I have no experience in sending HTML in e-mails. I tried to paste html coded text with a link in an e-mail but when the e-mail is received the HTML doesn't appear to be working. The coding shows up like text. The link will work but it doesn't look need and tidy like it should. Do I need to do anything special to make HTML work in an e-mail?

You should read up on the pros and cons of html emails - www.campaignmonitor.com has excellent resources.

You also must understand that some web clients absolutely will NOT render HTML in emails at all, so your code has to degrade gracefully to just text.

Also check out this article http://www.sitepoint.com/article/cod...l-newsletters/

But take LadynRed's advice and use a system like mentioned. You can still make your own templates with those.