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Email and Templates

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WhiskerEnt edited this page Aug 18, 2026 · 1 revision

Email and Templates

Whisker sends transactional email — order confirmations, receipts, refunds, shipping updates, answers to questions — and every one of them is editable.

Getting email working

Admin → Settings → Email

Field Notes
From Email The address customers see. Use one on your own domain.
From Name Usually your store name.
SMTP Host / Port / Username / Password Optional. Leave blank to use PHP's built-in mail().

Fill in SMTP for reliable delivery. mail() works on most shared hosting but is far more likely to be filtered as spam.

Press Test SMTP to send yourself a test. A failed test does not overwrite your saved settings, so you can experiment without breaking working email.

The SMTP password is never rendered back into the page. The field shows a placeholder when one is saved; leave it blank to keep it.

The templates

Admin → Email Templates

Shipped and ready to use:

Template Sent when
Welcome Email Someone creates an account
Order Confirmation An order is placed
Payment Receipt A payment is captured
Order Awaiting Payment An order is created but not yet paid
Order Cancelled An order is cancelled
Refund Notification You issue a refund
Shipping Notification You add tracking to an order
Question Answered You publish an answer to a customer's question
Order Status Update You change an order's status
Abandoned Cart A cart is left behind
Password Reset A customer or admin requests a reset
Ticket Created / Reply / Status Support ticket activity

Edit any of them. Your changes survive updates — a Whisker update never overwrites a template you have edited.

Variables

Each template lists the variables it can use, right beside the editor. They look like {{order_number}} and are replaced when the email is sent.

Common ones:

{{store_name}}      {{store_url}}       {{customer_name}}
{{customer_email}}  {{order_number}}    {{order_total}}

Order confirmation also has {{order_items_html}}, {{shipping_address}} and {{billing_address}}, which are built for you — a full items table with images and variants, and formatted address blocks.

Refunds have {{refund_amount}}, {{refund_id}}, {{refund_date}}, {{refund_time}} and {{refund_method}}.

Subject lines are plain text. Write — directly rather than —, which would otherwise be shown to the customer character by character. Whisker decodes entities in subjects anyway, but writing the character is clearer.

Testing a template

Every template has a Preview and a Send test button. The test goes to the email on your admin account and uses sample data, so you can see the layout without placing an order.

If email is not arriving

  1. Check the template is active. An inactive template sends nothing.
  2. Send a test from the template page. That isolates the template from the event that triggers it.
  3. Press Test SMTP in Settings → Email. That isolates delivery from Whisker entirely.
  4. Check your server's mail log. On cPanel that is usually /var/log/exim_mainlog. Look for your customer's address; the log will tell you whether the message left and what the receiving server said.
  5. Check SPF and DKIM for your sending domain. Mail that leaves successfully can still be filtered on arrival.

Order confirmation emails are sent after the response reaches the browser, so a slow mail server never delays a shopper's confirmation page. If confirmations are missing but tests work, check the mail log rather than the storefront.

See also

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