'subscribe to mailing list' how-to

Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/'subscribe to mailing list' how-to

jhocking
 #1
How do you do email address collecting on a webpage? Y'know, where the page has a text box for people to type in their email address and subscribe to a newsletter.

MattVonFat
 #2
You could use one of the free services. There are sites like www.Bravenet.com who have those sorts of things. If you want to do it your self using php would work.

[EDIT]
An example of using php and saving to a text file is:

mailing.html
<HTML>
<HEAD>
    <TITLE>Mailing List</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>

<FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="mailprocess.php">
Email: <INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="email">
<INPUT TYPE="SUBMIT">
</FORM>

</BODY>
</HTML>


mailprocess.php:
<?php

$email = $_POST["email"];

$file = fopen("emails.txt", "a");

fwrite($file,$email."/n");

fclose($file);

echo("Thanks, you have been subscribed");

?>


The Text file should conatin all the emails registered with a ':' separator.

DampeS8N
 #3
Use an form that collects the e-mail and a name.

2 simple text fields.

Send that data to a .php file that saves that list into a file...

Make a .php file of your own for mailing to the mailing list, and have that parse the file with the names and addresses and sends e-mails to them all...

Then you can either password that last .php or do it the easy way and name it something odd, never link to it, and remove it from the site when you aren't using it.


If You want I can code this for you.. It is really easy...


Just google PHP Tutorial and you should find the one I learned with...

Not 3 hours from then your should have created a mailing list...


EDIT

Like he said HAHAHA...

How do you make those code boxes... someone tell me the command..

Nilium
 #4
Could take a look at the code for this.. http://phplist.com/

jhocking
 #5
Is the use of PHP something your web host has to specifically allow? I know my one site (not the one the subscribe box will be on) doesn't support CGI scripts, so I'm going to check for this with the host of my other site.

Indiepath
 #6
You really need to think about double opt-in and unsubscribe functions. If you don't implement these measures you'll end up with a load of crap email addresses and probably get blacklisted for spamming.

jhocking
 #7
Hm, I don't know anything about php, and those sound important yet over-my-head. phplist looks good, but I think I'll just use that bravenet service. Thanks all!

DampeS8N
 #8
I knew nothing about PHP myself.. then I looked it up because I wanted to learn... and it took me all of a day to get my e-mailer and the comment system working on my time bridge site.... less than a day.. prolly about 3 hours...

It is worth learning. Will open up whole new areas to explore without mysql... with it.. you can make just about any site you see on the web...

VP
 #9
MattVonFat:

Are you sure that php code is safe? I'm far from expert but I can see that there are no sanity checks on the value of $email, which means it could be anything at all.

Combined with it being written immediately to a file, seems to perhaps leave an angle of attack for the malicious hacker?

I may be wrong, apologies if so :)

Indiepath
 #10
You need to build in a spam blocker. Basically track the IP of the host submitting the emails, if they send more than say 10 then ignore any further submissions.

MattVonFat
 #11
MattVonFat:

Are you sure that php code is safe?


Probably not, I'm not particularly an expert either with php - I think I was a bit to eager to supply some code...

I'll use the excuse that it was just meant as an example and shouldn't be used in it's current state :)