Newsletter, email sign-up HELP

Simple 2-box form, but how to handle it?

[oldmandrummer]

Ok, I am pretty new to much of this and designing a webpage for someone that needs the whole email list or ability to mass email a newsletter or website updates etc....

I just have a simple two-text box form and a submit. I just want to capture the email and be able to mass email. Can anyone point me to some help online? We have server space at gatorhost and phplist is available, but honestly, I'm not sure if that is what I am suppose to use for this or not and I keep reading about 'form mail' and 'Matt's Script' etc, but not sure where to begin. Basically, this is the last thing I need to put into place and I am done. So, any help or ideas to get me in that direction is much appreciated. I know it can't be that complicated, so many sites have this feature on them nowadays.

[piatkow]

Form Mail just means a form that sends an email back to you. The simplest way is just to pick up the incoming mails manually and add them to your mailing list BUT this leaves you without double opt in which may still put you in risk of accusations of spamming and some hosting services may suspend first and ask questions afterwards in the event of complaints. Laws on bulk emails vary by country, European legislation is generally much tougher than the American Can Spam act.

I am sure that there are software packages that will automatically build a mailing list for you but a lot of people pass the whole thing over to a managed service provider.

Regardless of the approach when testing your newsletter set up test registrations from Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo and AOL accounts as well as through a couple of different ISPs. Those four all have reputations for non delivery unless you jump through all their individual hoops and they account for too many users to be ignored. Having said that I did drop all AOL users from my mailing list at one time as I decided that they were more trouble that they were worth.

[oldmandrummer]

Yeah then maybe form mail isn't what I really want. At first I was thinking I could just do it that way and capture the email and put it in an address book to send emails to everyone at once, periodically. Basically, she is a singer and we want a simple way that people can just sign up to received updates of concert info or just updates to anything going on. What is PHPlist?

[maximillianos]

Use Feedburner. It is free, they provide the code for the sign up box. Then simply create an RSS feed of your site's updates, and folks will get emailed whenever you post a new update.

[rocknbil]

If you haven't received it yet . . . welcome aboard!

capture the email and put it in an address book to send emails to everyone at once, periodically.

The problem with automated software is the person using it has to understand it. :-) Many users just don't grok interfaces, so what you've posted here may turn out to be the best solution for her unless her quantity is huge. Easy to implement, easy to teach, easy to understand.

In this case, a form mailer would be to your advantage. Set it up so it emails her, she receives it, uses the tools she's familiar with to add it to her address book.

Otherwise look around for mailing list software or services, there are hundreds. Many of them install, some are external services you pay by subscription for. I have many clients who swear by Constant Contact, as it allows you to do lots of things and covers a lot of the spam issues.

<---- Heh . . . is an old man drummer too, ceramic Egyptian darbuka/doumbek with Nile Sturgeon head . . .

[oldmandrummer]

Thanks rocknbil - that is what I plan to do....keep it simple (mainly for me not knowing what I am doing). Right now I have a simple text saying, "sign up for email updates" with a simple name and email field.....they submit and it goes to a 'fanlist' email account. And like you said, then everyone in that list would be 'ON' the list. I know there are much better ways to do it. I just don't know where to begin. With gatorhost, there is software I can use, but not sure what I need to use. I'm assuming mysql and other particulars are needed to store the info. But I think with all that come options such as 'remove from list' and others. I want to do it the 'right' way, but just don't have the know-how to do so.