Coding Knowledge

Courtney Clark

Hello! Newb here!

I am a graphic designer and have been working with my current donor team to help them create emails and event pages using campaign monitor. Which requires no coding at all. Recently I have been tasked to try and figure out how to use Luminate online because a lot of their donor information is already tied to a program by blackbaud, i think raiser's edge.

I was wondering how much coding knowledge is needed to use this program, and if there are any classes/courses you think I could take and learn what I need to use this program, I would highly appreciate that!

Thanks!

Meghan Christiansen

Hi Courtney,

Luminate Online's (LO) email tool has a WYSIWYG editor but it is very limited so the emails need to be coded out. Blackbaud has some kits you can use that provide templates as well:

We had a developer build out some email templates for us that we work in and we also just discovered a tool called Stripo that helps us build out email templates and then we add the code to LO (we have the paid account as the free version has limits).

Blackbaud is also working on a new email tool that will be more of a drag and drop design type thing that won't require coding, but I am not sure when it will be released.

Cheers,

Meghan

Elizabeth Favre

Blackbaud Luminate Online Curriculum
Good morning!

I am one of the technical writers working on updating the Luminate Online docs and help resources. I'd love to hear any suggestions or feedback you have to offer as get familiar with our features.

The new email tool is currently rolled out in an Early Adoption Program to a limited number of customers. We will use their feedback to make improvements. The plan is to release to all customers later this year. The new features are in addition to the current offer, not replacing it, so everything offered now should still be available when the new features are available to you.

I recommend starting with a Blackbaud U Campus and BlackbaudU. There is a wonderful Luminate email basics course. I took it myself and I learned a lot more in 3 hours than I could have in a year of fiddling.

Help docs for using the email are here.
Here is a sneak peak at some updates that may be helpful

Austen Brown

Hi Courtney - I haven't used LO in a few years, but when I was first starting out I took a free online course to learn the basics of HTML/CSS. I was never a web programmer by any means, but having a solid understanding of what I was looking at within the code and how it would display within an email or the front-end of a TeamRaiser site, was tremendously helpful.