This article is an exhaustive overview of how to design, create, and use an editorial calendar with links to additional articles, templates, and more. It brings you up to date on how best to create an editorial calendar and process to manage online and offline publications, including content published in email newsletters and social media sites Twitter and Facebook. This article strives to provide a comprehensive overview of all possible resources online compared to other articles which may be publication-specific or focus on one viewpoint of how to create an editorial calendar.

When this article was first published in 2003, most online publishers had never seen an editorial calendar unless they came from a publishing background. Today it is far more common to find bloggers who understand editorial calendars, how they work, and their benefits. The publication management problem also has expanded to include how best to organize publishing for email newsletters, Twitter, Facebook fan pages, and other social media sites.

However, many articles about how to create and use editorial calendars either are not comprehensive (for example, few mention tracking micro-content like subheads or alt and title tags) or they’re link bait for search engines like eHow articles. There also are a few templates out there that are worth a look as you design or improve your calendar. Finally, this article always has had a focus on small businesses and how they might use editorial calendars, a focus I’ve not found elsewhere.

Most importantly, this article is written for people with no little or no publishing experience. What is an ideal editorial publishing process, for example? What guidelines should be used to write and edit content?

With this as background, let’s get started describing how to create an editorial calendar and editorial process that meets your needs.

• The Editorial Process
• The Editorial Calendar
• Editorial Calendar Documentation
• Writing and Editing Guidelines
• Ideas for Web Publishing Best Practices
• Media Journalism vs Corporate Journalism
• Learn More about Editorial Calendars
• Updates to this Article

The Editorial Process

The Publishing Process

Based on what content is published, the editorial process can be elaborate or simple. A small business owner, for example, might follow this process:

1. Brainstorm a list of content to publish, where, and when for a set time period
2. Write each piece of content based on the publication schedule
3. Edit each piece
4. Publish each piece

A corporate web team might have a much more complex, and flexible, publishing process:

1. Brainstorm a list of content to publish, where, and when for a set time period; include backup content items for each item slated for publication; include break points to determine whether to delay or kill each content item.
2. Assign each piece of content based on the publication schedule
3. Write each piece of content
4. Review first draft of each piece of content
5. Give go/no go based on first draft edits (adjust publication schedule if/as needed)
6. If go, finish writing each piece of content and submit draft as FYI to layout team
7. Perform final edit, copy edit, fact checking, and rewrites as needed
8. Submit for review by legal team
9. Make changes if/as needed based on legal input
10. Submit content formally to layout team
11. Post content on development server and make changes if/as needed
12. Publish content on production server

In both the simple and complex process, movement is forward and iterative. You encounter and cross a series of hurdles that lead to publication. If you don’t have a calendar of content to be published, for example, you cannot progress to writing content. Well, you can but you risk publishing content that does not meet the needs of your readers.

The Content Creation Process

You also have a process to create each piece of content. For example, an interview requires some number of emails to line up the interview subject, as well as time to research the interview subject and the topic, create then refine your questions, interview your subject, email your subject any follow up questions/clarifications, and then write up the interview.

Make time to document the different processes for each type of content you publish. Some types of content will have an identical process. But don’t assume they do. Sit down and map out the content creation process to be 100% certain. This step alone will avoid delays in your publishing schedule.

Feed the Beast: How to Create Content Ideas

For both small and larger publishing outfits, deciding what to publish is the start point. Usually this begins by identifying your audience then listing all possible topics of interest to your readers. You might organize some topics into recurring features, for example, publishing fun offbeat articles on Friday, research-related articles on Tuesdays, or interviews on Thursday. Recurring features train readers to return to your blog or Facebook fan page on specific days of the week.

In my experience helping clients with blog publishing and social media planning, there are three types of content you can include:

• Your Product or Service
• Your Customers and Prospects
• Industry News

Whatever you publish, be sure to include stories that cover these three types of content. For example, stories about your product or service might include new feature announcements, how-to step documentation and screencasts, and invitations to readers to provide ideas about how to refine features. But these types of content also can mix. You might, for example, do a how-to screencast that features a customer who uses your product or service in an interesting way. Or you might cover an industry news story through a feature in your product or service, or from the point of view of an actual customer or prospect.

Also realize that, despite your best plans, what you publish on any given day or week will change. And, if you publish daily, you’ll need to add topical stories as they happen. You want to leave room to cover news as it happens. It’s also a good idea to have at least one story held back that you can publish when you get sick, an interview subject cancels, or other mishap.

If you use a spreadsheet to track your editorial calendar, your content ideas should be included in your editorial calendar as a tab called Pending Content or similar label. I’d put this tab first in your spreadsheet so you can create a natural flow from your ideas to calendar to published content, with each step in its own tab.

At the least, if you use a paper calendar or piece of paper to track your editorial calendar, your story ideas should be written down and kept with your editorial calendar. A small business, for example, might create a folder for this purpose and put both the calendar and the story ideas together in the folder.

With a list of content ideas, and possibly recurring feature ideas, the next step is to talk about your editorial calendar, tools to document your calendar, and guidelines to write your content.

The Editorial Calendar

The editorial calendar is the heart of any successful publishing process. Without it, content publishing online and offline is guaranteed to be random in terms of what readers want to read, full of gaps (content doesn’t get published because some pieces take longer than needed and backup pieces are not in the pipeline), and poor quality.

For simple web publishing, the editorial calendar needs these elements at a minimum:

1. What to publish based on audience needs and your brainstormed ideas
2. Prioritized list of what to publish
3. Work effort required to publish each piece of content
4. Micro-content needed (e.g., page titles, headlines, navigation link labels, ALT tags, footers, blurbs)
5. Dates assigned for writing, editing, publishing for each piece of content
6. Publishing location (e.g. print, blog, email newsletter, Twitter, Facebook)

For large groups, the editorial calendar should include these elements:

1-6 above with line items added to #5 for copy editors, fact checkers, photographers, layout team, legal approval, and other participants

7. The author who will create the content plus their contact information
8. Backup content identified for each piece of content on the calendar
9. Go/No Go breakpoints identified for each piece of content and/or within the process (e.g., if interviews are not possible or a writer gets sick)

No matter the size of your publishing team, when you design your editorial process be sure to consider the scarcity of approval resources. Lawyers should be brought in as late as possible and as little as possible to maximize their time. Otherwise you risk endless (and avoidable) rewrite cycles and complaints. With lawyers, this might mean one review towards the end of the process. With the layout team, it might mean showing them early drafts of stories so they know what content will be included in each issue.

One prime use of the editorial calendar is to push back when others in your organization make unreasonable demands. A good editorial calendar makes a wonderful educational tool to teach those outside the publishing team the steps, time, and resources required to publish content. It can help with budget battles. Development and maintenance of your editorial calendar also can be an opportunity to include those who will pressure your schedule. It won’t buy you extra time in some cases but it will give you more leverage than if you have no calendar.

