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I am finally starting to figure out how to theme Simplenews and it seems to be working. Kind of. However, I have yet to figure out how to change the structure of the document. For now, the nodes I include in my newsletter are sent as a title in a paragraph tag, a teaser also in a paragraph tag and a 'read more' link. I need the title to be in an H2 tag... where can I change this?

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Hello Jane. I have the same need to use formatted emails.Are you using Drupal 6 or 7? How do you manage to insert nodes inside your template? – Drupont Nov 10 '11 at 11:10
Oh Gosh, it was such a long and drawn out process and the short answer -- as far as I can tell -- is that basically using only simplenews, it is close to impossible to achieve anything near the kind of newsletter functionality we've grown accustomed to in the non-Drupal Web world. My full answer will follow below shortly... – Jane Nov 11 '11 at 8:18

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So basically to achieve the desired result (for a Drupal 6 site), I used the following modules:

  • Simplenews (for the very basic newsletter functionality but very little else)
  • Simplenews Content Selection (so you can select the nodes you want to include in your newsletter)
  • Mime Mail (helped me with some theming and styling issues)

In simplenews' directory, there is a sub-directory called themes which contains several template files including a body template which allows you to theme around the newsletter content.

Also, for each node, simplenews content selection's default output is a title, teaser and 'read more' link. I just want to add that to change simplenews content selection's default format, there is a file in the module directory called scs.theme.inc and under 'function theme_scs_node_output' you can list which fields to use. This was one of the most critical issues to me because my client wanted the information to display in a specific way.

Finally, just a quick reminder: theming for email newsletters should be done in table layout for best results, and all styles should be inline.

If anyone has a more complete or accurate answer, I'm happy to select theirs instead.

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Hello, I have the same setup as you but I don't know what file I should be using for theming the entire email. Non of my mimemail-message.tpl.php work when I use the content selection for it. I get a really plain email and even when I try adding to $output in scs.theme.inc - this wouldn't let me change the template of the email either! Do you know which file I should be using? – Garry Feb 16 '12 at 13:06

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