SiteCore ECM attaching graphics in emails - sitecore

Trying to get started with using ECM 1.3 on a site we have been using CMS 6.5 for about a year now. When building an HTML email to send out, I code the images just as I always have with our old mass email tool to point to published images on our SiteCore CD server (and I've tried including images through SiteCore ECM's own WYSIWYG editor), but when I send the email (either though test or dispatch to a test target audience) the jpeg images come through as attachments. I've read through the ECM documentation, done an incremental site publish before dispatching the message, searched here and the web at large to no avail. Anyone else come across this? Is it a problem with my Target Audience setup or is this just how ECM thinks emails should be sent?
THANKS!

Looks like you have tried most of the stuff, but can you please check:
Base URL - http://localhost/ - The website address used for links in messages and for images, if they are hosted on the website.
Embed Images is True - Whether images are embedded in the message or links to images are inserted.
Hope this answer is of some help.

Related

Google Ad Manager adverts not showing on specific web page, but correct across rest of site

I've been running Google Ad Manager on a client's website - https://www.thewire.co.uk since 2012 without issue until July 2020 when suddenly adverts stopped appearing on the home page, though they still appear on the rest of the site. I did a deep dive into the issue at the time and could find not clear problem or solution. It's not been an issue for most of the last year, but now we need to resolve it.
What's odd is that the adverts appear if I visit the same page via a different URL, eg, https://www.thewire.co.uk/?foo=bar (query string is ignored by server) or https://www.thewire.co.uk/home/ (this is serving the same page from a different uri)
All the adverts we serve are line items we load up to Ad Manager directly - we don't use adsense. We have some in house adverts running which are set to deliver when specific slots aren't loaded, so for instance there is a leaderboard at the top of every page which should always have an advert. MPUs on the right hand column are set to collapse if no advert is picked.
When I check delivery using Ad Manager debug tool I am informed adverts are delivering correctly, and the adverts show. But in normal viewing it is not.
This is happening consistently across browsers, devices and with/without ad blockers installed, and on 'vanilla' systems running on new ISP networks across several countries, which I believe counters out any limits that may be created by cookies and IP addresses or location.
I've scoured the Google Ad Manager settings in case some form of serving block was in place, but I've found nothing, and no notifications of any limitations on our home page URL, so I'm completely stumped as to why.
I've checked the google tags and embed codes on our site and they are all OK - they are pulled from a template which is used consistently across the site, and they obviously work when I look at the same HTML via a different context, which leads me to believe the issue is some blocking in place for the specific https://www.thewire.co.uk url from Google's side.
Has anyone had any similar issue and have advise on how to resolve or able to point me to somewhere in google I can get specific support for this issue? Searches through help and the support forums have turned up nothing.
There are numerous work arounds I could apply (eg an http 301 or 302 redirect / to /home/ ) but I really want to solve the problem, not work round it only for it to arise again.
There's a previous topic on StackOverflow - Google Ads not showing on my home page - but that shows no resolution. So posting this maybe the same issue in case my necromancy on that doesn't work. The solutions linked in the comments on that post are either outdated or don't work.

Sitecore ECM Newsletter: links to site doesn't work from mail Inbox

I've created ECM NewsLetter with some links to site (another Items). In online version of NewsLetter links works fine, but when I've sent this NewsLetter to my email and tried to click on links from my mail Inbox it's displays 404 not found error. Base URL - The default address for all links configured properly. What am I missing? Maybe some configuration? I appreciate any help you can provide.
Several things to check here:
Most likely source is that the campaign item that gets created when the email is sent is not published.
If the campaign is published then check the goal that gets installed as part of the ECM module is published: /sitecore/system/Marketing Center/Goals/Click Email Link
The way to test the source of the problem is to search for the guids in the link querystring - the ec_camp part of the querystringis the guid of the campaign. Search for this in your content delivery web databse - if this exists then check the goal mentioned above. The ec_as value is the value used to identify the user in the analytics db. This wont exist in your sitecore tree.
finally if both of the above work then follow this set up guide and ensure all the relevant ECM pages are installed properly on your CD servers - including the connection string to the ECM service that handles all tracking and link processing: http://www.sitecore.net/learn/blogs/technical-blogs/sitecore-magnified/posts/2013/09/ecm-on-cd.aspx
If you view source are they absolute links? If not one thing we did was create a newsletter device and detect we were coming from ecm. Then we could specify an alternative layout/sublayouts/data sources based on device.
The sublayouts could check if they were coming from a newsletter device and ensure they return all links absolute.
Within the ECM you need to make sure that you are saving and publishing as you move throughout the process of setting up and deploying a message. Once the message is edited, save and publish the message. Before dispatching, you should smart publish the target audience which in turn will re-publish the message. Then, when you dispatch you should see all the images.
This seems to be an issue with the configuration of Email Campaign Manager. Follow these steps
Go to Email Campaign Manager.
Select Content tab.
Check the value of Base URL- default address for all links field.
If it is set to some website URL other than your website URL change it to your website URL.