Another interesting use of an editorial calendar is to mesh it with performance metrics, for example, the number of tweets, Facebook Likes, page views, and inbound links each story receives after publication. This expands the editorial calendar so you can make future decisions about what new story ideas might do better than other ideas. You also might want to track maintenance dates in your editorial calendar to ensure you know when site upgrades or changes might impact your ability to publish.

Finally, anyone with project management experience will recognize that a good editorial calendar is, in fact, a good project plan. There is one key difference, however. An editorial calendar is a rolling affair: individual pieces of content are completed but you never get to the end of the calendar until you’re fired or you quit or the publication shuts down.

Editorial Calendar Documentation

Once you have identified what to include in your editorial calendar, how do you organize your information? Most people use an Excel spreadsheet, Google Docs spreadsheet, or similar spreadsheet document with tabs. There even are WordPress plugins for publications that use WordPress to publish content. (However, if you publish a blog, Facebook fan page, Twitter, and email newsletters, a WordPress plugin only helps with the blog portion of your publishing empire.)

There are at least four technologies you can use to track your editorial calendar:

• Pieces of paper and a file folder
• A paper calendar or online calendar
• A spreadsheet or online spreadsheet
• Tracking software within your publishing software

Each of these tools has advantages and disadvantages. Paper, for example, works great for a small business that only needs to publish new content every week or month. Calendars work well if you have only 1-4 stories a day, or less frequency, and you’re the primary or sole author or a one person team. Spreadsheets can intimidate because they can hold so much information. It’s tempting to think you have to track every last detail in a spreadsheet when, in fact, you should track only critical information.

Whatever tool you use to track your editorial calendar, the secret of success is simplicity. Your calendar will evolve and adapt. But simplicity should be a key goal when you design and change your calendar. The more complex your calendar, and what you track, the more likely you are to not use it and benefit.

Within the document you use for your editorial calendar, you might want to create these tabs or pages:

• Story Ideas
• Production Calendar
• Published Content
• Glossary of Terms

Within each tab or page label your columns according to what you need to track, as defined in the Editorial Process and Editorial Calendar sections above. If you use a spreadsheet, this tab organization lets you move a spreadsheet row for each story as the story evolves from idea to production to published. The glossary tab or page contains a list of copy edit decisions over time to enforce consistency across articles.

The Production Calendar tab or page might or might not be broken into tabs for print, blog, email newsletter, Twitter, Facebook fan page, and other venues. Or you might create a column to hold this information so you can sort out your stories by publication destination.

Larger organizations might need a second set of documents to track each issue published, for example, to ensure that a particular theme is adhered to when story choices are made, ensure the correct number of stories (and backup stories) is accounted for with each issue, and related data. For a blog or brochure site or Facebook fan page, however, a basic spreadsheet or pages works fine.

Here is a basic template I’ve created with Google Docs that you can download and modify: Editorial Calendar Template. Note that, like other templates, the left hand columns are the same (e.g. Title, Author) so you can copy/paste one or more rows of stories to the next tab in the spreadsheet with little fuss or adjustments needed.

Writing and Editing Guidelines

In addition to the editorial calendar, your publication process should include style guidelines for writers and editors to follow. These guidelines are in addition to any layout guidelines used to control the publication design. Writing guidelines can include:

• Length of pieces published as well as the different kinds of pieces
• Examples of appropriate tone and structure for each kind of content piece
• Examples of things to avoid (e.g., first person, insulting the CEO, using less than 2 sources for each fact)
• Examples of file names and how they evolve through the process (e.g., to indicate versions)
• Grammar, punctuation, and language guidelines

The first four items are created in-house by the site publisher or publication team. Grammar and language guidelines are either adopted from existing sources (the Chicago Style Manual or Associated Press Style Guide, for example) or modified from several sources. The Washington Post, New York Times, and Newsweek follow the latter route with their own internal style guides.

The primary benefit of these guidelines is a consistent experience for readers as well as all members of the publishing team. Guidelines minimize the number of times the team has to reinvent the wheel when they assign, write, edit, and publish. Consistency does not mean boring, however. Cheeky writing full of attitude may appear to be written off the cuff. More often cheekiness is the result of deliberate writing and editing choices defined well before the writing happens.

For a small business, writing and editing guidelines could be the Associated Press Style Guide and printouts of a few articles that serve as best practice examples. Large publishing teams might document and publish a style guide with extensive examples and links to resources for the team to follow and consult as needed. They also might create and maintain a large glossary as copy edit decisions are made over time.

Ideas for Web Publishing Best Practices

In addition to an editorial calendar and guidelines for writing and editing content, here are some ideas for best practices specifically for web publishing:

Include author name with link to short bio. A reader of this website sent me an email stating that while I had written what appeared to be a useful article, he could not trust my article because he did not know the author or their background. Until he had that information, he insisted most readers would dismiss my article. Being raised Catholic, my first response was to assume guilt and fix the problem. Further reflection, however, led me to the conclusion that he was right. The author bio is an important bit of context needed in any publication but especially on the web where facts and lies can appear equally credible.

Include Publication Date. I see a lot of content on the web that lacks a publication date. My hunch is that the content is evergreen, useful at any date or time, and the site publisher is afraid dating their piece would make the content appear old. Dated content, in turn, would compel the publisher to replace the content, update the content, or add new content. I would argue, however, that publication date is as critical a piece of context as author information and for the same reason: it increases credibility. Issues about content freshness can be handled easily as noted in the next idea.

Include Changes section at bottom of the content. Except for blurbs or other short content pieces, every bit of content should have a heading at the bottom titled “Changes To This Content” (or similar language). If there are no changes, the heading should be followed by a sentence, “No updates at this time” or similar language. In addition, when you do update the content, be sure to put a single sentence at the top of the content that says, in effect, “Changes to this content are noted at the bottom.” This approach will allow you to provide publication date as context, a mechanism to easily note to readers what content has been updated, and take advantage of the immediacy of the web. Specifically, maintaining a change list allows you to expand your content easily over time.

Pay Attention to Version Control. If several people share an editorial calendar, keeping track of the most current version can become painful. Look at using Google Docs spreadsheet. Or ask the IT group to set up something that puts the file in a central location online and lets you track edits to your calendar over time. For individuals, obviously, this is a fairly easy problem to solve: always put the date in your calendar file name when you create a new version, for example, my-calendar-2010-0701.xls works.

Media Journalism vs. Corporate Journalism

I would end this piece by commenting on the perceived differences between content published by media outlets and content published by corporations and businesses. Typically, corporate journalism and writing is considered to be a pale version of the more rigorous and transparent standards followed by media journalists. Media journalists are supposed to be better trained, more thorough, and more fierce than a Director of Communications writing articles for an internal newsletter or website.

Some of this is true, of course. But much of it is not.

While it is true that media journalists are trained to fact check and to be skeptical, these benefits can be undermined by deadlines and subtle issues such as the perceived priorities of different beats. White House reporters, for example, see their stories on the front page of their papers more often than reporters covering the state house. Important stories at the state house level can be buried beneath comparatively less valuable stories from the national level. Reading several different media outlets on the web also quickly shows reporters often omit critical details reported elsewhere. It is unclear if these omissions happen due to deadlines, laziness, or the journalist’s ability (or inability) to refute (or confirm) facts. Readers are left to wonder which reported facts are true.

