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Author Topic: HTML email problem  (Read 5083 times)

teleute

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HTML email problem
June 06, 2007, 10:15:07 am
Hi all...

I recently used CiviMail to send out a mailing.  We've sent a couple of plain text emails before, but I wanted to try an HTML email this time.  I kept it quite simple - mostly just changed the text on the sample one.  I sent the test to myself in step 4, and it was perfect.  Looked great in HTML; I viewed it in plain text and it was still perfect.  URLs all still there, in the right spots, everything 100%.  So I went on to step 5 and sent it out to everyone.  When I got that version, it was completely broken!  All the formatting was gone, and even the links were messed up.  In my email, all my links were full paths (http://www.websitehere.com/, etc...), but when the "real" one came through, most of the urls were stripped out entirely, and the one that was left looked like this "/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?q=1533&u=6".  Even the optout and unsub links (which I copied from the sample, and which worked in the previous plain text emails and in the test) looked like this:  /modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?q=1634&u=1418.

Can anyone help?  I just sent garbage out to thousands of people, and it really makes us look like idiots.  I really want to make sure it doesn't happen again.  Thanks!

Donald Lobo

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Re: HTML email problem
June 06, 2007, 12:14:15 pm

Most likely your resource base url is a relative url (/modules/civicrm/) rather than absolute (http://www....../modules/civicrm/)

In general, in addition to the test mail, i would also send the same mailing to a "live test group" and make sure it looks fine on a few mail clients / images and links work as expected etc

lobo
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teleute

  • Guest
Re: HTML email problem
June 06, 2007, 02:54:23 pm
I don't understand how that would have this effect.  Why would it strip out html, strip out a bunch of links, and then mess up links that were coded as http://www.site.com/?

Donald Lobo

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Re: HTML email problem
June 06, 2007, 03:17:31 pm

In one of the settings in CiviMail, u enabled url tracking. This basically means we need to detect and rewrite all URL's so they hit our server first before we redirect them to the actual url (a common tactic used in mass mailing software)

Unfortunately, due to the way we send a test mail, we bypass the above (i.e. we dont do url tracking / open tracking). So for now, it definitely helps to also send a "real" mail to a small control group and make sure all things work as expected (especially for your first few large mailing's)

As an open source project, we learn a lot from such feedback and we will improve and make a few things more explicit on the screen with regard to test mailings. Note that we've always recommended all url's to be complete in our documentation and examples.

lobo
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teleute

  • Guest
Re: HTML email problem
June 06, 2007, 03:44:35 pm
Okay, found the base setting and changed it (I didn't set this up, so still learning my way around).  However, it only slightly fixed the problem.  I sent a new email, just to myself as a test group, and the links that were actually written in the text of the email worked.  However, all HTML was stripped (even though I uploaded it as an HTML version, and all the HTML shows in the preview).  So this means all links that were only in a href tags (as opposed to the address being written out) didn't work, along with all formatting.  This all worked fine in the test.

One other thing I'm finding odd - it seems to only be sending a small chunk of emails each time the cron runs (75-100), even though there's no batch limit set in the config file.  Is that normal behaviour?

Thanks!
« Last Edit: June 06, 2007, 04:31:36 pm by teleute »

Donald Lobo

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Re: HTML email problem
June 06, 2007, 07:24:00 pm

What version of CiviCRM are you using? If an older version, you might want to upgrade to the latest 1.7 and see the issue is still present.

With regard to point 2, you might want to check that someone has not modified the code to introduce a hard limit and exit after processing 75-100 emails. if the number is consistent on every run, i suspect someone might have hacked the code to do so

lobo
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teleute

  • Guest
Re: HTML email problem
June 06, 2007, 09:41:26 pm
Hmmm...it appears to be rev. 8585, which looks like it's 1.6?  I'll try to upgrade...I was kind of afraid of doing that before I knew how this all worked, in case I broke something further.

I can't find a hack in the code - seems to just be the base cron script.  And the number didn't look consistent either.  But again, I'll update and keep an eye on it.

Thanks!

teleute

  • Guest
Re: HTML email problem
June 06, 2007, 10:13:39 pm
I got your test...was that the plain text sample, or the HTML?  There's no formatting (I double checked, and I've definitely got viewing for HTML on in my email), and none of the links are clickable...

Donald Lobo

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Re: HTML email problem
June 06, 2007, 10:16:26 pm

sorry i did not get my test since i'm using localhost etc and gmail blocked it :(

trying from a public IP machine, gimme a few mins

u should have gotten 2 emails. Both MIME based. The first one was a test and no url translations were done, the second one should be the real one with click thru links etc (except the click thru's wont work etc)

u should get some more email in the next 5 mins :)

lobo
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teleute

  • Guest
Re: HTML email problem
June 06, 2007, 10:23:37 pm
Sure thing...thanks!

I've also decided that I may have to balance between the trackable links, and how it looks (cause those huge links look kind of scary).  Just for reference, this is what I wanted the email to look like (and what the test looked like) - minus the tokens, of course...

http://www.albertagreens.ca/email.html

Sorry if I sound frustrated - we're in the middle of an election, and the whole situation is making me want to tear my hair out!  I really do appreciate the help.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2007, 11:48:36 pm by teleute »

Donald Lobo

  • Administrator
  • I’m (like) Lobo ;)
  • *****
  • Posts: 15963
  • Karma: 470
    • CiviCRM site
  • CiviCRM version: 4.2+
  • CMS version: Drupal 7, Joomla 2.5+
  • MySQL version: 5.5.x
  • PHP version: 5.4.x
Re: HTML email problem
June 06, 2007, 10:27:24 pm

ok, i sent a real mailing to you this time and it seems to have worked quite well :)

Note that my html test email is more for testing purposes rather than display purposes. I used to test token substitution, url tracking etc. So you can use civimail and send well formatted email also

lobo
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teleute

  • Guest
Re: HTML email problem
June 06, 2007, 10:37:47 pm
The links still aren't clickable, though - is that how it's supposed to be?

teleute

  • Guest
Re: HTML email problem
June 06, 2007, 11:47:31 pm
Ah...got the final test and it worked just fine.  So it looks like I just need to upgrade to 1.7.  Thanks again!
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  • CiviCRM Community Forums (archive) »
  • Old sections (read-only, deprecated) »
  • Support »
  • Using CiviCRM »
  • Using CiviMail (Moderator: Piotr Szotkowski) »
  • HTML email problem

This forum was archived on 2017-11-26.