How to Set Up Custom Themes for Newsletter WordPress Plugin
on August 14, 2011
Satollo’s Newsletter Plugin for WordPress is an excellent option for those looking to manage newsletters through WordPress. The Newsletter Plugin complies with double-opt in anti-spam standards and has many useful features, such as custom themes.
Unfortunately, instructions on how to create custom themes are rather hard to find on Satollo’s page (they are buried in archives somewhere and took us some time to locate). So we have updated and published the instructions for creating custom templates for the Newsletter WordPress Plugin below.
Please note before beginning:
- The Newsletter Plugin comes with two pre-built themes. They are located in the /wp-content/plugins/newsletter/themes.
- Each theme’s folder has, at a minimum, a theme.php. Have a look at the two pre-built themes to familiarize yourself with the structure. An example of a typical structure for a theme folder is below:
- The Newsletter Plugin supports CSS from from version 1.4.7 onward; you can add a style.css stylesheet in a theme’s folder. This stylesheet will be loaded when you select the corresponding theme in the Newsletter editor.
theme-folder-name
-- theme.php (mandatory)
-- style.css (optional)
-- other files or folders i.e. images (optional)
To create a custom Newsletter theme:
- Create a folder called “newsletter-custom” in /wp-content/plugins”.
- Create a folder named “themes” in /wp-content/plugins/newsletter-custom/.
- Copy one of the pre-built theme folders to /wp-content/plugins/newsletter-custom/themes.
- Change the pre-built theme folder you just copied to something like “custom-theme-1”.
- This custom themes will be listed in email compose page by the name of their folder i.e. “custom-theme-1”.
- All of a theme’s files, typically image files, have to be stored in theme’s folder.
don’t work on 2.5.2.1
sorry … it works !
No worries. Glad you got it to work!
HI,
I’ve all that you explained. And I saved my html newsletter to a php theme. The I copy the theme.php, the html file and the images folder to my new custom folder. But the images are not showing. What did I do wrong?
Check to make sure that your image paths are correct and your images are in the correct folder.
Hi, I tweaked the blank theme already in the themes folder today. When I load it it looks absolutely spot on with the style sheet and images etc.
But when I send the email out it has the content in but no style whatsoever, like how it would look with no style sheet. I’ve sent it to .mail on my mac and hotmail and the same outcome on both. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance
When you are in the editor, open the html view and check out the stylesheet path. Make sure it is correct / hardcode it if it isn’t. Let us know if that does the trick.
Jamie, just had a thought, have you tried copying from one of the custom themes instead of the blank email? The blank email is set up to be blank, with no style. That is probably your issue.
Same Problem here like Jamie has / had. In the editor everything looks fine, but on sending stylesheet gets lost, and image (header gets lost too). I customized the theme 3 of nl version 2.5.2.3
So many questions:
1 The style.css is not included upon sending (it does not appear in the html code of the sent mail)
2 The header image is showing on gmx, but in outlook it does not show. (I set everything inside outlook to display and download images, every other newsetter shows images)
3 Can I set the Background around the outermost table to any color? How? This would be very important…
4 I use the theme „Suffusion“ by Sayontan Sinha, and made some customizations inside the theme:
1. – how long the excerpt should be
2. – how the links should look
3. – to displa a thumbnail image etc.
Newsletter seems to take the settings for it´s excerpts from some different location. Can I customize it so it takes the settings out of suffusion theme?
Christoph, try copying from one of the custom newsletter themes instead of the blank email. The blank email is set up to be blank, with no style.
Try that and then we can tackle the other items.
Hello C133,
thanx for your fast answer, in fact I copied the theme 3 to modify, not the blank email. But there ar no stylesheets inside the folders of the custon newsletters that come with the newsletter plugin, just the theme.php. I took the one with the blue pinstriped header background image to modify.
please help, thx,
Christoph
You’re welcome. If you can you email us a copy of your newsletter files and we will take a look. Contact info is here: https://www.collaboration133.com/contact/
As far as your question #2 above regarding the header image, we encountered a similar issue, but were able to solve it by switching the image from a background image to a regular .
Hi,
I want to show the full post in the email. What tag would I use to replace ” ” which shows only the excerpt and Continue reading link?
Thanks for any assistance here.
Lou
Hi Lou, did you mean to post something between the quotation marks? Off the top of my head, without knowing that I’d say replace get_the_excerpt with get_the_content. Let us know if that takes care of it or if not, what the actual code you are trying to edit is.
Do these steps work with the free version of the plugin?
Yes, they do.
Hello there!
How to create a template that use only a specific category n auto-compouse? Ex: show only the “news” (id=8) category on template.
Thanks!!
Hi Andre, thanks for your comment.
You’d need to modify some of the php code for the template. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.
Hi!!
I’m pretty newbie n PHP… Could you show me the files that I have to modify?
Thanks!
Hi, I spent this morning to install your wonderful plugin. Thank you.
But….can you see my website http://www.hopechestgallery.com? at footer. Where and how can I change color, change the size of it? Any help will be great! Thank you.
You’re welcome. Let us take a look at your site and we will be in touch shortly.
Hello,
At the top of a newsletter normally you see a link to view the newsletter online if you have difficulty
reading/viewing the newsletter. Where can I find the url for viewing the e-mail online?
Thx in advanced!
Gr Marco
Hi Marco, I don’t believe that this newsletter plugin generates a webpage for the newsletter. It is primary for sending via email. You could just copy and paste the html for the email into a page and include a link in the email.
Hi, I’m using your plugin and it work fine for me. Very nice.
Now, a question: all posts in the newsletter (6, in my case) have the same display, ex. the thumbnail is at the left place for all of them, font title are the same, and so on. How, if I’d want to display thumbnail at right for 1st, 3rd, 5th, and left for 2nd, 4th and 6th?
I suppose I’d make a bit of work with the php function?
thank you
Hi, glad it’s working well for you. To set up the thumbnails to alternate, you would need to customize the template, which would take a bit of PHP and CSS work. If you need further help, just let us know. Thanks!
Hi,
Thank you for this was really helpful. However, I have one issue the newsletter theme works fine but for instance, (I have enabled double opt-in) when the user subscriber, they are taken to a page that says they will receive an email…. I don’t seem to understand how to style these landing pages? Which files and how to edit safely? Any help please?
Thanks
Hi Tracersa, you should be able to style the pages with CSS. Depending on the theme you are using, each page should have a unique class and you can style the form elements that are in the body. Does that help? If not, let us know and we can take a look. Cheers!
Thanks for such useful information i am already using this plugin and that’s very useful plugin.
Hello there,
Thanks for this post! Just installed the plugin and currently altering one of the themes. It seems to work fine in general. One question though: Does anyone know if it’s possible to personalize the newsletters that are being send? i am now importing an email list to add subscribers as directed:
(email 1[separator]first name 1[separator]last name 1[new line])
I was hoping that the first and last name would be implemented in the newsletters itself so that it’s more personal..
Does anyone know if this is possible?
Looking forward to your response…
Greets