So I’ve recently started a small newsletter for my family and friends. I can’t rely on social media anymore to keep in touch reliably and this also keeps things more private. I wanted to chat about the process I’ve been through so far and see if anyone else has done something similar/is interested in doing so.
I started by looking at the massive resource list here for possible newsletter providers - but given my lack of back end knowledge and desire not to host my info on a different site I wasn’t into the options. I think eventually I’d love to learn how to set something up through something like send portal - but considering I got half way through set up before realizing I was using linux instructions on a PC I figured it was a bit too out of my depth for now. Since I have a very small mailing list of about 20 or so people I figured for now I can just manually email everything out until I get more comfortable with even the basics of SQL - starting with remembering what SQL stands for (again I am all style and zero substance rn).
Now i can focus on the stuff I’m actually excited about - the content and styling of the newsletter. I’m making my newsletter in Figma through a template I found on Emailify which is extremely user friendly for beginners like me. It has a couple of basic templates for simple element divs so you’re not accidentally designing something email won’t support. It allows 10 emails to be sent before your trial is up. after that point you can export your email template as a pdf. Depending on file size I can either attach the pdf or host it on my site. But during the trial i’m able to do full exports to html with the service hosting my images and text or letting me host them myself. Once I do my first mail out I’ll try to update this post with my experience.
Steps left for me to finish
- Finish designing the styling of my email like typography, colors, extra pictures of clowns etc.
- Test the various methods of sending the newsletter
- Clean up my old blog posts now that I know I’m sending a fresh audience to look at them and make it less obvious that i have adhd and post everything without spell checking my work…
And that’s the story so far! I’d love to get any tips/tutorials/suggestions from people with more experience. My skill level is currently just the basics of html and css. I’m about to start learning Java basics this month but have a bit of understanding from things like dataviewjs in my obisidan lol. I’m really excited about this project and also fuck microsoft outlook for making emails so hard to make. 