Tutorials

How to create e-mail newsletters in iWeb

If you are one of those kind and considerate people who regularly publishes a newsletter to subscribers to your iWeb site (or perhaps you are thinking about starting one) and you are getting fed up of it taking ages in ‘Mail.app’, then fret no more.

You can use your favorite web design application to build a HTML newsletter that looks just like iWeb site and still publish it from Mail after all. Here’s how.

Of course you will have to start by gathering together all of the necessary images and text for your newsletter and then open iWeb. If you already have a site within iWeb it is best if you start afresh and create a new one, with a blank page.

Of course you can copy a page from your other site into the new site if you want to look the same as your iWeb site; it’s up to you. Below is something I ‘knocked up’ for this tutorial.

The next step is to publish this one page to a folder on your Mac. Once that is done, close iWeb and, using ‘Finder’ navigate to where you saved that page. 

 Open it up in your favorite browser and select Cmd+A. You should have a transparent light blue box appear over the whole of the site. Select Cmd+C.

 Next up, open Mail and create a new mail message. Press Cmd+V and your web-site/newsletter will appear in the e-mail.

It’s at this point (if you are like me) you proof read everything and spot a spelling mistake (second line down, doh!). Not to worry, clicking within a text-box will bring up a dark border (as below) and you can edit to your heart’s content. You can even delete elements if you are not entirely happy with them simply by clicking on that black and white cross in the top-left corner.

Do you send an e-mail newsletter to subscribers of your iWeb site? What app do you use? Perhaps your going to start soon, what will you include? leave us a comment.

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16 Comments

  1. Hi Tim, Thanks for the post but when I tried it, everything worked fine except the receiving side. I sent a test email to my @me and @yahoo accounts using the mail.app and both did not display the same as I sent it. All the graphics were missing and in Yahoo it moved everything vertical instead of where it was originally. I viewed the receiving email using mail.app for @me and the yahoo website for @yahoo.

  2. Hi Tim,

    Thank for the post as well but my problem starts a little earlier then Kerry.
    When I press cmd+A it selects all and when doing cmd+c it copies everything. But when I do cmd+v in mail.app, instead of pasting all my images as well it only pastes about 2-3 of them. And all of the other images are squares with nothing in it.

  3. Hi Everyone,

    It may be easier.
    Create a newsletter (new webpage) -> publish -> upload him to your domain -> open the webpage (newsletter) in Safari -> select cmd+I -> Mail opens automatically with your newsletter – SEND

    When your newsletter is uploaded to a domain all the graphics will be loaded in the email. And don’t forget the ‘If you can’t read this newsletter’ button.

    See this example that I made for Cottonmouth:
    http://www.newsletter.cottonmouth.nl/newsletter012009.html

  4. I am at my wits end trying to figure out how to send blog posts from iWeb in the design of the website it’s in, and have it post in the email in the same design, with pictures, as the page appears on the site and in iWeb. I used feedburner and RSS for distribution. It just send the copy without the design, and I am certain it’s obvious I’m new to this aspect of things….
    If anyone here can help me, I’d be most appreciative.
    Linda

  5. Thanks Cottonmouth, Your steps work as well as Tim’s but I still have the same problem of viewing the email if sent to a website email address like yahoo and viewed with a browser. (I’ve tried in Firefox, Safari and Chrome).

    Using the mail.app still works as it should.

  6. WOW! What else can I say?
    AG

  7. I’ve got same receiving problem with this thing… In Mail it works fine but viewing in hotmail the whole thing goes vertical & images don’t appear…? Maybe a problem with how mail renders the HTML?

  8. Cool Tip!

  9. Tried posting this before and it disappeared! I’ll give it another go: I’ve tried to create HTML emails by creating a page in iWeb, uploading it to MobileMe and then opening it in Safari. Then I click “Email contents of this page”. But only the text (and background colour) appears on the email – no pictures. Any idea what I’m doing wrong?

  10. Having trouble with this. When i copy my content into Mail, none of my stuff shows up (besides one or two objects). However, when i copy in your home page site, it works fine. What is the error here?

  11. Hi Guy’s, This shall only work mail.app to mail.app, each email application reads it differently. With that said you can do it to other email clients by using someone like ‘MailChimp’ or Campaign Monitor’. This way you can create an ‘html’ email with links to you site or any others for that matter like Facebook etc.

    Firstly, design you email in iWeb, making sure any links you have are the external links to you website etc. and not ‘one of my pages’

    ie. http://allaboutiweb.com/index.php/2010/05/create-e-mail-newsletters/

    2. publish to a folder. (make a new folder on you desktop) In that folder you will find an “assets’, ‘index’ and your ‘site folder’. The site folder is all we want.

    3. compress the ‘site’ folder only (ignore/delete the assets and index, you don’t need these)

    4. sign up to your email campaign (MailChimp which is free) and when you have successfully got to the ‘design of your campaign’, there is and option to upload a .zip file. Upload the site folder you compressed in step 3. Send yourself a test to make sure all the links are working.

    5. Check with in this that it looks OK in all major mail apps, and SEND.

    This way you can track unsubscribes, bounces and even Google analytic.

    Enjoy
    Guy

    1. Thanks, this is helpful and so far it works well. You can also simply upload an existing URL page for Mail Chimp.

  12. It worked great all except the MP3’s on the published site. They don’t appear in the email version. How can I make it so that the mp3’s appear in the email version and you can hear the music?

  13. Been trying the method for days and still cannot get the images to show… If anyone could help?

  14. Ive tried both these methods and still end up with an email with broken image links. I read somewhere that it has to have true direct links to the images? Is there any truth to this or any suggestions to get this working correctly? thanks.

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