Choosing an email template
Four looks, from WordPress-plain to fully branded — and which of the colour settings actually apply to the one you picked.
- Beginner
- 5 min read
- Applies to 2.0
The four templates
User Access → Emails → General Settings → Email Template.
| Template | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Default | what WordPress itself sends — unstyled, entirely familiar |
| Enhanced | the same content with proper spacing, headings and a button |
| Branded | a coloured header, your logo, a footer you write, optional social links |
| Plain Text | no HTML at all |
The four template cards, with the branding settings beneath them.
Picking a card tells you what it costs you before you commit: the line under the row changes with the choice, so the trade-off is on screen rather than in this page.
Enhanced is the sensible middle: it reads well in every mail client without asking you to make design decisions. Branded is worth the effort if your members receive mail from you regularly enough to recognise it.
Plain Text is not a downgrade. It arrives intact everywhere, never trips a spam filter on its markup, and for a site whose emails are mostly a link and a sentence it is arguably the right answer.
The branding settings
These sit under the template cards. Which of them do anything depends on the template you chose:
| Setting | Applies to |
|---|---|
| Header colour | Branded |
| Accent colour | Branded — the second colour in the gradient |
| Header style — Solid or Gradient | Branded |
| Background colour | Branded |
| Logo URL | Branded |
| Footer text | Branded — leave empty for the default line |
| Social media links | Branded and Enhanced |
If you set a header colour and nothing changes, check the template: everything in that list except social links belongs to Branded alone. The screen shows the header style only when Branded is selected, for that reason.
Social links
Switch Show social media links in footer on and add your platforms. You can pick from the common ones or add your own with a label and a URL.
Keep the list short. A footer with nine icons in it reads as a newsletter, and these are transactional emails — someone resetting a password does not want a choice of nine places to go instead.
Checking the result
Every row in the User Notifications table has Preview and Send Test. Preview renders the template with sample values; Send Test puts a real one in your inbox, through whatever sending route you have configured.
Test with the template you intend to ship, not the default — the point of the test is to see the thing your members will see.
Coming from version 1.x? The Header Style dropdown offered a third option, Pattern Overlay, which rendered identically to Solid Color. It has been removed. A site that had it selected now gets Solid, which is what it was getting all along.
Something missing or out of date? Tell support.