email sign up tutorial

[sixfngers]

does anyone have a link for a tutorial on how to allow users to sign up for updates on a website.

basically I want to have people sign up so when i want to send out a mass email to people i just have to write one email and it goes to everyone in a database?

[thebloodpoolkid]

Why not just do an RSS feed?

[DHDesign]

well, i guess the first question is: what language & what backend? PHP? ASP? Flash integrated or not? etc.

Easiest way:
1. Set up a simple form for your user to fill out (Name, Email, etc.) with HTML
2. Send that form to a PHP file to process it
3. Store the data in a database (MySQL)
4. Extract the data from the DB with a loop and send off to users one by one

Just note that using PHP's mail() function might cause problems if you are sending large amounts of email as it will timeout (even if you set the timeout limit to infiniti)...it causes issues and is not intended for mass mailing.

You can phpMailer (search on Google for that) or download the PEAR packages: Mail & Mail_Queue (follow tutorials)

[BetaWar]

If you want I have created a simple freeware for this exact type of thing (a mail list application) it is PHP and requires a mysql table but it works nicely. In fact it is in need of an update, but other than that it is fairly good for an app made when I was starting php.

if you want there is a link to my site in my sig and from there just go to the web applications page to download it. I won't worry about posting a direct link because people don't typically like that type of thing.