SMF1.1:News and newsletters

News

If there is a bit of recent news, the forum administrators may decide to tell other users about it. BBcode and the HTML BBcode tag may be used in these messages. The messages will be displayed in the header.

Newsletters

If an administrator needs to contact some, or all, members of the forum this feature can be used to send a simple e-mail or newsletters.

Membergroups

Group Selection

The first thing the administrator will do when visiting the newsletter page is to select which membergroups they would like to e-mail. They may just select the boxes for each membergroup they want to e-mail. If an administrator wishes to send a newsletter to users by post count group, they need to enable permissions for post count groups in admin > permissions > settings > enable permissions for post count based groups".

E-mail Options

When they want to use the newsletter feature on the forum, forum administrators may configure a few options to meet their needs for sending out e-mails to the members:

• Send the messages using personal messages - With this option checked, members will receive the newsletter as a personal message rather than by e-mail.
• Send this to members even if they have chosen not to receive announcements - Administrators can choose this option to send the e-mail to members who have selected the option to not receive announcements by e-mail in their profile. It is not recommended to force the users to receive the announcement unless the piece of news is really important.

Advanced

Upon selecting the Advanced link underneath the membergroup listing, there will be a number of different options which include all of the following:

• E-mail Addresses - In this box, the administrators can add any additional e-mail addresses they would like the newsletter to be sent to.
• Members - The administrators can add the usernames of any additional members that they would like to receive the newsletter.
• Excluded Groups - Here, the administrator can select groups that absolutely cannot receive the newsletter under any condition, even if they have the same group selected under the included membergroups at the top of the page, or a member belongs to one of the included groups. As long as the member belongs to any groups checked here, they will not receive the newsletter. This includes primary and secondary membergroups.
• Excluded Members - This works similarly to the above option, except the administrators can add the usernames of members that they do not want to receive the newsletter no matter which membergroup(s) they belong to.
• Override Notification Settings - The administrators can select this to send the e-mail to the members who have selected the option to not receive announcements by e-mail in their profile. It is not recommended to force members to receive announcements, unless it is really important.

Composing e-mail

• Subject - The default subject will be the Site name: Subject.
• Message - Members can put almost anything they want into the message box, including HTML if they wish. Most e-mail clients support HTML, but not all of them do. If a member wishes to use HTML in the message, they must select this option: Send in HTML format. (This allows them to put normal HTML in the e-mail.)
• Variables - In the message, members can also use some variables. Below are the variables that can be used:
  • {$board_url} - The URL to your forum.
  • {$current_time} - The current time.
  • {$member.email} - The current member's email.
  • {$member.link} - The current member's link.
  • {$member.id} - The current member's ID.
  • {$member.name} - The current member's name.
  • {$latest_member.link} - The most recently registered member's link.
  • {$latest_member.id} - The most recently registered member's id.
  • {$latest_member.name} - The most recently registered member's name.

Settings

The Settings page of the News and newsletters section of the Administration Center allows an administrator to configure a few settings pertaining to forum news items.

• Groups allowed to edit news items: Select the groups that you wish to allow the ability to add and edit news items.
• Groups allowed to send out forum newsletters: Select the groups that you wish to allow the ability to send newsletters.
• Enable XML/RSS news: Allows people to link to the RSS feeds of recent posts made on your forum and other similar data. For details see the XML feeds page.
• Maximum post length: Here you can specify the maximum amount of characters to show for each RSS feed item. It is also recommended that you limit the size of recent posts and news because in some clients the amount of RSS data that is displayed is expected to be truncated.

• Maximum message length: See maximum post length.

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