Tendenci Blog

Corporate Membership Module Added Renewal Process and Renewal Reminder

We have recently rolled out the corporate membership renewal process and renewal reminder. Although they are the basic functionalities in the corporate memberships module, for some reason, they didn't get included in the initial release. For those who were waiting for this process, we greatly thank you for your patience!

The corporate membership renewal process let you renew your corporate membership as well as the individual memberships under the corporate membership provided that the individual membership type is tied to the corporate membership. For more information on how to renew your corporate membership as an admin and as a dues rep, visit the help files How do I renew a Corporate Membership as an Admin? and How do I renew a Corporate Membership as a Dues Rep?

The renewal reminder will be sent to the dues representative certain days before or after the expiration date. The default setting is 7 days before the expiration date. To turn on or off the renewal reminder, and change its frequency on your site, simply go to http://www.yourdomain.com/en/corporatememberships/ and you'll find the links to do so. Certainly you must be a site admin.

Newsletter Images Are Now Displaying Properly

What happened?

The software update to help make our email compliant, caused a slight change in the way newsletters were created. This required one extra step to make all paths to your images absolute paths instead of relative paths.

If you have experienced trouble with your Newsletter images displaying this week, The programming team has fixed this for you. Yay! Thank you Programmers!

What did the Programming Team do?

A snippet of code has been added that will automatically turn your relative image paths into absolute image paths for you. This change is automatic so your Tendenci Newsletter images will now display properly in preview mode and in your inbox. The code was accidentally overlooked on the first update, so we apologize for any inconvenience that it may have caused.

What is the difference between the paths?

A relative path is a path to an image or a page that does not include your full website address. You will use relative paths when you are linking to images or pages that live within your Tendenci site. This is an example of a relative path to an image:

An absolute path is a path to an image or a page that does include your full web address. You will use an absolute path when you are linking to images or pages outside of your Tendenci site. This is an example of an absolute path to the same image:

 

For more information on uploading images and creating newsletters, please visit our Tendenci help files.

Don't let your emails get passed over: Customize your sender display

To show the name you want to appear in the "From" field of a recipient's incoming mail when sending out a newsletter you must adjust the Sender Display field . 

What you enter in the Sender Display field will display in your email along with the new Do Not Reply email address. If you leave Sender Display blank, only the new Do Not Reply email address will display in the "From" field  of your recipient's incoming mail.

This is an example of what your newsletter will look like when it hits your recipient's inbox if you use the Sender Display.

The Sender Display field will automatically populate when a newsletter is created with the newsletter creator's name.  The helpfile on how to edit your Sender Display is located here http://tendenci.com/en/helpfiles/v/474.

You must be sure to include your correct address in the ReplyTo field to ensure email replies are sent to your email address. Otherwise, they will be sent to the DO-NOT-REPLY-TENDENCI@schipul.net and will not make it to your inbox, which would be sad.

For more information on why we use DO-NOT-REPLY-TENDENCI@schipul.net, please read our helpfile: What is DO-NOT-REPLY-TENDENCI@schipul.net

Importing users into Tendenci just got easier!

This update has been a long time coming!  We appreciate all of the patience and ideas on how to make importing users into Tendenci better and more user-friendly.

You can now rename the columns to fit your own needs. It does not have to be in the order of the import template. The header and the title rows can be left in the spreadsheet. Test it out.

Please visit the helps files on preparing a file for user import or learn how to import users into Tendenci.

Tendenci Enhancements Help Newsletters Reach More End Users

The Tendenci team works hard to keep your Web marketing efforts successful and effective.  In a recent effort to combat SPAM, we have implemented some changes in the way your Web site sends your emails, newsletters and notifications.

These changes not only make your site's email compliant with Internet rules and regulations of email delivery, but also increase your site's email deliverability.

When an Email notification, Contact Form Submission or Newsletter is sent from your Tendenci site, it will now have a sender address of DO-NOT-REPLY-TENDENCI@schipul.net. This email address matches the address of the mail server that is being used to process and send your emails - which looks more legitimate to other mail servers, resulting in increased deliveries.

What are you talking about?

Old Way:
To a server, the following sample email header could look like Spam as it is sent with the sender's own email address from a Tendenci site's newsletter generator (@hotmail.com vs. @schipul.net):

Return-Path: mdinkleplotz@hotmail.com
Sender: mdinkleplotz@hotmail.com
From: "Mary Dinkleplotz" <mdinkleplotz@hotmail.com>
Subject: My organization's newsletter!

New and Improved Way:
By changing the 'Sender' path, your email will appear less suspicious as the sender address matches your Tendenci site's mail server that is being used to send the email (@schipul.net):

Return-Path: DO-NOT-REPLY-TENDENCI@schipul.net
Sender: DO-NOT-REPLY-TENDENCI@schipul.net
From: "Mary Dinkleplotz" <mdinkleplotz@hotmail.com>
Subject: My Organization's Newsletter

How does this affect me?

If I were sending a newsletter to you from the Tendenci website, you would receive my Newsletter in your inbox and the "Sender" would be DO-NOT-REPLY-TENDENCI@schipul.net (this is generally not displayed by the email application).

The "From and/or Reply To” address will continue to have the email address of the user who was specified in the ReplyTo field pictured below:

You must be sure to include your correct address in the 'ReplyTo' field (see below) to ensure email replies are sent to your email address. Otherwise, they will be sent to the DO-NOT-REPLY-TENDENCI@schipul.net and will not make it to your inbox, which would be sad.

The Good News:

This mandatory update was made specifically to help improve your email deliverability.  It also makes your email compliant with regulations outlined here: http://www.openspf.org/Best_Practices/Webgenerated

Please Note!:

With this change, some of the Tendenci Newsletter bounce back features will be temporarily disabled. This means you will not be receiving your newsletter bounce backs until further notice.

Many Tendenci clients count on receiving their bouncebacks to remove or update email addresses on their mailing lists. We are aware that this temporary disruption may be a challenge for you, so we can offer a solution for you.

By editing your Site Variables, you can revert to the old email sender Return-Path, instead of utilizing the new, compliant sender email address. To make this change, you will need to edit the variable called:  SiteEmailNoReplyAddress

We strongly recommend that you do not change this variable as YOUR EMAIL DELIVERY RATES WILL DROP IF YOU REVERT BACK!

If you are still not sure if you like the change, this quote from Ed Schipul pretty much sums it all up:"Yes - it IS less convenient. But spammers make everything hell so we need to do this." - Ed Schipul, CEO