Storing my email newsletter signups in a text file on my server?

[anon123]

Hi,

From now on, I wan't the new email newsletter signups to be stored online, in a text file, 1 per line.

Then I will copy and paste to our newsletter software the new signups, each time I send the newsletter.

Currently, every time someone signs up, I get an email, and have to add them 1 at a time.

Anyone know how to do this?

[phranque]

this is a common feature of a cgi script that would process such a form.
look at the "action" attribute of the "form" element which refers to the script where you must add this functionality.

[anon123]

Thanks phranque,

Is it secure? I don't want people being able to go to mysite.com/wheretheemailsarebeingadded.txt and seing the new signups.

Also, I'm pretty newbie to this, do you know what script I would need?

[phranque]

you should put wheretheemailsarebeingadded.txt in a directory that is not publicly web-accessible, either outside of the document root directory or in a directory requiring authentication for access.

there are many such scripts available in the various script archives or you could modify your existing script to open a file and append a record in addition to whatever processing it currently does.

[onlineleben]

sounds easy (did this with my first newsletter, too) but there are a few disadvantages:
a) manual work of copy and pasting and deleting bounces
b) usually no possibility for changing or opting out by the user

If you are serious about publishing a newsletter, I would recommend going with a solution that automates as much as possible for you and does double-optin so you are on a very safe side legally

[tangor]

Second onlineleben: Get a real, and proven, newsletter/elist program like Majordomo, Listserv, etc., to handle this aspect of the site. And keep it up to date!

[maximillianos]

I always recommend checking out Feedburner for basic newsletters. With a little programming you can have our newsletter posts go into an RSS feed, and then let Feedburner manager your email subscriptions, bounce-backs, deactivations, etc. Plus they even handle sending it out from their own servers. All for free.