Managing Templates

The Templates tab of Email Editor lists every email you can design for this show. Each row says what goes out today: Your design, Your theme’s template or Benecaster’s default. Transactional marks an email a listener can’t opt out of.

Broadcast is in this list too, but a design saved there only changes that type’s preview. A sent broadcast always carries its own message: see Sending Broadcasts.

Designing an Email

Click an email to open its page, which has a Subject, a canvas and a settings panel.

An email you haven’t designed opens on Benecaster’s own wording, as blocks, with This is Benecaster’s own wording, as a starting point… above it. Nothing goes out until you click Save, which works with no edits if you want the wording as it is. Remove all blocks clears the canvas. A broadcast has no starting wording, and an email from another add-on opens empty unless that add-on supplies one.

There are six blocks: Heading, Text, Button, Image, Divider and Spacer. Add one, drag it into place or move it with the buttons or the keyboard, then select it to change it in the settings panel. A button or image address is a web address or exactly one merge tag.

Saved designs beat your theme’s template file for that email. Any email you haven’t saved a design for still uses your theme’s file, if you have one. See Customizing Email Templates.

What the Starting Wording Leaves Out

The starting wording carries every branch of Benecaster’s own email, but blocks can’t say three things:

• The renewal reminder always says “on the date below”, because a tag can’t choose a plural for “in N days”.
• Facts sit on lines of text, without the shaded box behind them.
• App buttons sit one above another, not in a row.

The Donation Thank You starting design adds two lines Benecaster’s own email doesn’t have: Thanks, {{donor_name}}. and Your message: {{donor_message}}, each shown only when the donor gave one. Donors see them only once you save the design.

Saved Designs Don’t Follow Later Changes

A saved design keeps what you saved. If a Benecaster update changes the wording of an email, your design doesn’t change with it. To pick up the new wording, use Reset to default and design it again.

Showing a Block to Some Readers

Select a block and use Show this block when… to send it only to certain readers. Condition is one of:

• A merge tag has a value
• A merge tag is empty
• The reader’s tier is one of these

Add more than one and all of them must be true. A reader who doesn’t qualify gets an email without that block, not one with it hidden. The block shows Conditional on the canvas. Email sent with no show has no tiers to choose from, and blocks in a broadcast can’t have conditions.

Benecaster’s starting wording uses these to keep wording that differs from reader to reader, so someone you removed still gets no Resubscribe button after you reword an email. Check these conditions before you delete a block. To see each version, use Preview as a reader who….

Branding

The Settings tab sets what goes around every email from this show:

• Six colors: Accent colour (header and buttons), Header text colour, Page background, Email background, Text colour and Link colour
• Font: System default, Arial, Georgia, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS or Verdana
• Header image address, Logo address and Logo width in pixels
• Header text and Footer text

It opens on your show’s title and artwork, Benecaster’s blue and your site’s name in the footer, with a sample beside it. Nothing changes until you click Save: until then, Benecaster’s own wrapper or your theme’s override goes out.

Once saved, a button with no color of its own takes the accent color in any saved design. Benecaster’s own templates keep their blue buttons until you design them. The unsubscribe line appears on emails that have one, and your business address in your footer. Header text and Footer text can’t use merge tags, because one wrapper goes around every email and the tags differ by email.

The site-wide branding is at Brand email sent with no show. It starts from your site’s name, with no logo.

Earlier Versions

Each time you save a change to an email’s design or a show’s branding, the Email Editor keeps what you replaced. Show earlier versions, on the email’s page and on the Settings tab, lists them with when each was saved and by whom.

Restore puts one back and saves straight away, keeping what it replaced as a version, so you can undo it. It waits if you have unsaved edits. There’s no preview of a version before you restore it.

The last 20 versions are kept for each email on each show, and the oldest goes as a new one comes. Saving with no changes doesn’t use one up. Branding counts as one email, and the site-wide design has its own history. Deleting a show deletes its versions, and switching the add-on off keeps them.

Going Back to Benecaster’s Email

Reset to default, on the page of an email you have designed and on the Settings tab, stops using your design. The email goes back to Benecaster’s own, or your theme’s template if you have one, and follows them from then on. Your design isn’t lost: it’s kept in Show earlier versions.

Each email and each show’s branding resets on its own, and there’s no reset-all. It asks first only if you have unsaved edits. Resetting the branding also puts the buttons in your saved designs back to Benecaster’s blue.

Moving Designs Between Shows and Sites

Export designs, on the Templates tab, saves all the designs and branding of the selected show, or of email sent with no show, to one file. Import designs reads one back.

Before anything changes, it tells you which designs it would replace and add, and you choose Import or Cancel. Each design it replaces is kept as an earlier version. An email this site doesn’t have is left out and named, and the rest still imports. A file that isn’t a design file, or comes from a newer version of the add-on, is refused whole. It warns you about blocks set to a tier this show doesn’t have, which no reader would get until you change them.

A file holds designs and branding, and nothing about your subscribers or who saved what. Image addresses are kept as they are, so an image hosted on another site keeps loading from there.