Consilience Blog

Magento comes with a set of email templates. There are rather a lot of them, as there are a lot of reasons for Magento to send e-mails.

There is a problem though: none of them are designed for real-world use.

The problems with the default templates are multiple:

• Many contain default text for the “Acme Shop” with hard-coded phone numbers of the Magento offices.
• Many rank very highly as SPAM and usually don’t get to their destinations.
• HTML tags are not properly structured, leading to display problems on some email clients.

What I have done is fix these major problems with the default email templates and present them here for download. These templates are as close to the originals as possible, while still solving the above problems (better at getting through SPAM filters, no “test site” text hard-coded, etc.)

email.zip

The place to upload this template set is into your default locale. I drop the “email” folder with all its contents into app/locale/en_GB/template/ – you may have a different locale set up. Don’t forget also to update your shop logo in the skin you use, under images/logo_email.gif

The email templates can be over-ridden in the database through the Magento administration screens, but it is a cumbersome process and I would not recommend it. It is far too easy to miss out a template or two.

Now, you can also make the job of managing the templates a little easier using the Email Template Adapter plugin. This template set already contains comment markers that split it up into container/header/middle/footer. You can over-ride these sections across all the templates using this plugin, without having to manually edit each individual email template. This comes into its own when you are running multiple store fronts, since each store can use a different wrapper – with its own logo, style, colours and introduction on – but still based on the core set of templates.

Feel free to download and use these templates. Any problems or suggestions, please let me know. If you would like us to construct formatted e-mail templates for your new shop, then please contact us for a fixed or hourly quote.

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The Affilliates For All website reflects the no-nonsense look of the application

If you run a Magento shop, and you would like to drive customers to your shop, then an affiliate programme may be one option to look at. This is basically low risk and low cost, since you only pay when you make sales.

The Affiliates For All Open Source application is able to support the running of your affiliate scheme.

Your affiliates would register on your site, through this application. Your only involvement would be to approve their application, and I guess attract these people in the first place by telling them about your scheme.

You can then provide the affiliates with a bunch of banners – it that’s your thing – or leave it up to them to create their own, which probably won’t be their thing, so do create the banners you want associated with your shop. The affiliates are provided with a snippet of HTML that they paste into their own website. The HTML contains a link back to any page of their chosing on your shop (remember, it is the affiliates’ job to decide how to send traffic your way, so long as they are not breaking any rules you get them to agree to on signing up).

All links back to your shop are then recorded against the originating associate, and all orders placed by visitors using those links are also recorded against the originating associate.

The application provides administration tools for calculating the orders-based commission and for paying the associates through PayPal.

As an application it is simple, and sticks to doing its main job (and main job only) without any fuss or eye candy, and it appears to do it rather well.

I don’t know why I have not come across this project before – most likely because the more commercial affiliate programmes have buried it somewhat. It is well written, well supported and has some excellent documentation written in some of the clearest English I have seen for a long time.

It is just writtem for Magento Commerce, and includes a plugin to handle cookies and order recording at the Magento end. With a little help, it may also be possible to expand the project to support other commerce systems too, but that all depends on demand and the help offered to the author, Pete Chown.

When I get this thing set up, I’ll report back on how it goes.

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