Feature #3976
closedEmails to blog subscribers should be sent in HTML
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Description
We have created an ACERT group on the Commons and associated our blog with the group so that members get email notifications when we create new posts. The email notification is sent in plain text, so is difficult to read and does not include any of the links from the body of the post. Since the link to the full post is at the bottom, I'm guessing that most readers do not see it. Could we think about more effective ways to send these notifications? One idea that comes to mind is having the option to send an excerpt rather than the full post. Moving the link to the post to the top and sending the email in html format would also be useful.
Updated by Boone Gorges about 9 years ago
- Subject changed from Emails to blog subscribers to Emails to blog subscribers should be sent in HTML
- Category name set to Email Notifications
- Status changed from New to Assigned
- Assignee set to Boone Gorges
- Target version set to 1.7.18
Putting the entire text of the post into the email was a conscious choice that I don't think we want to reverse. See http://redmine.gc.cuny.edu/issues/2129.
Most of our other emails are sent in HTML format. I think it was an oversight that this one was not included. Let's correct that for 1.7.18. I think that'll probably be enough to solve the problem, but if it's not, we'll come back and consider your suggestion of moving the post link to the top of the notification.
Updated by Raymond Hoh about 9 years ago
Most of our other emails are sent in HTML format. I think it was an oversight that this one was not included.
Related: #3954.
Especially read the latter portion of comment 5 (#3954-5). I'm quoting it here below:
One other thing to note is currently, HTML emails do not work outside the main Commons site as we have not network-activated the WP Better Emails / WP Better Emails for BP plugins. The reason why we probably didn't network-activate these plugins is this might interfere with sites that already have existing email solutions or that we do not want to force the main Commons HTML template on all sites. I'm not sure what we want to do regarding this, but since we haven't really received many tickets about this issue, it's probably best to leave things as-is for the time being.
Updated by Boone Gorges about 9 years ago
Oh right. Crud.
So, super hacky. But maybe we do something like this. Hook to something in the activity component and detect when a groupblog-related email is about to be fired off. Detect whether wp-better-emails and wpbe-bp are activated on the current site. If not, bootstrap them in by manually including the files. The mailing itself would happen from the context of a `switch_to_blog()` (right?) so it would automatically inherit the main site's settings.
Updated by Boone Gorges about 9 years ago
- Status changed from Assigned to Resolved
Realized after writing the previous content that what I was suggested had mostly already been done by r-a-y in https://github.com/cuny-academic-commons/cac/commit/a8868e7d4a5beec.
The shortcoming of what Ray did there is that it only worked when both wpbe and wpbe-bp were active on the groupblog site. On the Commons, we don't have these plugins network activated. In https://github.com/cuny-academic-commons/cac/commit/679ecefefbddd4e8957761d24ea139ea177cbd9a, I bootstrap the plugins when they're not available. It looks like this solves the HTML problem.
I'm going to mark this problem as Resolved for 1.7.18. Gina, if you still find usability issues with group blog email notifications after the release, please feel free to reopen or to open a new ticket.
Updated by Raymond Hoh about 9 years ago
Realized after writing the previous content that what I was suggested had mostly already been done
Nice catch! Forgot about that stub plugin.