# Ability to post newsletter as topic in discourse
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-post-newsletter-as-topic-in-discourse/291259
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [January 11, 2024, 4:51am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-post-newsletter-as-topic-in-discourse/291259 "2024-01-11T04:51:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@anon36555649](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon36555649)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2024, 4:51am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-post-newsletter-as-topic-in-discourse/291259/1 "2024-01-11T04:51:26Z")
Would be amazing if it can one day be possible to forward e-mail newsletters to discourse site to publish as a new topic with correct original formatting.
Currently it seems this is not possible, although there is the feature for a category to mirror a mailing list if subscribed directly. However it can be helpful to be able to review a newsletter mailing first before deciding if this would be good to publish with discourse.
As an example here is a newsletter with event announcement that I have published with copy/paste but it does not have the correct formatting. As a forwarded e-mail the system does not publish the newsletter only publishes if there is new text written in the forwarded message.
[https://forum.wombatconstruction.us/t/fw-glow-in-the-dark-at-jacob-lawrence-gallery-through-jan-27/202](https://forum.wombatconstruction.us/t/fw-glow-in-the-dark-at-jacob-lawrence-gallery-through-jan-27/202)
Event page:
> **[Gallery Calendar | School of Art + Art History + Design | University of...](https://art.washington.edu/jacob-lawrence-gallery/calendar?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D171860654)**
>
> $Trumba.addSpud({ webName: "sea\_art", spudType : "tabchooser" , url : { filterview : "Jacob Lawrence Gallery" } }); $Trumba.addSpud({ webName: "sea\_art", spudType : "main" , url : { filterview : "Jacob Lawrence Gallery" } });
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### Author:  [@anon36555649](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon36555649)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2024, 4:57am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-post-newsletter-as-topic-in-discourse/291259/2 "2024-01-11T04:57:09Z")
This is what the e-mail looks like:
---
### Author:  [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2024, 4:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-post-newsletter-as-topic-in-discourse/291259/3 "2024-01-11T16:21:28Z")
This would be difficult because the email could contain any kind of content and it’s hard to predict whether or not it would work well in the context of Discourse… an email could even contain malicious executable scripts. By default the type of HTML and CSS allowed in posts is fairly limited to avoid these layout and security issues.
Something like this might be possible with iframes, but this would require the email to be hosted on an external site. You’d also need some control over that external site because embedding the email in an iframe may be prevented by a content security policy (CSP) or X-Frame-Options header. These also exist for security reasons.
To accept any email as HTML post content you’d need some sort of email parsing tool that can determine whether or not the email’s content is safe. I don’t believe this would be a simple task.
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### Author:  [@anon36555649](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon36555649)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2024, 6:02pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-post-newsletter-as-topic-in-discourse/291259/4 "2024-01-11T18:02:33Z")
That makes sense, for security screening usually disabling remote content from loading unless it is a trusted sender is a good idea.
Subscribed to the governor’s newsletter with general category address will see how those load.
HTML is:
Welcome,
You have successfully created subscriber preferences for Office of the Governor / Office of Financial Management. You are now able to take advantage of the convenient email updates offered by Office of the Governor / Office of Financial Management.
But looks like the Star Destroyer takes down that banner and just posts the text.
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### Author:  [@maiki](https://meta.discourse.org/u/maiki)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2024, 6:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-post-newsletter-as-topic-in-discourse/291259/5 "2024-01-11T18:42:04Z")
Some methods I’ve recommended:
1. Simplify the newsletter output so it can easily be parsed in Discourse; this is fairly easy to do, but reduces the benefits of using a newsletter system
2. Use Discourse to create the content, send a newsletter to highlight links to the community site
3. Create a topic for discussion, and link to the hosted newsletter elsewhere
Most of the time folks are asking for sending and sharing their own newsletter. It sounds like you might want to re-share newsletters sent to you, in which case there is a gotcha: newsletters are almost always customized to included individualized subscription links in the message, and sharing those means others can use them to change the subscription status.
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### Author:  [@anon36555649](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon36555649)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2024, 9:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-post-newsletter-as-topic-in-discourse/291259/6 "2024-01-11T21:13:54Z")
> [@maiki](#):
>
> individualized subscription links
This is an issue, I set a password required for login to that but the “unsubscribe all” link doesn’t require a password login.
Am able to edit that out manually.
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### Author:  [@anon36555649](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon36555649)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2024, 4:07pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-post-newsletter-as-topic-in-discourse/291259/7 "2024-01-12T16:07:36Z")
> [@maiki](#):
>
> to re-share newsletters
This is primarily what I was talking about, don’t have a newsletter to send out myself yet.
For public alert newsletters such as from the department of transportation and local/state + federal government agencies, there are a lot of these.
