | | decides how to display your HTML email |
| | | | newsletter. Now that you know how to send |
| Every email has a property known as: | | | | HTML email, make sure to test your |
| "Content-Type:" which identifies the type of | | | | newsletters with different email accounts |
| content that is included in that email. The | | | | (Yahoo, Hotmail, Google, etx). Each one of |
| emails that you, me, and everyone usually | | | | them tends to display your HTML differently. |
| send are mostly text. Plain Text to be exact. | | | | Test, Test, and Retest. |