Newsletter Hyperlinks Dead in Webmail

Hi,

I know this problem is not restricted to myself as it also happens to a friend..

When a newsletter email with a hyperlink is sent to a webmail account, the webmail account sometimes removes the site name from the hyperlink..eg.

http://www.sitename.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=4

is changed into..

http://www.name-of-webmail-provider.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=4

and so the hyperlink is dead. I know that lycos.co.uk does it for sure.

Anyone know why?

Cheers

Beerman

I think that you are describing a condition that exists if the receiving account can only receive "Text" mail and not html/rich text mail format...

Thanks Kobra,

Trouble is, when I receive emails from say Amazon, all their hyperlinks work fine..it really does seem to be restricted to emails sent via my own and my friends ZC stores.

Cheers!

Examine the headers of the affected emails for Content type, charset and Mime or encoding headers.
This could be caused by 8bit header and 7bit ecoding in the body, or vice versa.

Trouble is, when I receive emails from say Amazon, all their hyperlinks work fine..it really does seem to be restricted to emails sent via my own and my friends ZC stores.
Check in your admin that you have mime enabled among others:
admin > config > email options

Use MIME HTML When Sending Emails  	true

Thanks Kobra and Chuckl

Email is set to send MIME (true) and also html (naturally!!)

If there is say, 8bit body and an 7bit header, (I haven't checked actually) can this be changed in Zen? Nothing that I can see in admin?

Cheers!

<Broad Brush On> Setting Use Mime 'assumes' encoding etc. However there are complicating issues where the actual encoding and the header do not match.

One issue is that /admin/includes/extra_configures/ does not have a copy of email_use_8bit.php, while /includes/extra_configures does, as documented here:

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=60847

This causes newsletters etc sent from admin to use 7bit mime by default. Cure is to simply put a copy of the file there.

There is also an issue if you are sending test emails to 'Admin', where any use of HTML is problematic, discussed here:

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56507

Thanks Chuckl,

Seems like you had a similar problem as me. I'll give the first method a go and see what happens. Thanks to you and Kobra for taking the time to reply.

Cheers!

Beerman

Hi All,

Sorry to post again on this, but HTML is still going funny when sent to webmail accounts

If I send, for example a discount coupon to an email address with thunderbird as the email client it looks perfect..colours, images, HTML, all there.

If I send the same coupon to a webmail address (I have tried two accounts) its screwed up..no colours, no logo, some hyperlinks work..

I receive mail from three separate ZC stores, and this happens to all of them.

Anyone else who sends HTML based emails (either company or personal) to the webmail addresses gets there intact. This shows its a ZC issue and not a webmail issue.

Surely sending HTML embedded email is one of the most basic functions of the internet?

email_use_8bit.php has been copied and I have also uploaded a new version of functions_email.php. No change
:frusty: :frusty:

Any help/advise appreciated.

You would indeed think that sending HTML mail would be a basic function; and you'd be wrong. Email predates the www by years, and HTML mail is a very recent (overall) addon.
Essentially, each service decides what it will and will not accept, and it is a matter of trying to juggle settings to please as many as possible. Anything wrong, and the HTML gets stripped out. Send from known domain is usually a very good idea, as well as sending from a real email address. Ditto having an MX record for the domain pointing at a real mail server. And not being blacklisted - your domain or your hosting co's mail servers.
That said, Zen Cart is not perfect, and it could have, and will need to have greater functionality and flexibility in the future; I'm busy looking at it.
A recent development is that some hosting companies are switching their mail servers to multibyte and UTF-8 character sets only, which also plays havoc with the above.

A useful guide to such things is here:

http://www.swiftmailer.org/wikidocs/v3/tips/spam

Surely sending HTML embedded email is one of the most basic functions of the internet?

Actually, no. Email was around for a couple of decades before HTML was even thought of. HTML was developed as a means of sharing information via WEB Servers, and everyone was happy. Then one day, some bright spark thought it'd be cool to clog up their friends email boxes with entire webpages, rather than sending them the link to the webpage (which is always going to be more up to date and probably even display better anyway), other people then got on the bandwaggon by adding needless backgrounds and fonts to their emails, with no regard as to whether the intended recipient could read it or not, and no thought whatsoever about the needless waste of bandwitdh to they imposed on others to recieve such things (not everyone has broadband), and eventually, the hackers and scammers figured out that these HTML emails, with who knows what object embedded in them, was the ideal method to gain access to other peoples machines and/or information.
Without a doubt, HTML embedded email has been, and is, one of the most overused and abused merging of technologies I can think of. It has no useful purpose other than to make emails look pretty (if you can consider that as being 'useful', but if you are going to go to that trouble, create a webpage and send the link. :-)

I happily trade off pretty looking emails for plain text ones knowing that I'll never get an email virus or suckered into going to a phishing site by doing so.

Just my 2cents worth ;-)

Thanks Rod And Chuckl

I don’t think this is a server problem as for me, it is restricted to newletters, coupons, messages etc.. sent by my own and other ZC stores. Indeed, it is restricted only to ZC emails that I receive (all other HTML comes through as it should be).

Rod, I understand what you are saying about the security issues of HTML, but my issue is that HTML doesn’t work, not how secure it is (or isn’t). Irrelevant of how secure/safe it is (or isn’t) if a customer wants a to receive HTML email they should be able to do so and view it exactly as intended (well, 99% of people should!) and not some squashed, crushed, ‘wrong’ version of it.

For me, HTML newsletters are a way to keep customers informed about their order, and keep them updated and informed about new products. Ultimately, the aim is to increase sales. Pretty pictures, colours, hyperlinks all help this. I imagine that most customers would agree.

Cheers!

Beerman

How can I stop Excel 2004 (Mac) from converting an email address to a hyperlink? No way to do this under AutoComplete. I know how to REMOVE a hyperlink, but I don't want Excel to auto-create one IN THE FIRST PLACE. Thanks for any help you can offer!