At the same time, corporate journalists and editors I have worked with realize fact based reporting of corporate activities reads better and is better received than watered down writing. Employees buy into organizational changes, for example, if facts are reported in detail with context that relates to their job situation. They don’t buy in if change is presented with boilerplate happy talk. And there may be little difference between a corporate journalist who does not offend their CEO in print and a media journalist whose editors achieve the same result (intentionally or not) in editing their stories.

Bottomline, an editorial calendar and guidelines for writers and editors are only a start. It is equally important to pursue content that is factually accurate, fully in context, relevant to your readers, and timely. If you’re a corporate journalist or writer, for example, don’t assume your standards have to be lower than media journalists. Force your editors to cut you back rather than self-edit. That’s the only way to ensure you publish good content and make the most of your editorial publishing process.

Learn More about Editorial Calendars

There are many online resources for writers, journalists, and editors. I have listed the most basic resources a small business might need to use to develop an editorial calendar and process to publish content.

Editorial Calendar Process (Some with Templates)

Save Time & Stress – Blog Editorial Calendar Template

Both the article and the template are the best I’ve found online over the years. Some of the ideas in this article come from this source, for example, including performance data for each story you publish and how to organize tabs in your editorial calendar spreadsheet. However, I’ve not included all her ideas and it is well worth reading yourself. Note that, like other templates, the left hand columns are the same (e.g. Title, Author) so you can copy/paste one or more rows of stories to the next tab in the spreadsheet with little fuss.

Creating an Editorial Calendar for a Blog

Short article has some great ideas to organize blog content into types of content. Her spreadsheet is fairly simple, however, which may or may not work for larger groups.

Editorial Calendar Template

My spreadsheet editorial calendar template that incorporates most of the ideas in this article. Note that, like other templates, the left hand columns are the same (e.g. Title, Author) so you can copy/paste one or more rows of stories to the next tab in the spreadsheet with little fuss.

Build Your Blog’s Traffic with an Editorial Calendar

The post and template has a blog focus but it could be adapted for a small business brochure site and email newsletter publishing.

Pattern Your Audience: How Editorial Calendars Can Increase Your Readership

No templates but some great ideas for organizing content into recurring features that train readers to show up at your site on a more regular basis.

How to Create an Editorial Calendar for Your Blog

A good video about how to create editorial calendars with a calendar instead of a spreadsheet.

How to Create and Use an Editorial Calendar

Excellent example of a simple approach to manage an email newsletter and website.

Editorial Calendar Documentation

Google Docs

Create and share an Excel spreadsheet for your editorial calendar. Another benefit: it’s always online in case you find yourself somewhere without your computer but you do have a hotel computer and an internet connection

WordPress Plugin: Editorial Calendar

WordPress Plugin: Edit Flow

After light testing, both of these plugins appear worth a try if you publish with WordPress. Edit Flow appears to be more elaborate and configurable while Editorial Calendar works within each Add/Edit a Post page. Both these plugins appear well supported and under development. As with any software, pay attention to date last updated. Orphaned software can work fine. But it also means any problems are yours to sort out.

Editorial Copy Resources

Associated Press Style Guide
http://fredericksburg.com/FreeLanceStarCompany/Newsrooms/newsroom/FLSstyle/flsstyle.htm;;

RefDesk Grammar, Usage, and Style Resources
http://www.refdesk.com/factgram.html;;

Rensselaer: Revising Prose
http://www.rpi.edu/web/writingcenter/revise.html

Updates To This Article

This article has been published online since 2003. Here are the most recent changes:

• Completely rewrote article to reflect changes to the subject matter area since publication, including links to additional resources for templates and WordPress plugins. (August 20, 2010)

Here’s a great example.

I’m not an accountant. Managing my business accounting has been the only unsolved business problem that has plagued me for the past eight years. I’ve tried Quicken software four different times since the 1990s for our personal finances and fail every time: it’s too complicated to reconcile the bank statements with what’s in Quicken and the interface is clunky. Quicken Online worked better but $35 a month was too steep for me. I had looked at Mint and a few other services but, at the time, they didn’t have the feature set I need.

A few months ago, at a Refresh NYC meeting, we got talking about taxes and managing your books to make it easier to work with your accountant. Someone mentioned WorkingPoint. They used it to manage their fairly complex consulting business and a small retail business. Best of all: it costs $10 a month.

So I signed up for the free version first. One huge hurdle with these online bookkeeping services, and Quicken software on your computer, is that it takes time to put enough of your business in to really test the system. To see what makes sense and what does not work. It was fairly easy to input a couple invoices in WorkingPoint, then record payment. Adding client names and addresses proved equally easy and obvious. Then I added a few expenses. That worked well. My only real confusion had to do with the idea of accounts: I’m not an accountant and the lingo escapes me. The WorkingPoint help turns out to have a lot of plain English descriptions of the accounting process which helped me understand better.

WorkingPoint worked so well that I signed up for the $10 a month account and made the time on a weekend to add in my six months of invoices, expenses, and other data for this year. Besides being easy to use, I also created a second user account for my wife so she can stop asking me when different projects will pay off, what’s in the pipeline, and all the mundane data needed to mesh a business life with a personal life.

WorkingPoint turns out to have exactly the broad range of bookkeeping features I need to manage my businesses easily. For a great price. Some of what they offer:

• Record and categorize transactions, adjust/close activities
• Invoice customers and send by email or snail mail
• Manage business expenses
• Reporting for financials and taxes
• Manage customer contact information
• Manage cash and inventory
• Import and match transactions from your bank account

Their feature set appears to be driven mostly by their feedback forum where subscribers can vote for different features. They’ve recently added the ability to track recurring payments, for example, a fairly rare capability but important to track income for my online publishing service.

While the feature set is comprehensive for my needs, I’m most impressed by how they solve common problems people have when they do their bookkeeping. In the past month, for example, they added the ability to connect to your business bank accounts and then reconcile to your Working Point entries with your imported bank entries. I expected the clunky Quicken approach where you stare at a checkbook and try to figure out which items might be the same. Instead, Working Point surrounds each entry with a set of obvious links to import the data, never import, and ignore. Even better, if Working Point finds an entry for the same amount and around the same date, they add a message and link to let you quickly match the Working Point entry with your imported entry from your bank. It’s not always a match but it is far easier to import data.

Is WorkingPoint perfect? Not exactly. The Profit/Loss widget on the dashboard never seems to record money I take in until a month later, a problem that may be mine, something that is inscrutable to me. Which is no big deal because I use the other more robust reporting to see what invoices are outstanding, for example, or how much I’ve made the past month or quarter. People with a retail business might find WorkingPoint a work in progress with some features that need to be added. But WorkingPoint has a great customer support mechanism to handle ideas to improve their service. And they act on those ideas: that’s how they added the ability to import and reconcile their data with data from your bank.