This is one that has published well just edited out the subscriber links:
[https://forum.wombatconstruction.us/t/notice-land-use-and-building-fee-schedule-amendment-and-increase-effective-february-1st-2024/210](https://forum.wombatconstruction.us/t/notice-land-use-and-building-fee-schedule-amendment-and-increase-effective-february-1st-2024/210)
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### Author:  [@maiki](https://meta.discourse.org/u/maiki)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2024, 6:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-post-newsletter-as-topic-in-discourse/291259/8 "2024-01-12T18:17:34Z")
Many government websites generate an RSS feed for public announcements; consider using RSS Polling to bring in that content.
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### Author:  [@anon36555649](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon36555649)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2024, 7:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-post-newsletter-as-topic-in-discourse/291259/9 "2024-01-12T19:20:01Z")
Thanks didn’t know about that looks like this state does have that:
> **[Page not found](https://leg.wa.gov/legislature/Pages/AboutLegRSS.aspx)**
_About Washington State Legislature RSS Feeds_
_The Legislature website currently provides RSS feeds for every bill introduced to the Legislature. Feeds are available for individual bills or you may subscribe to a bill topic feed that has updates for every bill in a certain topic._
Will see if I can set that up with them or the county.
This is a RSS for the county:
_Island County, WA - Calendar - Commissioners_
_[Calendar • Island County, WA • CivicEngage](https://www.islandcountywa.gov/Calendar.aspx)_
_Fri, 12 Jan 2024 11:22:39 -0800_
_Island County, WA - Get the latest events_
_en-us_
> **[Island County, WA - Calendar - Commissioners](https://www.islandcountywa.gov/RSSFeed.aspx?ModID=58&CID=Commissioners-24)**
Will research about how to integrate that.
> [@RSS Polling](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rss-polling/156387):
>
> discourse2Summary Allows you to automatically import content from RSS/ATOM feeds into your Discourse site as topicsopen_bookInstall Guide This plugin is bundled with Discourse core. There is no need to install the plugin separately.bookmark This guide explains how to configure and use the RSS Polling plugin to automatically import content from RSS/ATOM feeds into your Discourse site as topics. person_raising_hand Required user level: Administrator Summary This…
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### Author:  [@anon36555649](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon36555649)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2024, 5:21am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-post-newsletter-as-topic-in-discourse/291259/10 "2024-01-20T05:21:25Z")
RSS works, also e-mail newsletters are mostly posting fully (when category address is subscribed directly to mailing list) unless there is a line break in them then that seems to stop them from loading completely just as with if a message is forwarded.
Here is another topic about this:
> [@Text of forwarded emails don't show up in posts](https://meta.discourse.org/t/text-of-forwarded-emails-dont-show-up-in-posts/23155):
>
> We’re using discourse as a mailing list, and it appears that forwarded emails do not show up in the posts. If you look at the source of the email you can see there is alot of content that is not included. Ive tried a few things including removing this line: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- which did not work, and then removing these lines: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Foo Bar \ Date: Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 10:39 AM Subject: A gift from one Foo to the next!…
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### Author:  [@anon36555649](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon36555649)
#### Post date: [January 31, 2024, 11:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-post-newsletter-as-topic-in-discourse/291259/12 "2024-01-31T23:59:41Z")
Dan @Heliosurge had mentioned that there is a plugin to automatically edit out subscription links for newsletter e-mails that are being converted to a discourse topic post, can you post that here and do you know if that can be integrated for standard tier hosted sites or only enterprise / self-hosted?
> [@eBay EPN Affiliate Link Generator](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ebay-epn-affiliate-link-generator/292012/2):
>
> This is quite cool. I was wondering if this could be tooled to remove a url link? Per case use: Using email subscription to create topics Strip “Unsubscribe” link. Very nice work @anon36555649
One issue with the RSS is that if i delete a topic from that which isn’t relevant for my site, it automatically comes back right away. Don’t know if that can be disabled or un-listing a topic instead of deleting it would work instead.
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### Author:  [@Heliosurge](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Heliosurge)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2024, 12:00am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-post-newsletter-as-topic-in-discourse/291259/13 "2024-02-03T00:00:24Z")
This is a #Customization > Theme component (not a #Customization > Plugin ) and can be used on any hosted or self hosted instances.
You would need to examine the code and change/modify it to remove the subscribe Links
The author of the component might be willing to make a fork or another coder for some kind of fee. If not able to figure out how to change the code to achieve the desired effect.
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### Author:  [@Lilly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Lilly)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2024, 4:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-post-newsletter-as-topic-in-discourse/291259/14 "2024-02-03T16:30:15Z")
Can pehaps accomplish something similar with Wordpress using the email to post plugin and the Discourse WP plugin.