Today we’re going to talk about sending amazing, templated, parsed HTML emails using PHP and the PHPMailer class. I know it sounds trivial- “Oh sure! Let’s send some messages!”, however, I do get a ton of requests for assistance when dealing with email templates and parsed content within those templates, so I figured this would be a good thing to write about! Background When I refer to email templates, I’m referring specifically to chunked, individual […]

If you’ve been to this site before,  you’ll probably notice that I’ve switched from the syntax highlighter that I’d used to display code to something a ton cleaner (the credit does not go to me, the new syntax highlighting plugin came from this TutsPlus article). Until a few hours ago, I used SyntaxHighlighter Evolved, which looked great, and was super easy to use, however, there were some issues with using it on a website displaying code that people […]

Ever have one of those days where you get a new codebase on your desk, but realize that you’re missing ALL THE IMAGES?  (face slap). I’ve had plenty of those, and here’s how to stop slapping yourself and just use PHP to download files from a list in a text file! The Directory Structure Easy enough, but just to be safe, the following is the directory structure used for this: process.php attachment.txt files/ Process.php The […]

If you’re a PHP developer, and you prefix questionable function calls with the “@” symbol, you should be aware that I’m onto you!  If the first line of code you write after <?php is “error_reporting(0);”, then we shouldn’t be friends anymore.  Error reporting in PHP is really really really important, and you should probably also stop reading, because this article will just fill your soul with rage. Keep in mind, this article isn’t about whether or […]

Sometime last year, I wrote about super awesome email open tracking using PHP and MySQL, and I’ve since ALSO updated that one to be EVEN MORE SUPER AWESOME! Tracking email open rates is both very valuable, and very useful, particularly if you run a service where statistics are important, or in scenarios where more detailed information on users (namely their participation with site content outside the website is crucial). That being said, a couple things […]