Their Facebook fan page also turns out to have useful information for me as a small business owner. I click more on their stuff than I do other businesses. But the real benefit, aside from having the perfect cost and feature set for my needs, is that it is easier for me to keep my business organized. Once or twice a week I login to record expenses. And when checks come in, I login and record the income. When my wife asks me to update her on my cash flow, that’s easy, too: I tell her to login and find out.

Bottomline, if you’re like me and have struggled with how to manage your bookkeeping in a simple way, or you don’t like the solution you currently use, I highly recommend you look at WorkingPoint. It’s a great combination of features, and ecosystem to manage improvements, and a source of useful information about the whole problem of how to run a business and have a little fun. Not only have I solved a nagging problem. I actually make more money because doing the books is not longer painful. It’s easier to sit down and invoice. The reporting features also create a positive feedback loop to encourage me to make the most of the work I do.

Email newsletters have been separate marketing channels from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. This week, MailChimp has taken a great stride forward by adding Facebook Like buttons and other integration of social media into email campaigns. For example, you can use their Facebook application to integrate email signups with your Facebook fan page.

Their new Social Pro plugin syncs your email list with the Facebook social graph. It shows what social networks subscribers are on, who’s following you on twitter, rank subscribers by influence, and more. These additions help marketers understand their audiences better so they can refine their offers and drive conversions and sales.

Integration of email newsletters, which still yields significant customer actions relative to other forms of marketing, with social media, which yields significant details about the demographics and preferences of customers, is a huge win for marketers. However, the audience is limited to people who feel comfortable enough with Facebook privacy controls to expose their personal data. MailChimp goes as far as you can go to connect the email marketing and social media marketing channels.

The MailChimp blog has the details. They also have a guide to their social media capabilities. And it’s all done with the usual MailChimp tongue in cheek style (although hopefully their monkey has not been fired: they’ve moved more towards a 1950s design aesthetic and away from cute mouthy spokesmonkeys).

URLs

a href=”http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/mailchimp-v5-2-is-coming/” target=”_blank”>http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/mailchimp-v5-2-is-coming/
http://downloads.mailchimp.com/guides/MailChimp_LetsGetSocialGuide.pdf

When Microsoft decided to use its older HTML rendering software from Word in Outlook, as the means to display HTML email, some key HTML email functionality disappeared. In particular, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 do not display background images, which is used extensively in many email designs. They did in earlier versions of Outlook. At the same time, GMail has never fully displayed background images.

Campaign Monitor has an article, Add a Background Image to your Email in Two Simple Steps that describes two small technical fixes to make GMail and Microsoft Outlook 2007/2010 display background images. While they include a traditional CSS style declaration, most likely their fix only works with inline styles because GMail, in particular, strips out all but inline CSS. Be sure to cut up the Campaign Monitor CSS definitions and put them in the right place(s) in your HTML email.

URLs:

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/3170/adding-background-images-to-your-email-in-two-simple-steps/

“If you can make a solid design in black, white, and shades of gray, it will often allow you to translate your design to almost any color combination—as long as that color combination maintains the same level of contrast between the visual elements. Create your sketches and roughs in black and white and then create comps in grayscale. This workflow not only allows your mind to stay focused on the hierarchy of elements on the page, preventing you from getting hung up on color choices, it also helps you to create a design that uses proper contrast.”

From A List Apart. Geared to help designers create accessible websites that color blind people can see, her approach is excellent for any design for any audience. Includes links to other resources, for example, GrayBit, an online service that will translate any site into grey scale, Color Scheme Designer, a site to help create color palettes and show how different colorblind conditions see your palettes, and Check My Colours.

URLs

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/contrast-is-king/
http://graybit.com/main.php
http://colorschemedesigner.com/
http://www.checkmycolours.com/

“Harrison Tang cares about his privacy and takes elaborate steps to protect it. Your privacy is another matter.

Tang, 27, is co-founder of a “people search” website called Spokeo, which serves up extraordinarily detailed profiles of pretty much everyone — including you — gleaned from online directories, databases and social networks.

Don’t take my word for it. Do a search for your name at Spokeo’s website (www.spokeo.com).”

From the LA Times. You can remove your listing from their service by using the Spokeo Privacy page. What is most disturbing is that they charge money to aggregate data about individuals. It’s one thing to have to search to find information about people. It’s another to pull that data into one place then charge money. But it’s also not unexpected when, in the US, at least, there are few rules about online privacy when it comes to businesses harvesting personal data.

URLs

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fiw-lazarus-20100608,0,7917251,full.column
http://www.spokeo.com
http://www.spokeo.com/privacy

“There are three basic approaches to conducting quick remote interface tests, whether you’re testing live websites, designs, wireframes, or prototypes. The approach you take will depend mostly on how you feel about people—do you want to talk to users face-to-face, or use one of the many new UX tools and let computers gather the information automatically?”

From A List Apart. Really practical and thorough with lots of links, funny (choose your usability test method based on whether or not you like talking to people), and mentions my favorite free screen sharing application, Adobe Acrobat ConnectNow, that works with any operating system, Macs included.

URLs

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/quick-and-dirty-remote-user-testing/
http://www.adobe.com/acom/connectnow/

CMO.com a few months ago, published a chart that describes the social media channels most used by businesses. According to research CMO.com and BazaarVoice did recently, CMOs Plan for Higher Social Media Measurability in 2010, 81% of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) plan to link their revenues to their social media efforts. Tracking ROI, whether dollars earned or simply business impact, is a big step forward for business use of social media.

While the CMO.com chart is interesting, and a good high level introduction, it’s missing Four Square, Yelp, and other location based social media that retailers can use to great effect. Retailers and local businesses have long found it difficult to get noticed and recommended online by their customers. LinkedIn works great for some businesses, and individuals, but not so well for your local flower shop. Four Square and similar services are perfect for the millions of these small local businesses.

If you’re interested in charts about social media, what social media is and how it operates, HubSpot has a great post, 22 Educational Social Media Diagrams. For example, the first chart groups social media outlets by type of activity, commenting versus creating content versus joining, a point of view that had not occurred to me. Plus at the bottom of their post is a link to PowerPoint and PDF versions of 50 more charts. Perfect for presentations to sell in social media projects.

URLs

http://www.cmo.com/social-media/cmos-guide-social-media-landscape
http://www.bazaarvoice.com/blog/2009/12/17/cmos-plan-for-higher-social-media-measurability-in-2010/
http://www.foursquare.com
http://www.yelp.com
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/6005/22-Educational-Social-Media-Diagrams.aspx

The Programmers and Web Designers resource pages have been updated with these topics: Photoshop PSD to HTML, Hosted Forms, CSS Frameworks, and Text Editors and IDEs. Please check them out. If you find useful tools or services, let us know!

Please note a version of this article is published at SitePoint which includes links to related articles on their site. This article has been online since 2004.

Changes to this article are noted at the bottom of this article.

