Editing Email Message Templates & Web Pages
Table of Contents
- Overview
- Editing HTML for Email
-
Configuring Expression Web & Gnosis Pro
-
Setting up your Preferred
HTML Editor in Gnosis Pro
-
Setting up Expression Web Style-Editing
Mode
-
Opening your Gnosis-enabled Web Site (for
editing content templates and/or web site pages)
-
Loading & Saving Layout Templates to Gnosis
-
Editing Content Templates
-
Editing Web Site Pages
1. Overview
In addition to HTML web pages on your web site, Gnosis has two primary sets of email templates that define
content and layout for email messages sent by the system.
Layout Templates
Layout templates define the overall visual structure of HTML
emails are designed and created on your PC and then uploaded to the
database in the communications module within Gnosis Pro. These
layout templates are designed to be used when creating general outgoing
communications from within the Gnosis Pro communications module.
Content Templates
Content templates on the other hand are complete HTML messages
that are used by your Gnosis system to communicate specific messages
(such as lost password information, initial registration welcome
message, Issue tracking messages, etc.) to web site guests and
persons registered in your Gnosis database. These templates are
stored as html files within your Gnosis web site.
This document explains how to edit and maintain these template
files. The instructions here assume that you are using
"Expression Web" - Gnosis' recommended HTML editor, however, if you
are using Dreamweaver or another web page editing tool, you may
generally substitute Expressions Web instructions for the equivalent
in your preferred web page editing software.
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2. Editing HTML for Email
HTML email while similar in nature to HTML web pages, have a
number of quirks that need to be addressed to ensure maximum
deliverability and visual integrity of your email communications. As
a result of this, most HTML web page editing software is not well
suited to editing HTML for email.
The Dreamweaver/Contribute editors for example, are an excellent
set of visual design tools for HTML web pages, however, they do not
do a good job of HTML email editing as they make certain assumptions
about the final product living on a web site as opposed to living in
an email environment. While you are able to work around these
issues if you are an experienced HTML editor, for most casual HTML
editors, you are better off selecting a WYSIWYG (what you see is
what you get) HTML editor that is HTML email friendly.
At this time, our recommendation for HTML editor for email
communications is Microsoft's
"Expression Web". As an added bonus,
Expression Web is also an
excellent HTML editor for general web site editing on your
Gnosis-enabled web site.
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3. Configuring Expression Web & Gnosis
Pro
The remainder of this article will assume that you will be
editing HTML (content and layout) templates with Expression Web. If
you do not have a copy of Expression Web, you may download a 60 day
trial from Microsoft's web site at
http://www.microsoft.com/expression. At the time of writing, the
application generally retails for around $280, however, if you have
an older copy of Microsoft's FrontPage web page editing program, you
may upgrade to Expression Web for about $90.
Once you have installed Expression Web, perform the following to
setup your Gnosis system to work with it:
Setting up your
Preferred HTML Editor in Gnosis ProGnosis Pro has a basic
inbuilt HTML editor that provides adequate functionality for
editing email messages using existing templates, however, if you
need to design or edit content or layout templates, you will
want to use a more advanced HTML editor such as Expression Web.
To do this, you should configure Expression Web (or the editor
of your choice) as your preferred HTML editor:
- Open Gnosis Pro and choose "Settings
| Preferences & Settings" on the main menu bar at the
top of the application.
- Choose the "General"
section and navigate down to the "External
HTML Editor" setting.
- In the "User"
column, click on the ellipses button to open a dialog and
paste the location of your Expression Web program. If
you accepted the default installation location when
installing Expression Web, that will be:
- For Expressions Web V1:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Expression\WebDesigner\EXPRWD.EXE"
- for Expressions Web V2:
C:\Program
Files\Microsoft Expression\Web 2\WebDesigner\EXPRWD.EXE.
- If you are using a different editor, enter the full path to
the program file for your preferred editor.
- Press the Save & Close button to return to the main
Gnosis Pro application. Now, instead of launching the
internal HTML editor, Gnosis Pro will use the editor that
you just configured.
Note: You may still use the internal editor by
"Shift-Clicking" on
any button that launches an HTML editor now that Clicking on
the button launches the external editor that you just
configured.
-
Setting up Expression Web Style Editing
Mode
Inside the Expression Web application its-self, you will need
to set the "Style Application"
to "Manual Inline Styles"
mode to place the application into a mode suitable for
editing HTML emails.
To do this:
- Open the Expression Web application.
- Ensure that the Style Application
button bar is visible.
If the bar is not visible, Right-Click on the menu bar at
the top and place a check mark next to the Style Application
item -- the bar will then appear.
- In the first drop down box, ensure that the Style
Application is set to Manual
- In the second drop down box, ensure that the
Target Rule is set
to (New Inline Style)
and that the Reuse Properties button and Show Overlay button
are both depressed as shown in the image above.
Note: when editing web pages (as opposed to
HTML email), you will most likely wish to change the Style
Application back to Automatic.
-
Opening your Gnosis-enabled
Web Site (for editing content templates and/or web site pages)
If you wish to edit your content templates or regular web site pages, you will need to Open your web site
within Expression Web. If you do not wish to edit content
templates or web site pages at this time, you may skip this section.
