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Use bulletins to communicate with members of your site
Your Manila faculty web site provides a bulletins feature that lets you send email messages to members of your site. This can be useful if you need to alert your members of changes or news at your web site.
Members fill out a form when they join your web site. In addition providing their email address and selecting a password they set several other preferences. The last two preferences on the sign-up form let them subscribe to your bulletins. The default settings shown below will subscribe them to the "plain text" version of your bulletins.
For most users the default settings are the best choices. Some who prefer to receive html-formatted email may wish to choose Yes for the "In HTML?" option. They may also check the No button for "Receive Email Bulletins?" if they prefer not to receive them.
(Members may change their own preferences later if they choose. The Managing Membership page describes how they may do this.)
Sending a bulletin
Here is the procedure for sending a bulletin.
- Go to your web site and log in.
- Click on the Bulletins link in the Editors Only menu at the top of the page to go to the Bulletins page.
- On the bulletins page you will see a Subject: and Text: boxes
- Type a subject for your bulletin in the Subject: box just as you would if you were sending a message in your email program.
- Type the text of your message in the Text: box. Format it much the same as you would format a normal email.
- After you finish typing the message scroll to the bottom of the page.
- You can limit the distribution of your message to members who chose to recieve the html versions by checking the HTML recipients only box. (It is unlikely that you will want to do this.)
- Note the list of subscribers link in the paragraph above the Title: field. You can click here to see a list of your bulletin recipients before you send the message.
- The Preview button at the bottom of the page lets you see what your message will look like when your members receive it.
- When you are satisfied that the message is ready for distribution, click the Send button.
Customizing your bulletins
You can customize certain aspects of your bulletins.
- You can change the email address from which your bulletins are sent.
- You can change the format of the HTML and plain text versions of the bulletins.
Changing the format of plain text versions is fairly straightforward. Changing the HTML version requires either a basic understanding of html or a sense of adventure. Most users will be happy with the default settings, with the possible exception of some of the content of the text-only versions.
Here is the procedure for customizing your bulletins.
- Go to your web site and log in.
- Click on the Prefs link in the Editors Only menu at the top of the page to go to the Welcome page.
- Click on the Membership link in the left sidebar to go to the Membership page.
- Scroll down on the Membership page until you see the Email Bulletins: section. In this section you can change the following elements:
- Bulletin Sender Address - The default is to use the same email account that you use to log in to your site. You may change this to another of your email addresses here if necessary.
- HTML Template - The code in this box controls the formatting and content of the html versions of your bulletins. You can change this if you understand html. (It is a good idea to make a copy of the text and save it before editing.)
- Plain Text Template - This determines the content of plain text versions of your bulletins. You may want to alter the text at the top of the box. By default it is something similar to "A Bulletin from the Firstname Lastname Support site sent {now
}." (The word {now} in curly braces is a "macro" that automatically inserts the time and date when the message is sent. Don't remove or alter this.)
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Submit button.
- It is a good idea to create and preview a sample bulletin after making changes. Just follow the steps for creating a bulletin described above and click the Preview button.
Bulletins are not discussion messages
Remember that bulletins are one-way messages. You can send them to all of your site members, but their replies will only go individually to you. You can use bulletins to begin shared discussions by sending messages that include the URL of discussion threads that you would like your members to visit.
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