SMF For Free Support Forum

NOTE:  Newsletters are an Upgrade Option.  
Click the Upgrade This Forum link at the bottom of your forum or Adfree & Upgrades inside your Admin Panel.

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Newsletters - Admin > News and Newsletters
Use this feature to contact all or some of your members.
You can use it to send a simple email or use it to send elegant newsletters.

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Membergroups

Group Selection - The first thing you will do when on the Newsletter page is select which membergroups you would like to email. Simply check the boxes for each membergroups you want to email.

Email Options
When you want to use the newsletter feature on your forum, you can configure a few options to meet the needs for sending out emails to your members:

Send this to these groups using personal messages - With this option checked, members will receive the newsletter you send as a personal message rather than by email. Note that this is not inclusive to sending the newsletter as an email, but rather sends it as a personal message instead.
Send this to members even if they have chosen not to receive announcements - You can choose this to send the email to the members who have the option to not receive emails/announcements by email in their profile selected. It is recommended you don't force them to receive the email unless it is really important.


Composing the email (after pressing Next)

While composing the email you will be shown the email addresses it will be sent to.
You can add or remove addresses as you wish.


Subject - The subject by default will be Sitename: Subject.
It is recommended you change the subject of the email to something that is more descriptive.

Message - You can put almost anything you want into the message box. If you would like, you can even use html. Most email clients support using html in emails. If you wish to use html in the message you must select this option Send in HTML format". (With this, you can put normal HTML in the email.)

Variables - In the message you can also use some variables. Here are the "variables" you can use:

{$board_url} - The URL to your forum.
{$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. (for personalization.)
{$latest_member.link} - The most recently registered member's link.
{$latest_member.id} - The most recently registered member's id.
{$latest_member.name} - The most recently registered member's name.