node-prelaunch
A prelaunch sign up app, written in node.js, powered by MongoDB & Mailgun.
Live Demo: node-prelaunch.herokuapp.com
Responsive transactional HTML email templates from mailgun/transactional-email-templates
Icon from sketchappsources.com.
HTML/CSS mostly from twbs/bootstrap cover template.
System Requirements
- mongodb
- nodejs
- Mailgun account
Getting Started
First update /server/config/secrets.js
with the following credentials:
- Mailgun for sending sign up confirmations and validating email addresses
- google analytics id
Install dependencies:
npm install
Make sure mongodb is running (mongod
) then start the node server
node server
Prelaunch Sign Up Flow
- A user signs up on the site
- a confirmation email is sent - image
- the user receives the email and clicks the confirmation link
- the user is redirected to the site with a unique token and confirmation id
- if the token and id are valid, the user model is updated and a thank you email is sent - image
Sending Post Launch Emails
Need to send an update? An example of querying confirmed users and sending emails in batches can be found in server/email/batch-demo.js. This uses Mailgun's batch sending feature.
To send the following campaign update template, run the following command. PLEAE NOTE: there is no dry run version of this yet, this command will send out emails to any confirmed users in your user collection.
node server/email/batch-demo.js
The campaign update email uses the email alert template
Contributing
If you're interested in contributing, please refer to the following project goals before submitting a pr or github issue.
Project Goals
- keep this as a starting point people can fork, redeploy, and persist their database while their app is built out
- make it easy to send email & track changes in email templates since they are checked into codebase
- be responsible for user data in database (not in some third party service), this also includes
- tracking sign up dates
- securing confirmations
- keeping track of confirmations
- use transactional email provider - ex: Mailgun
- avoid creating something that can spam people and ruin email sending reputation for the owner
- use double opt in
- sending batch emails (max 1000 at a time) - ex: Mailgun
- post launch sending capabilities and integration (ex: send password reset codes when app is launched)
Todo
- add flag to batch command for sending in testmode
- use tags to track transactional emails (
signups
vscommercial
vspassword resets
)