Creating a CMS for HTML email templates

[Bopjo]

My client wants me to design email templates that can be edited online, like the templates in Constant Contact. The only parts editable by the user would be 2 blocks of text and a logo image. Once all the information is added, the user hits submit and the HTML is composed for previewing online, going back for re-editing, or for downloading or for copy of HTML source code, etc.

I looked into Adobe Contribute, but I'm not sure if that is the solution.

I've read David Power's excellent book "The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS4 with CSS, AJAX and PHP" and think I could possibly use what he teaches to build this system. The text blocks would be simple, but the logo image presents a problem as I don't know how to replace/upload images. This is not covered in DP's book.

Also, the original template page needs to remain the same so it would be available to other users.

Can anyone offer suggestions on how to best approach this project? Is Contribute the answer? If not, how do I program the image replacement feature? Do I use a database?

Thanks in advance for any responses and assistance.

[bregent]

This sounds like your clients wants a custom solution of a CMS that creates/modifies html files on the server. This is not trivial. How much experience do you have with server side scripting?

[Bopjo]

I am comfortable using Dreamweaver's server behaviors and know how to set up a MySQL database, connect to it, and insert, update, delete records. I also know how to display those records on an HTML page. My knowledge of PHP is limited to what I've learned from David Power's books, but I do understand the code and what it does.

The original template page could have a link to "edit this template" that would go to the editable version. The editable content could displayed within text fields that could be modified by the user. When the user submits the form, the data is updated in the database and displayed in all it's updated glory on another page.

Right?

[Nookeen]

I use WordPress with TinyMCE modifications to make sure HTML code is written correctly. Emails are not coded the same way as web pages. Also, I use str_replace and preg_replace within the template to make sure the editor won't have any code that I do not want, for example I take <p align="center">...</p> and replace them with <center>...</center>, and some other modifications that I find fitting due to HTML Email code reqs. If you're not sure how to buffer, find and replace content in WordPress, you could also use a WordPress plugin - Real-Time Find and Replace I believe it's called. I just have many templates so I need custom replacing, this plugin does it for every page. I also installed one of the Multiple Blocks plugins that create multiple blocks within your Page/Post. With that you can create as many editable fields as you need. I send emails manually, but I came accross the code once that actually will allow you to submit your content within the same page, I dont have the link, I found it googling HTML emails and wordpress. You may also look into PHPList emailing software (free) in addition to this. You can plug the final HTML code your browser produces into there and then email it out using their emailing system, since you get more control over your lists and so on. If not I guess you could implement one of the custom fields in WordPress as a email list.