Adding Backgrounds to email?

basil

I would like to write a simple PhP script to open and flat text file (or Comma dilimiated file) containing email addresses, and send an email to those in that list. What I am not sure how to do is add a background image to the email (like I can do if I send it from Outlook Express). Can someone tell me how to to this?

Thanks,
Basil

azkworld

You need to include a header of

Content-Type: text/html in the headers field of your email, and then make the body of your email pretty much any html you want, e.g. (the actual text of body between ---)

<STYLE>
body { background-color: red; text: blue }
</STYLE>

<CENTER>This is blue on red.</CENTER>

Note not to include the HTML, HEAD, or BODY tags, that is, the above is the entire text.
You can also link to external stylesheets, just like from plain html page.

hearn

To add the header simply add it after your message:

<?php

mail("$to", "$subject", "
Hey, this is a message", 
"Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1");

?>

Hope this helps, Cheers.

fizzwizz

The problem with this is it doesn't add a background image.
You can reference an image from your site ... but this breaks if the recipients client disconnects after recieving the email but before the picture has downloaded via http.

Isn't there a way of doing this by making the background image part of the email?

Weedpacket

Don't tell me you're one of those people who stick background images in emails. I find emails with such things are guaranteed to be spam.

It's a hairily tedious job; I'm not sure I'm up to describing it, but here's an example of an email with embedded images (including a background). To cut a long story short (and make a short email long), it's a multipart MIME type (in which one of the parts is itself a multipart MIME type), with, in the HTML part, a body tag that reads (in part)

background=cid:D34F7CAA-BA64-419D-806B-1729BF1A4B23

where that cid refers to another part of the email message:

--------------Boundary-00=_U4FDG6G0000000000000
Content-Type: Image/jpeg
Content-ID: <D34F7CAA-BA64-419D-806B-1729BF1A4B23>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

which (as the headers imply) contain a base64-encoded JPEG.

I should mention that most if not all of the X- extension headers are unnecessary (why they're there at all Ralf only knows).

And as an exercise, find out what the content of the email was.

fizzwizz

Thanks for that .... I look forward to trying to get my head around it.

The email is intended for a fishing equipment manufacturer's website. It is for emails sent from his members/retailers area, the background image is wanted for corporate image continuity.

(Fizzwizz felt the need to explain as Spammers are his arch-nemesis and doesn't want to be mistaken for one!)