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.

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 vs commercial vs password resets)