New template tags: Easily insert links and set default values
Posted by David Greiner on May 14, 2007 12:56 PM
Hot on the heels of our custom fields release, I'm pleased to announce the launch of two highly requested updates to our template tagging system.
Add a link to a title or image with link="true"
By far the most requested template feature, the new link="true" attribute allows your clients to easily add their own links to any title or image via the editor. Here's the syntax...
<$title link="true"$><$imagesrc link="true"$>
The link attribute can be added to any title or imagesrc tag in your template, whether it's in a <repeater> or free standing. When this attribute is present, your clients will see a small 
icon next to their title or image tag which they can click and add their own URL.
We've put together a quick video walkthrough of this new tag in action so you can quickly see how easy it is for your clients to add links to any content in their email.
Set default values for any title or description with default=""
The new default="" attribute allows you to easily set default values for any title or description tag in your template. This makes it easy to add little guidelines to any template telling your client which content goes where. Here's the syntax...
<$title default="This month's listings"$><$description default="Add the monthly listings here, but try to keep the description to a few lines."$>
On top of helping your clients out, you can use it to set the default values for those tags that aren't updated very often. This might be the title of the newsletter or the contact details of the company.
For example, we noticed some of you guys creating multiple versions of the same template with the only difference being the title of the newsletter, such as "Breaking News" or "Monthly Report". You could use the default="" attribute to set the most commonly used title, but still give your client the flexibility to change it depending on the type of email they're sending.
We've also updated our official template documentation to include samples and more information about the two newest tags in the MailBuild family.
13 total comments:
you guys are legends! (but you knew that :). It's so positive to see feature requests being added and so thoughtfully with attention to detail - it's almost worth waiting for ;) It's a shame that the alt tag for repeater images couldn't have been done at this time too though... (or is that apost that is hot on the heals of this one!?).
Great work,
Just one amend - in your blog post you've written the syntax for adding a link to a title tag is <$title link="true"> whereas it should read <$title link="true"$> - I think?
Alex
Great spotting Alex, that's been fixed.
These aren't launched today - I downloaded the template for playing with over a month ago and the link="true" was in it already. I have been using it regularly. But I like the feature.
I would like to be able to resell this whole concept to my clients who are developers and want to upload their own templates - can we get that feature? So my clients can't see what I am paying verses what they are paying me.
Chris,
You're right, we "soft launched" this feature a couple of weeks back to see how it went and finalize any changes based on the feedback of the customers that had requested it. This was the announcement to all customers once we were completely happy with the implementation.
Thanks for your thoughts on making templates available too, I've noted that on our internal feature request tracker.
Default values!!! Oh, man, that's the best feature. Thank you a million times over for that one.
Love the new default value feature... One more thing that we would like to be able to do is the following:
issue of Newsletter"$>
So that the client has the option of changing the title if they are sending out a 'special' newsletter, and if not it auto updates the default. This would be perfect...
Is there a way to do this currently? As the inner tag seems to break it.
Thanks.
Ah - it stripped the code out:
<$title default="Welcome to the <$currentmonthname$> issue of Newsletter"$>
That's a nice suggestion Lara, I'll look into that and let you know.
Lara, we've just looked into this issue and plan on adding support for it some time later this month. I'll post an update here the moment it's available. Thanks again for the great suggestion too, we hadn't thought of that.
Cool thanks. Very impressed with the quick response. Keep up the good work :)
It would be great to have multiple categories or sections for the repeater content. A further break down of "In The News Today".
Yeah, that's another feature we've been considering for a while. If the customer demand is there then it will more then likely make it into a future release.