E-mail Edit

Description

This screen edits one of the emails HikaShop sends: the order notifications, the order status changes, the account creation, the waitlist, and the others of the emails listing. You can change its sender, its subject, its attachments, its design (the template, the hero and the blocks) and the code of its HTML and preload versions.

If you only want to change a sentence of an email, edit the translation instead, from the Languages tab of the configuration page of HikaShop: the email then keeps being sent in the language of each customer. The changes made here apply whatever the language.

The HTML and preload versions you save are written as .modified.php files next to the files shipped with HikaShop, in media/com_hikashop/mail (or in the "Mail folder" of the configuration), so they are kept through the updates of HikaShop. Once such a file exists, a See modifications button next to the title of the version opens the differences between your version and the one shipped with the current HikaShop, which is how you can report in it the improvements of a new version.

Emails are displayed by email clients (Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail, ...) which support no JavaScript and only part of CSS. The templates shipped with HikaShop are written for them; keep that in mind when you edit the code.

This screen is only available in the Business edition of HikaShop.

Toolbar

• Preview: opens a popup where you pick one of the orders or users of your shop; the email is then built with that data and displayed as your customer would receive it. The button is only there for the emails which have data to preview.
• Save: saves the email and stays on this screen.
• Save & Close: saves the email and returns to the emails listing. Until an email has been saved once, it uses the values of the configuration for the sender information and the "Send HTML" option.
• Cancel: returns to the emails listing without saving.
• Help: displays or hides this documentation page at the top of the screen.

Main information

• Email subject: the subject of the email. It can contain tags filled with the data of the email: {order_number} for the order number, {order_full_price} for the total of the order, {customer.name} for the name of the user account of the order, {billing_address.address_firstname} for the first name of the billing address, and the other tags of the "List of available tags" of the HTML version. The order creation and order status notifications use a translation key as subject, ORDER_NOTIFICATION_SUBJECT and ORDER_STATUS_NOTIFICATION_SUBJECT, so that the subject follows the language of the customer; change these from the Languages tab of the configuration. ORDER_STATUS_NOTIFICATION_SUBJECT has three parameters (the %s), the order number, the order status and the name of the website; ORDER_NOTIFICATION_SUBJECT has the order number and the name of the website.
• Send HTML: with No, only the text version is sent. With Yes, the HTML version is sent, with the text version as a second part for the email clients which do not display HTML when the "Multiple part" option of the configuration is on.
• Published: an unpublished email is never sent. Unpublish for example the order status notification if you do not want your customers to be notified of the status changes of their orders.
• Email history: displayed when the Email history plugin is enabled. With Yes, each sending of this email is kept in the emails history of HikaShop, where it can be read again and sent again.
• Attached Files: files sent with every copy of this email, your terms and conditions for example. Drag and drop them from your computer or use the upload button; they are uploaded to your server at once. The upload limit of the php.ini of your server applies.
• Payment methods: only for the order and payment emails. Select payment methods to send this email only for the orders paid with one of them; with none selected, the email is sent for every order. A sending skipped because of this setting is written in the logs of HikaShop.

Sender information

The greyed values are the ones of the configuration of HikaShop, used while a field is left empty. Fill a field to use another value for this email only.

• From Name: the name your customers see as the sender of the email.
• From Address: the address they see as the sender. Many mail servers only accept an address of the domain of the website; the "From address" of the configuration is a safe choice.
• Reply-to Name and Reply-to Address: the name and the address their reply goes to when they answer the email.
• BCC: addresses which receive a blind copy of each copy of this email, separated by commas. Useful to keep a copy of the order confirmations in a mailbox of your own.
• CC: addresses which receive a visible copy, separated by commas.

Design

• Email template: the frame around the content of the email: the canvas, the logo or the shop name, the card, the footer. HikaShop comes with two modern ones, clean (a light canvas, the template of every email on a new install) and bold (a colored canvas), and keeps the older ones. The thumbnail shows this email with the selected template. The Choose a template button opens a gallery where each card is a live preview of this email with one of the templates, with your logo, your colors and your latest order or user. The pen button opens the settings of the selected template (colors, fonts, corner radius, width, color of the social icons) with a preview which follows the values as you change them, and a Code tab with the file itself; saving writes your copy of the template, kept through the updates of HikaShop. The plus button creates a template of your own; the "Save as" field of that popup writes the template under another name, and refuses a name which is already taken by another template. The colors, the fonts and the logo are shared by every email which uses the template; the logo is the "Your logo URL" setting of the configuration.
• Hero: what the template displays above the content of this email. The default of the template (the title and lead sentence with bold, nothing with the others), none, the title and lead sentence with a button to the order, the progress of the order as steps (order placed, payment confirmed, shipped, the current one from the status of the order), a picture you upload (600 x 280 pixels, or twice that), or a headline and a paragraph you write here. The hero is only offered with the templates which have a place for it.
• Blocks after the content: the blocks displayed after the content of this email, in the order of the list; drag a block to move it. The gear of a block opens its settings, which apply to every email displaying it: the phone of the contact block, the texts and the link of the promotional message, the number of related products. The social networks of the footer come from the "Follow us" tab of the social plugin.

Blocks

The content of an email can insert ready-made parts with a tag such as {BLOCK:contact}, wherever the tag is placed in the HTML version of the email. Each block matches the colors and the fonts of the selected template and prints nothing when it has nothing to show. The blocks shipped with HikaShop:

• {BLOCK:contact}: boxes with the email address of the shop (the "Reply-to address" of the email or of the configuration, else its "From address"), its phone (set in the settings of the block) and its address (the "Your shop name & address" setting of the configuration).
• {BLOCK:related_products}: up to three products related to the ones of the order, or the latest products of the shop with a picture when there are none, with their thumbnail, name and price.
• {BLOCK:promo}: a title, a sentence and a button, for a free shipping offer, a discount code or a link to your FAQ. The texts and the URL are set in the settings of the block.
• {BLOCK:social}: the pages of your shop on the social networks, from the "Follow us" tab of the HikaShop social plugin, with their icons. The new templates place it in their footer.
• {BLOCK:hero_title}, {BLOCK:hero_steps}, {BLOCK:hero_image}, {BLOCK:hero_text}: the heroes the templates place above the content, chosen per email in the Design section. hero_steps displays the progress of the order as steps (order placed, payment confirmed, shipped); an order in a status which is in no step, such as a cancelled one, gets no steps.

The order emails come with the contact and related products blocks after the order details. The files of the blocks are in media/com_hikashop/mail/blocks; a copy with the .modified.php suffix next to one of them replaces it, and extensions can offer blocks of their own.

HTML version

• View Builder: the parts of the HTML version as blocks you can move or remove, without touching the code.
• Code: the code of the HTML version, HTML with PHP in it for the translations and the data of the email. The List of available tags button opens the tags this email can display, with their meaning; clicking one copies it, closes the list and puts the cursor back in the editor, ready to paste.
• Per status override: only for the order status notification. Opens a popup where you pick an order status and write the HTML version sent for that status, when the common one does not fit; the statuses without an override keep the common version. The preload version has the same button.

Text version

The text version of an email is built from its HTML version when the email is sent, for the email clients which do not display HTML. The Preview the text version button shows it with your latest data. A text version written by hand in the mail folder, as older versions of HikaShop allowed, is still used when it exists, and the screen says so.

Preload version

The preload version is PHP code run before the HTML version, to load and prepare the data the HTML version displays: the products of the order, the addresses, the totals. Edit it when the HTML version needs data it does not have yet; the variables it sets are available in the HTML version. Like the HTML version, it has the See modifications button once you saved a copy, and the Per status override button on the order status notification.