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Customize newsletter

Customize newsletter

Owned by Timo Fuchs
Last updated: Aug. 03, 2021
2 min read

The provided integration is a great starting point for your individual customization. There are two ways to proceed.

Simple customization

If you want to keep the overall look and feel for the newsletter and only make minor adjustments you can opt for this option. The GCA “newsletter profile” provides a comprehensive list of texts, colors, links and pictures/logos which make up the general layout.

Advanced customization

The newsletter is set up like a regular website managed in FirstSpirit. It therefore uses Templates to create a HTML source code with will be sent as an E-mail. Thus, you can modify the templates just like in a regular website project.

Overall structure

  • Page template “Newsletter” is the empty container with just a body “content”

  • The page “Newsletter” using this page template contains a single section in the body “content” using the table template “emailmarketing.newsletter”

  • Table template “emailmarketing.newsletter” contains the actual code for the newsletter in the HTML channel. It consists of two parts:

    • The HTML code which is split up to several render templates from the folder “newsletter” and the contents created by editors in the FS_CATALOG field “tt_contents”

    • The XML code for the newsletter event file (described here: https://www.universal-messenger.de/knowledge-base/intern/doc-en/Developer/XML_event_file.html). It will contain all information for the Universal Messenger to send the newsletter. The XML code will include the HTML code in a regular page generation. In a preview generation it will however only output the HTML code.

Adding new content modules

To add new content modules just create new section templates like the ones provided in the folder “newsletter” and add them to the FS_CATALOG “tt_contents” in the table template “emailmarketing.newsletter”

Replace HTML code and templates

It is also possible to complete replace the HTML code and create your own template. In that case you can still keep all of the global templates and settings and just replace the HTML code and/or the form fields within the template “emailmarketing.newsletter”. The HTML code is defined within the variable “set_htmlcontent”, you can therefore just replace the content within that variable and keep the XML event file structure.

It is also possible to change the properties within the XML event file structure as long as it conforms to the XML event file format.