using html in my welcome email

[marwan4]

i am starting a new forum , and right now i am making a welcome email to be sent to users on registration ,
i dont know how to make a welcome email that contains pictures and links , i have tried to send some emails to my self writing in it some html codes that displays pics but all i get is the code it self!!!
can anyone help me with this , all i want to do is some pics , links and some font editing.....

[MattEvans]

are you using forum software? does it let you change the content type/header of the email? In the header, a plaintext email has : Content-type:text/plain, and an HTML email has: Content-type:text/html. some email accounts turn HTML emails into an attachment aswell.

if there's no setting in the forum software, look for the module that deals with email, and look for the part that generates the mail. in php it'll be something like:

$to = "matt-at-somewhere.com";
 
$headers = 'Subject: lalala\n";
$headers .= 'From: matt-at-somewhere-else.com\n";
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\n";
$body = 'the message';
 
mail($to,$title,$body,$headers);

in perl it'll be something like:

open(MAIL, "|/usr/sbin/sendmail -t ");
  print MAIL "From: #hidden#\n";
  print MAIL "To: #hidden#\n";
  print MAIL "Reply-To: #hidden#\n";
  print MAIL "Content-Type: text/plain\n";
  print MAIL "Subject: lalala\n\n";
  print MAIL "[Start of message; this message is an automated message. You should reply to #hidden#]\n\n";
  print MAIL "[End of message; this message is an automated message. You should reply to #hidden#]";
 close(MAIL);

Set the content-type to HTML by whatever means, and your message will be HTML.

EDIT: quick disclaimer; I can't be held responsible for any damage to your forum should you follow my instructions =P they should be considered "informative". of course, you should make backups before you change anything. but that aside, provided your forum software is script based, it should be a very simple thing to change. finding it in the first place will be hard part.