This article brings you up to date on how best to code HTML email so that it will display well in most email software. It provides an exhaustive overview of how to code html email newsletters (even in Outlook) with links to free html email templates, CSS compatability tables, services that test your html email, and much more. This article strives to provide a comprehensive overview of all possible resources online compared to other articles on this topic which may be vendor-specific or focus on one aspect of how to code html email, for example, testing CSS styles across email software clients.

Here are some quick links if you only need specific information from this article:

• The Building Blocks
• Step 1: Use HTML Tables for Layout
• Step 2: Add in CSS Styles
• Step 3: Add HTML Email Best Practices
• Step 4: Code for GoogleMail, LotusNotes, and Outlook 2007
• FAQs: Create HTML Email in Outlook, Background Images, Create Anchor Links in Email, Add Video to HTML Email
• “How to Code HTML Email” Slide Presentation
• Where to Learn More about Coding HTML Email, Including Free HTML Email Templates
• Changes to this article

The Building Blocks

Whether you use a template or hand code (my preference), there are two key building blocks for html email:

• HTML tables control the design layout and some presentation
• Inline CSS controls presentation, for example, colors for backgrounds and fonts

The quickest and easiest way to see how HTML tables and inline CSS interact within an HTML email is to download templates from Campaign Monitor and MailChimp, two email delivery services that provide free templates (links are below in the Where to Learn More section).

When you open up their templates, you will notice several things we’ll discuss in more detail later:

• CSS style declarations appear below the BODY tag, not between the HEAD tags. If a template has CSS declarations above the BODY tag, it’s simply a convenience: the email delivery service (Campaign Monitor, in particular) moves these declarations down to inline styles as part of their email delivery process.
• No CSS shorthand is used: instead of “font: 12px/16px Arial, Helvetica” break this shorthand into its components of font-family, font-size, and line-height.
• SPANs and DIVs are used sparingly to achieve specific effects while HTML tables do the bulk of the layout work.
• CSS style declarations are basic with no hacks required.

Step 1: Use HTML Tables for Layout

Determining the layout design is the first step in coding an html email. Single column and two-column layouts work best for emails because they control the natural chaos that results when a lot of content is pushed into such a small space as email.

• With a one column layout, typically there is a header that contains a logo and some (or all) navigation links from the parent website. Below that are the intra-email links to stories further down in the email. At the bottom of one column layouts are the footer (often with links that repeat the top navigation) and detailed unsubscribe instructions.
• Two-column email layouts also use a header and footer. They also typically use a narrow side column to contain features and links to more information. The wider column holds the main content of the email.
• Promotional emails follow the same rules but with much less content and links. They often include one to two messages and sometimes one big image with small explanatory text and links below the image.

No matter how your email is designed, the most important content (or reference to that content) should appear at or near the top of the email design, so it is visible immediately when a reader opens your email. The top left of an email often is the first place people look when they open an email.

All of these email layout possibilities can be coded easily with html tables to divide up the space into rows and columns. Using html tables also helps with problems caused by different email software and how they can read the same email code differently.

The basic approach follows these steps in coding the email layout with html tables:

• For a two-column layout, create one table each for the header, the center two content columns, and the footer. That’s three tables. Wrap these tables into another table that “wraps” or “frames” the other tables. Use the same approach for one column layouts except the content table has one column. This approach helps with email designs that break images into multiple table cells. Otherwise, a single table with TD rows for header (with colspan=2 if the design is two column), content, and footer should display fine for all but Lotus Notes email software.
• Use the HTML table attributes within the TABLE and TD tags, for example, to set the table border=0, the valign=top, the align=left (or center, if that is the design), cellpadding=0, cellspacing=0, and so on. This primarily helps older email readers to display the html email in a minimally-acceptable way.
• Set the HTML table border=1 to help debug any problems with the internal alignment of TR and TD tags in development. Then change it back to border=0 for testing and production.

While this approach might offend purists who prefer to code to the latest standards, you do not have to be a complete primitive. No matter how badly LotusNotes displays html email, resorting to HTML FONT tags is not required (although use of FONT tags cannot hurt, honestly). And while Outlook 2007′s HTML rendering engine is less than perfect, it does display basic HTML tables just fine.

Step 2: Add in CSS Styles

Once the email layout is coded as a set of nested HTML tables, the next step is to add in CSS styles. Here are the steps to follow:

• First, put style information (style=) into the HTML tags, for example, TABLE, TD, P, A, and so on.
• Place the CSS STYLE declaration right below the HTML BODY tag. Do not use the CSS STYLE declaration in the HTML HEAD tags as is done when coding web pages. Google Mail, in particular, looks for STYLE anywhere in the email and (helpfully) deletes it. And don’t bother to use CSS LINK to a stylesheet. Google Mail, Hotmail, and other email software ignore, modify, or delete these external references to a stylesheet.
• For the frame table, the one that contains the header, content, and footer tables, style the table width at 98%. It turns out that Yahoo! mail needs the 1% cushion on either side to display the email properly. If side gutters are critical to the email design, set the width at 95% or even 90% to avoid potential problems. Of course, the tables inside the frame (wrapper) table are set for 100%.
• Put general font style information in the table TD closest to the content. This can mean repetitive style declarations in multiple TD cells. Put font style definitions into heading (e.g. H1, H2), P, or A tags only when necessary.
• Use DIVs sparingly to float small boxes of content and links to the right or left inside a table TD cell. Google Mail appears to ignore the CSS Float property but Yahoo! and Hotmail work fine. Outlook 2007 ignores floats. Sometimes it is better to code a more complex table layout than rely on the Float property. Or, since email is easy to clutter, ask that the design put the floated content in the narrow side column. Floats are the one part of an email design that might require the design be reworked.
• While DIVs appear to be barely useful, SPANs appear to work almost every time because they work inline. In some cases, SPANs can be used to position text above or below content, not just to color or re-size type.

If you download and study the email templates from Campaign Monitor and Mail Chimp, you’ll see they treat the frame table, the one that wraps the tables that hold content, as if it were the HTML BODY tag. Campaign Monitor calls it “BodyImposter” which is a great way to think about the frame or wrapper table. From a CSS perspective, the frame table does what the HTML BODY would do if services like Google Mail didn’t disable or ignore the BODY tag.

Step 3: Best Practices

There are several best practices to follow to ensure your email code works well.

With the html email coded as described above, the next step is to test the email in a variety of email software. Often this will identify problems that require workarounds.

The first test tools to use are the Firefox and Internet Explorer web browsers. If the email displays well or perfectly in both browsers, chances are good that testing the email in Outlook, Yahoo!, Google Mail, and other services will reveal only minor problems. You also might want to use the Internet Explorer 6 web browser to test for Outlook 2003 which uses its rendering engine (see Resources below if you need to download IE6).

Once the email appears fine in the two web browsers, use an email delivery service to send the email to a range of test email accounts. Ideally this should include accounts with Yahoo!, Hotmail, and Google Mail.

Which test accounts are used, however, should be determined by the domain names in the email address list of people who will receive the email. For example, if there are few or no AOL subscribers on this list, then it may be a waste of time and money to set up an AOL email account.

