Customizing Email Marketing Newsletter - Newsletter

Daniel Maley asked on October 19, 2017 22:29

Hello,

We were hoping to be able to customize the (Newsletter - Newsletter) class in the Email Marketing Module. Unfortunately, this is an installed module and this particular class is not customizable. What is the best approach for allowing our content editors to be able to add additional configuration fields to the Newsletter class such as "Newsletter Description" or "Allow Users to Subscribe to this Newsletter"?

I know you can "unseal" this module with some SQL, however, I have to believe that this is a pretty common requirement for Newsletters and would hate to cause issues with future upgrades by unsealing the module.

I thought about a custom table where our Editors could specify a Newsletter from a dropdown and we could provide the additional fields on the form. However, that process seems confusing as the Custom Tables are a separate application.

Any advice??

Correct Answer

Brenden Kehren answered on October 20, 2017 00:17

My suggestion would be to unseal the module class, make your changes and seal it back up knowing there is a possibility that an upgrade will overwrite the new fields you add. What I'd suggest is having that part of your documentation you hand off to the client, "newsletter customized by adding X fields within the Kentico Email Marketing module". If you unseal it and add your fields, it's not standard practice or best for that matter but it is better than trying to rewrite the whole module or manually add the fields you need/want.

Lastly, I'd really look at the reason to add the additional fields and what business purpose they will serve or if they are just there to help with development purposes. Adding a description field seems a bit overkill, just name your newsletter appropriately. Adding the allow users to subscribe field makes sense although if you don't want users to subscribe, then don't put a subscription form on a page for them to do so.

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Daniel Maley answered on October 20, 2017 15:21

Hi Brenden, thank you for your response! It sounds like unsealing is the best choice based on your answer. The reason we would like the additional fields is because we are creating a "Subscription Center" area of the site where we have a custom Web Part that shows a full list of available newsletters and lets the visitor subscribe/unsubscribe using the check boxes. The description will include info such as frequency of delivery to help the visitor decide if they are interested. We also do no want one-off newsletters to appear in the list so we need a way to differentiate. Thanks again!

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