DotAdmin User Guide

Editing and Sending mailing list E-Mail

Editing and Sending mailing list email using the email builder is straighforward task, and requires only a few form fields to be filled in:

Subject

Subject field.

The subject line of your email will appear in the “Subject” column of your recipient's email software. This should be a concise description of the main subject of the email you are sending, to give the recipient an at-a-glance idea of the contents.

To

To: filter selector.

Depending on what kinds of users you have on your website, you may be offered a number of filters of different groups of users to whom email can be sent. This selector will always offer the two main defaults of All mailing list subscribers and Site administrators, but may offer other options where appropriate:

All mailing list subscribers:

Send this mail to everybody who is on the site mailing list.

Site administrators:

Send this mail to all the users of your dotAdmin CMS

All registered site users :

Send this mail to all users of your website who have a username and password for member's / privileged areas of your site.

Users with access to [n] Zone of Website

Send this mail to all users of your website who have a username and password and have been granted access to [n] privileged area of your site.

All affiliates:

Send this mail to all users of your dotAdmin affiliates system (if applicable).

Note: The first of the above filters, All mailing list subscribers does not allow personalisation placeholders in your email, as the main site mailing list does not contain personal information other than an email address.

Template

Template selector.

Your email template is selected from your pre-defined email templates, which control the overall “Look & Feel” of your email.

Plaintext email content

Plaintext email content editor.

To edit plaintext email content, simply type your text into the text box. Plaintext emails do not allow for HTML features such as embedded images and hyperlinked text. Most email readers will, however, automatically place a hyperlink under web addresses (URL's) which are surrounded by pointy brackets as follows:

<http://www.dotadmin.com>

Note: Be sure to include the http:// part of the web address. For best accuracy, copy the address straight out of a web browser address bar using CTRL+C (copy) and CTRL+V (paste).

For email addresses prefix the address with mailto: as follows:

<mailto:support@dotadmin.com>

The “Make Link ” button can be used to browse to a link on your website.

Make link button (plaintext editor only)

After clicking the the “Make Link ” button, the link selector pop-up will appear:

The Link Selector

Use the Current Zone and Child Zones folders to navigate to the zone which contains the page you want to link to. Now find the page you want to link to in the files list. To select a page, first click the Use icon in the files list. The page title will now appear in the form field on the right, labeled “Choose”. Finally, click the “Select” button to confirm your choice. The Link Selector window will close, and the address to the page you chose will appear at the bottom of your email content.

HTML email editor content

HTML email content edit button.

To edit the content of an HTML email, click the “Edit HTML”, and the WYSIWYG content editor will open in a new window. For more information on using the WYSIWYG editor, see “The WYSIWYG Editor” elsewhere in this documentation.

“Test”, “Send” and “Quit”buttons.

Sending a test mail.

To send test copy of your email to yourself, enter your email address into the “Send test email to:” address field, and hit the the “Test” button. The email will be immediately sent to the address in the box, and a copy will be stored in the mailing list outbox.

Sending the finished email.

Hit send and your mail will be placed into the mailing list spool, and queued to be sent to the group of users you have selected. The mailing list spool sends out bursts of 1,000 emails every 15 minutes, so your mail may take a few hours to be sent to all of the destination email addresses. A copy of your email will also be stored in the mailing list outbox.