Here are the most common code tweaks that are found in this test phase:

• Sometimes a switch from percentage widths to fixed widths is needed. While this is not optimal, because people can and do resize their email windows when reading, sometimes using a fixed width is the only way for a layout to display properly in multiple email software.
• If there is a spacing issue with the columns in the email design, first tweak the cellpadding and cellspacing attributes of the HTML tables. If that does not work, use CSS margin and padding attributes. HTML spacing works better with older email software than spacing with CSS.
• Image displacement can occur when a TD cell is closed right below the IMG tag. This is an ancient HTML problem. Putting the right after (on the same line as) the IMG tag eliminates the annoying and mystifying 1 pixel gap.

In addition, the following best practices are recommended:

• Avoid javascript. Most email software disables javascript.
• If an image is cut up and spread across several HTML table cells, test the email with many test accounts. Sometimes it looks great in Outlook but shifts by 1 pixel or more in Hotmail and other services. Also consider putting the image as a background image on a new html table (set the background= value to the URL of your image) that encases all the table rows and columns that would display parts of your background image; sometimes this achieves the same effect as cutting an image up but with less code and better results. Note that Outlook 2007 does not display background images. Be sure to test your email code with your target email software. (Campaign Monitor has published a solution to the background problem with Outlook 2007 and 2010, Add a Background Image to your Email in Two Simple Steps.)
• If you use background images, use the HTML table attribute background= instead of CSS. It works more consistently across email software, for example, GMail.
• Store the email images on a web server, preferably in a folder separate from website images, for example, in /images/email not /images. And don’t delete them. Some people open emails weeks or months later, the same way people use bookmarks to return to websites.
• Be sure all your images use the alt, height, and width parameters. This helps with Google Mail as well as when a reader has their images turned off. However, Outlook 2007 does not recognize the alt= parameter.
• Use the target=”_blank” attribute for the HTML A tags so that people reading with a webmail service don’t have the requested page appear within their webmail interface.
• While a 1×1 pixel image can be used to force spacing to create a precise email layout, spammers use 1×1 pixel images to determine if their email has been opened.
• Avoid a big image above the fold in the email. This is another classic spammer practice and can increase the likelihood an email will be tagged as spam.

My final test is to view the HTML email with images turned off. Outlook and some other email software set images off by default, to prevent spammers from knowing your email address is active. I set images off in my code by using my editor’s search and replace to delete some part of the src= URLs in my file.

Make sure your email content displays fine without images. For example, if you use a background image to provide a background color with white font color over it, make sure the default background color for that part of the HTML table is dark, not white. Also be sure your alt=, height=, and width= parameters are set for images so they can help readers understand your content without images. Turning off your images will help you catch these issues and ensure the HTML email will display effectively if people see your email with images off.

Once the html email is tweaked so that it displays well or perfectly in the test email accounts, the next step is to go through a checklist. Verify that

• The From address displays properly (as a name, not a bare email address)
• The subject line is correct
• The contact information is correct and visually obvious
• The top of the email has the text, “You received this email because … Unsubscribe instructions are at the bottom of this email.”
• There is text asking readers to add your From address to their email address book
• The top of your emails include a link to the web version of your email.

If it is important to know absolutely everything wrong with the html email code, try a service like Browsercam.com or LitmusApp.com. These services show how your HTML and CSS code will display as email or, in the case of Browsercam, as a web page.

Step 4: Coding for GoogleMail, LotusNotes, and Outlook 2007

Google Mail, LotusNotes, and Outlook 2007 present special coding problems. The good news? If you code to account for their oddities, your html email code is more likely to display well in most if not all email software.

Because Google cannot control how senders will code CSS and HTML, they have to take steps to ensure their application displays properly regardless of the code quality of the html email that is displayed.

As a result, Google Mail acts like an artifact of the mid 1990s when web standards were primitive. It takes some work, but it is possible to crack open a Google Mail page and see just how convoluted their approach is to rendering html email.

For one thing, Google Mail deletes any CSS style reference to a set of styles, no matter where it appears in the email. And fonts displayed in html tables have the odd habit of appearing larger than intended no matter how the html email is coded.

Here are coding techniques that appear to work well in Google Mail and older email software:

• Define the background color in a TD cell with bgcolor=, not the CSS style.
• Use the background= attribute in the TD cell for background images, not the CSS. A corollary is that the background image can be made as tall as needed. If the content of an email template might be short or tall depending on the email content, using an extra-tall background image this way lets the email layout height shrink or expand based on the height of the copy from one email to the next. Note, however, that Outlook 2007 ignores background images. (Campaign Monitor has published a solution to the background problem with Outlook 2007 and 2010, Add a Background Image to your Email in Two Simple Steps.)
• If it works better, use the padding style to control margins within a TD cell. The margin style does not work in these cells. Padding does work.
• If a border around a TD cell is needed, Google Mail displays a border when defined in a DIV but not when defined as a border style in a TD tag.
• If a light colored link against a dark background color is needed, put the font definition in the TD cell (so it applies to P and A tags equally) then add a color= style to the A tag.
• If the P and A fonts appear to be different sizes, wrap the A tag in a P tag.
• Google Mail aggressively uses the right column of their interface which squeezes the html email into the center panel. Be sure the padding style in the content TDs is set at 10 pixels all round so text does not smash against the left and right edges.
• When testing an html email with a Google Mail account, it is likely one or more missing font styles in the TD, H1, H2, P, A, and other tags will be found. Inspect every font carefully to make sure Google Mail displays the fonts correctly.

Besides Google Mail, another hazard programmers face when coding email is less obvious: LotusNotes. Many large corporations continue to support and upgrade their Notes installations. As of 2004, IBM reported that 95 million people used Notes. Unfortunately, it is impossible to tell which companies use Notes. So code html emails as described in this article. The more primitive the code, the more likely it will work well, if not perfectly, with Notes.

That said, it is quite possible that Notes will introduce quirks that beggar belief, for example, converting images to their proprietary format. Or Notes will simply ignore flawless basic html in one email but display other html fine in another email.

Here is what apparently helps Lotus Notes display html email:

• Use a frame table that contains all the internal layout tables, for example, for the header, content, and footer. This keeps the email together in one chunk of html. Pieces of the layout are less likely to wander when displayed in Notes.
• Create a gutter around the frame (wrapper) table by setting the width to a percentage and/or using the cellpadding to at least 5.
• Don’t use a style declaration in the head tags. It is the proper way to code to standards, but Notes (like Google Mail) might delete your styles. Rely, instead, on inline styles within the TABLE, TD, H1, H2, P, A, and other tags.
• Use absolute URLs to images stored on a web server. Notes cannot be prevented from converting images, if it does, but using remote images might help.
• Intra page jumps, using named anchors, rarely work in Notes, if ever. It is best to avoid links that jump down the email to a specific piece of content.
• Avoid colspans in the HTML table layouts. Notes apparently only handles basic table layouts, especially older versions of the software.
• Be sure TD cell widths have accurate widths. Unlike web browsers, which automatically make all cells the widest defined width, Notes sizes each TD cell based on its defined width.
• Centering an email layout usually does not work in Notes. Email layouts will have to be left-aligned.

