The Issue
Sometimes it is desirable to have a standard footer section which appears on the bottom of every outgoing message automatically. We can add a function to your listowner interface to support the editing of a footer - but there are significant limitations.
Limitations
If a footer is defined, then it is simply appended to the bottom of each outgoing message. That works fine if and only if the outgoing message is plain text. So if yours is a newsletter list and if it is plain-text only, not HTML, then the footer is added and will be visible to all recipients.
But if you enter an HTML message, that message is enclosed within HTML tags. When the footer text (not in HTML) is then appended to the end of that message, it falls outside the final HTML tag and so will not be displayed by most receiving email clients. It *is* appended, it's just not visible to the recipients. So invisible = unusable.
The same applies when you submit a post to a newsletter list by using the control- address. If your email is HTML (and it almost always is), then your appended footer probably won't be visible to most recipients.
In a similar way, a footer can be added to every post on a discussion list, but because virtually all email clients now default to sending HTML, it will rarely if ever be visible to recipients.
Your Choices
- Use our footer function and publish only plain text messages via the web interface.
- Include your footer in each message as you prepare it and do not use our footer function in the mailing list interface (this is our recommendation).
- Use a footer but understand that it will only appear on "some" messages - those which are plain text.
- For discussion lists, you may use our optional DeMime filter to convert all messages to plain text. In that case a footer will always be visible to recipients.