Plugin : Kunena

Description

This plugin enables you to include Kunena content such as latest posts and profile information in your Newsletter or any other e-mail.

The Kunena plugin inserts the public posts, so if your forum or category is only accessible when logged in, you could use this little "trick": Install the Autologin plugin then, in the AcyMailing configuration page tab "Queue Process", add the autologin parameters on the cron URL (with a dummy account of course, not your super admin one).

Plugin

When writing a Newsletter, click on the Tags button to access the AcyMailing tag system and being able to include Kunena data in your Newsletter.

Tag button

Go to the Kunena tab. You will see two subtags.

Topics

The first one, Topics, allows you to insert latest posts from Kunena forums. To do that, select one or more categories to look into, set the options, then click on the "Insert the Tag" button.

• Display: Display latest topics (do not display topic responses) or latest posts (display one or more posts per topic)

• Display pictures: The icon to insert before a post title

• Total messages: Show or hide the total of messages posted in the topic

• Author name: Show or hide the name of the person who wrote the post

• Max. Number of items: The maximum number of elements to display

• Min. Number of items : This option will only be displayed if you access this plugin for a Smart-Newsletter. AcyMailing will only generate your Smart-Newsletter if the minimum number of items found is reached.

• Created Date: Time limit beyond which the posts will be ignored

If you want to include posts with restricted access in your newsletter, you will need the associate rights (administrator, moderator of the target categories).

Moreover, you will have to send the newsletter manually (for security reasons).

Profile information

The second tab, Profile information, gives you access to Kunena users profile information. Click on a field to insert it in the newsletter. Each tag will be replaced by the corresponding receiver information.

Parameters

• Maximum length of a subject: Number of characters beyond which the subject will be cut

• Maximum length of a message: Number of characters beyond which the message will be cut

• Read more link: Adds a "Read more" button at the end of the messages (in addition to the one added when the text is truncated)

• Itemid: You can specify the itemid used in the link to the topics / messages

• Front-end Access: You can restrict the access to this plugin on the Front-end

Styling

You can change the style of the generated content by settings some CSS rules in your stylesheet ("Stylesheet" tab on the left of your template's edition page).

For example, if you create a newsletter with this template:

You will obtain something like this:

Here are the rules available:

/* Table wrapping every content from kunena */
.acykunena { } 
/* Subject title + messages count */
.acykunena h2 { } 
/* Subject title */
.acykunena .subject { } 
/* Messages count */
.acykunena h2 span { } 
/* Message header (icon, author, date) */
.acykunena .wrapper { } 
/* Message icon */
.acykunena .icon { } 
/* Message author */
.acykunena .authorname { } 
/* Message creation date */
.acykunena .createddate { } 
/* Message content */
.acykunena .content { }

Create a custom layout

You can modify the way the topics / messages are displayed in your newsletters by creating a custom layout for this plugin.

Firstly, create the filte media / com_acymailing / plugins / kunenamessage.php

In this file, you can access the message's properies by using this simple syntax: {subject}, {message}, {url}...

Here is an example of custom template you can use:

 <div class="acymailing_content"> 
     <h2 class="title">
         <a href="{url}">{subject}</a>
     </h2> 
     <table>
         <tr>
             <td>{icon}</td>
             <td>{createddate}<br/>
             {message}</td>
         </tr>
     </table> 
 </div>