Using these techniques for Google Mail and Lotus Notes also will ensure your emails display fine in Outlook 2007 with its older HTML rendering engine. Microsoft has published details about what their email software will and won’t display properly (see Resources below for the link). And the Email Standards Project has additional details. They also lobby companies like Microsoft to improve their products.

The bottomline with Outlook 2007, LotusNotes, and Google Mail is that it requires coders to make sure their HTML email code works across most email software. That means simple, standards-compliant code works best in most if not all situations.

Many people who receive email prefer HTML over text for any number of reasons. For programmers, however, the task of coding an HTML email appears both simple and horribly complex. Hopefully this article has described many of the issues and coding strategies that work across email software so that you can code HTML emails effectively.

What is the best idea to take from this article? If there is a choice to be made between a simple coding solution and a more complex solution, simplicity always works better.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to Create HTML Email in Outlook

The basic approach is to create your html email as a separate html file and then create a signature file and use your html email as the signature file. Then you open a new email message and add the new signature file. This prevents Outlook from helpfully converting all your precious html code into text.

To create a signature file in Outlook:

1. Select Tools from the top menus, then Options, then the Mail Format tab in the Options pop-up that will appear.
2. Down on the lower right of the Mail Format tab is a Signatures button. Click that button and a Create Signature pop-up will appear.
3. Click the New button on the Create Signature pop-up and a Create New Signature pop-up appears. Give your new signature a name and select Use this File as a Template and browse to your HTML email.

Then create a new email message, click in the body of your email message, select Insert from the mail dropdown menu and Signature then your new signature file.

People usually ask this question because they want to send html email from their internet account. Don’t. Unless you know every person on your email list, too many bad things can happen if someone tags your email as spam. If you send email through your business domain name, for example, all your email will be tagged as spam. And you will be left to figure out how to get off any blacklists. Even if you know everyone on your list, your internet provider may have a limit to how many messages can be sent and may boot you off their service. It’s far less hassle to pay an email service provider to deliver your email and worry about spam blacklists.

How to Use Background Images in GMail, Lotus Notes, and Other Services

Using images as a background in an html email is problematic. The old way is to carve up your image and divide it among HTML table cells and rows, using the background= setting for the table. You also can put the image in a new html table that encases all the table rows and columns that would display parts of your background image; sometimes this achieves the same effect as cutting an image up but with less code and better results. However, Outlook 2007, Google Mail, Lotus Notes 6, and Live Mail do not display background images easily. Be sure to test your email code with your target email software. Whatever you do, be sure your email design degrades nicely if and when the background image does not display. If you use white text, for example, against a dark image, make the default background color a dark color.

How to Create Anchor Links in an Email

Like image backgrounds, links within an email do not always work. You should test first. Over the years, I have cracked open a few emails with intra-email links and find they use the basic HTML anchor tag to link to a defined name= bookmark. The only oddity I’ve seen is the addition of shape=rect in the anchor name code, as in, <a name=sometag shape=rect> But this was in an email full of images.

How to Add Video to HTML Email

It is difficult but possible to add video to your html emails. Campaign Monitor has a great article, “HTML5 and video in email“, that covers all the steps to make video available within email software clients that can display video while degrading well for email software that cannot display video in an html email. Their article includes test results across many email clients, as well as comments with more insights and results.

“How to Code HTML Email” Slide Presentation

I recently presented this information in a slide presentation, if it is useful:

My presentation also included a one-sheet with resources for coding HTML email newsletters.

Where to Learn More

Besides this article, these online resources should be very helpful:

Email Standards Project

http://www.email-standards.org/
Probably the best start point for understanding exactly how different email software complies with HTML and CSS. They also maintain an acid test they use to compare compliance across email software. And you can participate to help improve standards.

Free HTML Email Templates

http://campaignmonitor.com/resources/templates.aspx
http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/html_email_templates/
Both email delivery services actively test their templates over time with different email software. However, there are subtle differences to note. Campaign Monitor has its STYLE declaration within the HEAD tag while Mail Chimp does not. Be sure to test your final HTML code with whatever services are used by recipients in your email list.

Plain Text Email Design Guidelines

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/plain-text-templates.aspx
This article has a number of simple ways to make text emails easier to scan.

Blocked Email Images

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3413471
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/archives/2005/11/email_design_guidelines_for_20.html
From 2004, the ClickZ article shows how major email software compares for blocked images and preview panes. The Campaign Monitor article goes into greater detail with actual examples and ideas how to combat default image off rendering of your emails, as well as designing your email to look okay in preview panes.

Word 2007 HTML and CSS Rendering Capabilities in Outlook 2007

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338201.aspx
The official Microsoft description of what Outlook 2007 will and will not render for HTML and CSS. Includes a link to a validator that works in Dreamweaver, as well as Microsoft editing tools.

A Guide to CSS Support in Email

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/archives/2007/04/a_guide_to_css_support_in_emai_2.html
Campaign Monitor, an email service provider, has taken Xavier Frenette’s excellent work documenting CSS performance in a few email clients and expanded it to include Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! and Windows Live Mail, as well as for the PC they cover Outlook 2003 and Outlook Express, Lotus Notes, and Thunderbird and for the Mac they cover Mac Mail, Entourage, and Eudora.

MailChimp Email HTML Coding/Delivery Guide

http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/email_marketing_guide.phtml
Lots of great information about all aspects of html email, including how spam filters work.

CSS Support in HTML Emails of Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Gmail by Xavier Frenette

http://www.xavierfrenette.com/articles/css-support-inwebmail/
This is excellent research and style by style results that show how these three webmail services display CSS.

Secrets of HTML Email Series

http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=listarticles&secid=16
Some of this information is old but they have a good piece on Lotus Notes.

Lotus Notes Trial Software

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/downloads/
Free downloads of their latest software if thoroughly testing an email with the Notes client software is needed.

HTML Email and Web Page Testing Services

http://www.mailchimp.com MailChimp Inbox Inspector
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/testing/ Browsercam also has updated their service to display your pages at a variety of screen resolutions.
https://browserlab.adobe.com/ Adobe BrowserLab currently is free and available anywhere with a modern browser. It’s easy to use and displays the full range of bad browsers, specifically, IE6 and IE7. But it also shows Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
http://www.browsercam.com
http://www.litmusapp.com
Test compatiblity of your web pages with a variety of web browsers and operating systems. For email, Browsercam simply shows you all the warts in your html code, even though your email might work fine in Notes, Google Mail, and other difficult email software environments. Litmus shows how your email appears in email software.

Best Practices For Bulletproof E-Mail Delivery

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/10/16/best-practices-for-bulletproof-e-mail-delivery/
Excellent overview with some interesting ideas, resources, and details, for example, sending emails on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 2-3 p.m. That mirrors my experience for lists with business email addresses (people come back from lunch and do email before meetings or getting back to work). The best way to ensure delivery, however, is to use email inspection services provided by email delivery vendors: it’s their job to keep up with what works best to deliver emails.