- If you have a local "staging" or "testing" copy of your
web site:
- On the menu bar at the top of the Expression Web
application, choose "File | Open Site" and navigate to
the top most folder of your local copy of your web site.
- Press "Open" to open the local copy of your web site
- If you edit your web pages directly on your public web site:
- On the menu bar at the top of the Expression Web
application, choose "File | Open Site".
- In the Site Name
box at the foot of the Open Site dialog, enter the ftp
address of your public gnosis-enabled web site (Note: ftp://
is similar to the http:// that you see in front of web page
addresses, except, ftp is a connection method that lets you
send pages in both directions whereas http is really only
for downloading pages to look at). The ftp address of
your public web site will be something like
ftp://www.MyWebsite.com.
- Press "Open" to make an ftp connection to your public
web site. Expression Web will display the following dialog
box...
You should accept the default "Edit
Live Web Site Now" to open your public web site.
-
Next,
Expression Web asks you for the web site ftp user name and
password.
Here you will want to provide the Web Master FTP Username and Password which
should be available from your system administrator and was
provided as part of your "Gnosis
Getting Started Guide" in your initial subscription
package. Note, your system may have a number of different
ftp usernames and passwords, be sure to select the Web
Master one.
- Expression Web should now open your public web site.
If it does not, recheck your ftp address, username and
password for errors.
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4. Loading & Saving Layout
Templates to Gnosis
Layout Templates start
out as standard HTML files on your local PC. You create Layout
Templates using Expression Web (or any other web page editor
such as dreamweaver) by either starting with an
existing template and modifying it, or, starting with a blank
page. If you are starting from an existing template, make sure
that it was created for email use, not for web page use - web
page templates are a very
different beast to email templates (see the article on
Communicating With Email for additional information)
- To edit or clone an existing template, If the template
that you wish to edit is already loaded in your Gnosis
database templates area, you will need to save a copy on
your local hard drive:
- Open Gnosis Pro and navigate to the communications
center.
- Select a communications category (any one that has email
as a method will do) and press the
New Item
button to create a new item in that category (you'll need to
give it a name and press save).
- Switch to the Email Message tab and press the
Choose Template
button to open the template management dialog.
- Choose the template that you wish to save and press the
Select button.
- Press the Edit Message
button to load the template into Expression Web
(Note: This assumes that you have already completed
the step to configure Expression Web as your preferred HTML
email editor in Gnosis Pro).
- You may now edit your template in Expression Web --
See
Communicating With Email
for additional very important information on formatting
HTML for email messages.
- When you are done, choose
File | Save As...
to choose a location to save your new template file. You
will use this file to upload your new layout template to
Gnosis.
- To edit or clone an existing template, If the template
that you wish to edit is already located on your PC or a
disk area to which you have access, simply select
File | Open... to
open the template directly in Expression Web.
- To upload your new template once it is saved on your local hard
drive, go to the Communications Center main page in Gnosis Pro and
click on the "Manage HTML Templates" button, then:
-
In the Template Dialog, press the
Add New Template button
and select the new template file that you saved in
Expression Web.
- Give the new template a name, category and
description and press the OK button - The new template
will be immediately saved to your database and available
to all users.
5. Editing Content
Templates
This section assumed that you have already configured your
Expression Web or other HTML editor to access your Gnosis-enabled
web site per the instructions above.
Content templates are all located in the
/Connect4/Resources/Messages folder
of your web site. Navigate to that folder using the folder
list in Expression Web and double-click on the item that you wish to
edit.
Your gnosis system comes pre-loaded with a number of different
sample templates for various purposes and you will fund a number of
sub-folders within the messages folder that contain different sets
of templates you may use for customizing your content messages,
To use one or more of the sets of templates in sub-directories in
the messages folder, you will need to copy them directly to the root
of the messages folder.
Each content template contains two files, one HTML file (ending
in htm) and one plain text version (ending in txt). when you
customize a content template, you should remember to customize both
versions as they are always both sent whenever the content template
is used by the system. To prevent one type from being sent,
simply delete it from the root of the messages folder.
Each content template uses special data fields that are used just
like mail merge fields and are substituted with data from the
database. These special fields are enclosed in chevrons like this:
Account for : «PFirstName» «PLastName»
Email address : «EEmailAddress»
You may completely change the format and layout of content
templates, however, be careful to preserve the special data fields
that you want to appear in your message -- they must appear exactly
as shown in the original templates without any additional spaces or
formatting added to them. Basically, the content between the
chevrons must remain unchanged whereas content outside the chevrons
may be changed in any way.
If you do not want a particular field to be included in a
template, you may delete it.
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6. Editing Web Site Pages
All of your public web site pages are contained in the /Site
directory in a standard Gnosis-enabled web site. If your web
site existed before implementing Gnosis, you may also find web pages
in the root directory of your site.
We recommend that you use Expression Web to edit and create new
web pages on your site. If you are creating pages to include
Gnosis database enabled content, you should use the "Gnosis Page"
template that was supplied as part of your initial web site
implementation. Pages that host Gnosis database components must end
in ".aspx".
To place Gnosis database components on a web page, simply drag
the required component from the
/Connect4/Controls or
/Connect4/Plugins directory
to the page in the location that you desire, then, set any required
properties on the dragged control.
For a tutorial and reference on building web pages using Gnosis
components, see the Gnosis Web Master's Getting Started Guide.
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