Sitecore ECM Newsletter: ECM generate different values for links inside message when click on Dispatch and Test button

I have ECM NewsLetter with some links to site (another Items). When I send this Newsletter to my email by click on Dispatch button - links don't work when I click on them from the email inbox. It displays 404 not found error. But in ECM, if I click on Test button and type an email address, then go to inbox - the links works.
Link - when clicked on Dispatch message button looks like: (after ec_camp there's no nulls)
http://www.site.com/sitecore/RedirectUrlPage.aspx?ec_url=mypage.aspx&ec_camp=6CDF958396FE4C6DABBC318860DFA7A3&ec_as=F829E136B63042CB9927100E3C0BF2D1
And link - when clicked on Test button looks like: (after ec_camp there's a lot of nulls)
http://www.site.com/sitecore/RedirectUrlPage.aspx?ec_url=mypage.aspx&ec_camp=00000000000000000000000000000000&ec_as=00000000000000000000000000000000
Why does this happen? Only the last link works. How to generate a proper link when clicked on Dispatch message button? I appreciate any help you can provide.
I'll assume that you have separate CD + CM environments and also that you're using ECM 2.x as well.
If this is the case, we had the same issue and it's apparently a bug in ECM. When you dispatch, the campaign, message, etc are all already created, but they aren't published to the shared Web database automatically. (as one might expect) Sitecore support was able to provide us with a fix for this.
Contact support and reference issue ID 388472.
Also: The zeros are there for the campaignID and automation state when you send the test email so that it doesn't log your test against your actual campaign.
The issue has been fixed in the latest ECM version. I just updated it and tested with Sitecore 7.1. (it is ECM v2.1 rev.140214 ).
Are you having a CM and CD environment? Are you sure that both url's points to the same domain?
Make sure you have the file /sitecore/redirecturlpage.aspx on all your environments. Make sure that the item mypage.aspx is pointing to is actually published.
Don't worry about the zeroes in the ec_camp querystring. These are simply there to trigger a campaign in DMS. It will not cause a 404.

Why in this case google analytics cookie value pairs exist in http request?

When visiting this site:
https://campus.ayy.fi
and submitting the login http POST request,
I found in cookie collection two google analytics related keys: __utma, __utmz.
I searched into the html code and js script for that page and didn't find any evidence that google analytics script is embedded (e.g. "ga.js").
So my question is why there are still google analytics cookies in the request and who added them?
Thank you!
Well after visiting the website mentioned I coudn´t idenfity any http requests to google analytics and also no evidence of the GA code installed on the page.
My assumption is that the "cookie collection" you are reffering to is the collection of cookies on your machine, and if that website has had any GA code installed before and you visited the page, the cookies will stay on your machine for some time (as long as 2 years for _utma and 6 months for _utmz).
The easiest way to check that is to clean your cookies and open the webpage once again. If you really want to digg in, you can use HTTPFox (enable it, click "start" when you visit the page and in the search field type "utm"). In this way, you can see every request beign sent by the webpage. (Although I did use this proccess and there really are no requests to GA).
-Augusto Roselli
Web Analytics - dp6

Pulling Facebook photos onto an external website

I'm doing a job for Company A. I've just built their website in Django but now they want to add a social photo management aspect to the site (in that other people can upload).
The only way I know of doing this (having done it before) is through Flickr. You can set up a group and have it so anybody can add photos to it. And pull out the latest with RSS. But let's be honest, Facebook is far more popular and my client wants this feature heavily used by his clientèle.
They have a Facebook page and the power to open it up so anybody can add their photos to it... But how can I pull those photos back to the website?
Facebook's query language can do this (like the RSS sends data to you from Flickr) for users of FB pages, and there are some Javascripts for making them viewable and interactive on external web pages.
For example:
http://www.codeofaninja.com/2011/06/display-facebook-photos-to-your-website.html
http://www.alexanderinteractive.com/blog/2012/03/display-facebook-photos-on-your-website-with-galleria/
Good luck!
Terry
I'm not sure if this will help, but I recall that the Flock Web Browser had the capability of loading a stream of new videos/photos on the top of the brower's media stream bar - perhaps you can sneak a peek into the inner workings it uses to accomplish this task.
I know that you can start reading the RSS feed of a Facebook Page itself now, perhaps just a little parsing is all you need: http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-pages-rss-2010-01