Testing Internet Explorer 6 Web Browser

Microsoft’s Expression Web SuperPreview lets you see how your email (or web pages) look in software that uses the Microsoft web browser engine. Unfortunately, the Preview portion is not free. You have to buy the whole package of Expression Web 3 software. Adobe’s Browserlab site is free and might be a better option to check small changes and validate your html email displays fine.

Standalone Internet Explorer 6 Web Browser

http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE
This free software lets you run install and run IE6 and IE7 without causing conflicts. With Vista and now Windows 7, this only works at installing IE6 because Windows only lets you have one IE running at a time. Better to use BrowserLab to test against email clients that use the IE6 or IE7 html rendering engine. Also, Microsoft’s Expression Web Super Preview is an easier and better option for the future.

Changes to This Article

This article has been published and maintained since 2004. Here are the most recent changes:

• Updated references to background images to include a Campaign Monitor solution to the background problem with Outlook 2007 and 2010 and GMail, Add a Background Image to your Email in Two Simple Steps. (July 15, 2010)
• Embedded slides from a presentation I gave recently on How to Code HTML Email Newsletters. It included a one-sheet with resources for coding HTML email newsletters. (June 15, 2010)
• Based on a comment, clarified the reason you might see CSS styles above the BODY tag open in some email templates. The email delivery service that provides the templates moves these styles down into inline styles as part of the delivery process. Added link to Best Practices For Bulletproof E-Mail Delivery article in the Learn More section directly above. (May 26, 2010)
• Added link to Microsoft’s Expression Web SuperPreview software that shows how your html email looks in older email software that uses the Microsoft web browser engine. (February 15, 2010)
• Added link to Adobe’s BrowserLab online service that, like BrowserCam, lets you see how your web page (in this case, an html email) displays in older browser technology like IE6 and IE7. This is useful for sending HTML email to older AOL email clients. Also added the FAQ about how to add video to HTML email. (November 13, 2009)
• Added intra-page links to help people who arrive here from search engines. Also added link to MailChimp’s HTML Email Inbox Inspector service. Added FAQs. (January 23, 2009)
• Updated link to MailChimp’s free HTML templates. Their URL changed without any automated redirection. (February 23, 2009)

“Google Grants is a unique in-kind donation program awarding free AdWords advertising to select charitable organizations. We support organizations sharing our philosophy of community service to help the world in areas such as science and technology, education, global public health, the environment, youth advocacy, and the arts.”

From Google Grants. The value of their grant varies and depends on how the non-profit uses their grant. Google says it is about $300/month. But the goal is to allow non-profits to use AdWords to get donations, volunteers, and other good things.

If you’re a non-profit that qualifies and is accepted, or you have a non-profit who meets their criteria, this could be an excellent program. There is no end date to the grant as long as the non-profit actively keeps up their AdWords account.

“No single visual element has more effect on a viewer than color. Color gets attention, sets a mood, sends a message. But what colors are the right ones? The key is that color is relational. Colors don’t exist in a vacuum but are always seen with other colors. Because of this, you can design a color-coordinated document based on the colors in any element on the page. Here’s how.”

From Before & After magazine. It’s part of their process to collect email addresses so you have to provide an email address to get the document. However, I find their monthly how-to emails often interesting, not pushy.

This article shows a series of basic steps you can follow to take a photograph and extract many different possible color palettes. Picking colors can be hard, especially for business people on a budget. Even with a budget, it helps to know the color picking process if you manage or hire designers. In this case, their article shows how to use colors in one element of a document, a photograph, to then extract palettes from a color wheel. It’s a very good primer on that process.

UPDATE: This document on how to pick colors that work together also works great with an online color wheel to pick analogs, tetrads, and so on. Color Scheme Designer, for example, lets you define an RGB color value (to the lower right of the circle on the left side of their page) and then all its different color relations. Color Scheme Designer also lets you see how your color choices look to color-impaired people. You still have to pick your colors and ensure they work together in a palette, but an online color wheel can make the process faster and easier.

“We’re living in a social media world, and, like it or not, our avatar is often the first impression others get about us as we interact virtually on social networks, blogs, microblogs and other online communities. Our avatars are a representation of our brands — our personal brand or our company’s or organization’s brand. But how many of us are thinking strategically about our avatars?”

From Salon. If you have not figured it out already, the avatar, the small thumbnail sized picture you use on Facebook and LinkedIn, among other places, can say alot about you. This blog post describes six different issues to consider as you pick and change avatars.

“Frustrated by a slow and antiquated computer system, the city of Los Angeles is weighing a plan to replace its e-mail and records retention software with a service provided by Google, a move that could allow the Internet giant to retain sensitive records transmitted by the police and other municipal agencies.

If approved by the City Council, responsibility for protecting the internal data and public records would be shifted from the city to Google, according to a report submitted this week to a council committee that will weigh the proposed $7.25-million contract.”

From the LA Times. A few years ago, there were stories about countries like Brazil promoting open source as an alternative to Microsoft Windows and Office. Now it’s cities talking about using Google’s network and software to replace antiquated software, in this case, GroupWise email. And companies like Motorola and Genentech apparently find Google secure enough to use for their businesses.

In case you’re somewhere on the planet without the internet, today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission that landed men on the moon on July 20, 1969. NASA has a commemorative site with lots of news, pictures, and interactive features.

Most striking, to me, in our age, is that Neil Armstrong, the man who actually stepped on the moon first, has deliberately avoided the public limelight. He doesn’t appear in People magazine every few years by choice. He’s never on TV. Instead, he’s lived out the life he wanted in Ohio. That’s truly odd, and wonderful, in an age that worships and promotes celebrity.

In 1969, personal technology meant a TV, radio, and telephone. Technology like Apollo 11, and mainframe computers, were too expensive and too complex to be run by anyone other than governments and well-funded corporations. Today, of course, personal technology includes updated versions of TV, radio, and phone but it also includes a host of internet-related services that most people take for granted. Especially if you have a phone with internet connectivity and a web browser.

While no government has matched what happened 40 years ago today, you could say that instead we created technology that helps billions of individuals. And much of that achievement has been based on the Apollo and other space and science missions. And much of that achievement has been from individuals from many countries who took government created technology, specifically the internet, to create technologies such as Google, eBay, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, open source, and all the rest. We have had the technology revolution promised by Apollo. However, it has happened on earth, not space. And it’s been created and used by millions of people, not carefully selected astronauts.

All that said, as a web designer and coder, chained to computers all day and tormented at times by lousy Microsoft web browsers, my dream job is to herd goats in some mountain village somewhere that has no internet, no phone, no TV, no radio. You have to read books and talk to people to keep amused. You have to be outdoors hiking, swimming, or sitting around and watching the day pass. I would like universal health care, of course, and a professional government. My daughter tells me Norway might be just the ticket.