New module Admin Contact

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Module Admin Contact just released on EDC.

Create custom e-mail templates and send beautiful personalized HTML e-mails to your customers. It can be used for various notifications, payments, offers, personalized newsletters. Increases productivity as you can send complex e-mails in seconds. Supports saving unlimited recipients and organize them into groups. Usage summary (number of recipients, sets, last sent information). Custom fields, unlimited email templates. The module comes with a demo template. You can copy and edit it to create your own, or add new ones from any web source of email templates, or contact Is Open Source to create perfect email templates for any case you want.

Download from EDC

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After the module installation you will see on the top right corner of administration panel an @ symbol. Click it to open the module interface.

Manage recipients
Click "New recipient". Add a name and at least one e-mail address (email2 and email3 are optional). On "Group" select "Other" and type a group name. This is to help you organize your contacts. The group can be anything you want. For example: Providers, Suppliers, Hosting customers, Friends, etc. You can optionally also add a note for this recipient. Click the Save button. Your recipient has been save.

If you want to edit or delete it do this:
Click "New message". Select the recipient you want from the list. You will notice 2 links, one for editing and an other one to delete the selected recipient.

Send a message
Click "New message". Select the recipient you want from the list. If you want type one more e-mail address in the "Send copy" field. It can be your own email too. The Send Copy email will be added to the email message as CC. Select a template from the list. The template controls the layout and content of the final email. Templates can have custom content and be totally different. Each template may have places to add custom content (like payment amount) and personalized content (like the name of the recipient). After you select the template you will notice a number of new fields to be displayed below which you must fill-in. These are the custom content of the template. You can also modify the email Subject been generated by the selected template. When ready click Send message to send the message to the recipient(s).

Manage templates
The module comes with a default demo template in English language. You will find the templates under this folder:

modules/mod_admincontact/inc/templates/

Each template consists of 2 files having the same name but different extension, one html (the email content) and one php (contains custom fields, images and email default subject). The names can be anything. Give names that make sense. Example:

customer_en.php
customer_en.html

You can create copies of the above for different languages and name them something relevant. Example:

customer_el.php
customer_el.html

Do not modify the default demo template because you will loose your changes in a module update. Copy its files and rename them to create a new template instead.

The PHP file
Must contain 3 variables with names $tpl_subject, $tpl_params and $tpl_images (follow the demo template example).

tpl_subject: This is the default email subject
tpl_params: these are the custom parameters that existing in the template (optional)
tpl_images: These are the embed images in template (optional). Images must exist in templates folder.

The actual content of the email is the contents of the HTML file. Inside it you will notice string like this {{AMOUNT}}. {{AMOUNT}} is a custom parameter. An other one can be {{WEIGHT}}. We define these parameters in the PHP file like this:

$tpl_params = array(
   'AMOUNT' => 'Payment amount',
   'WEIGHT' => 'Weight in Kgr',
);

After you select that template in administration you will see 2 new fields labeled Payment amount and Weight in Kgr which you must fill in. The module will take whatever values you provide to these 2 fields and replaces all instances of {{AMOUNT}} and {{WEIGHT}} with the text provided.

There are also 3 standard parameters which you dont have to defined and you can use directly in your HTML template. These are:

{{NAME}} : Recipient name
{{DATENOW}} : Current date (short date, year month day, as of Elxis DATE_FORMAT_2)
{{DATETIMENOW}} : Current date-time (long date, year month day hours minutes, as of Elxis DATE_FORMAT_4)

There is also an other array ($tpl_images) where you define the images used in your email template (optional). The format of this array is similar to tpl_params. Example:

$tpl_images = array(
   'MYLOGO' => 'ioslogo.jpg',
   'SWIMAGE' => 'demosw.jpg',
);

With the above instances of {{MYLOGO}} will be replaced by the ioslogo.jpg image. In HTML template it will look like that:

<img src="{{MYLOGO}}" width="157" height="40" border="0" alt="image">

HTML skills are required to create a brand new email template. However you have solutions:

1. There are several sites on the internet that provide free and paid email html templates. You can download such templates to use them in module Admin Contact.
Sample (free) such sites: Mail bakery, themezy, colorlib and many more (most require free subscription - not the ones I posted).

2. Contact Is Open Source (me), or other professional, to create a template for you.

Download module Admin Contact