By using PHP,newsletter script can be developed. This is an easy newsletter script and this article will explain step by step on creating a newsletter script with all the functionality of subscribing and unsubscribing by the members. The php script will take care of all subscribe and unsubscribe
requirements.
All newsletters will have one unique link in
side the body of the email to allow members to unsubscribe
from the list. One famous site on Funny jokes with Daily Jokes uses this script to manage its subscribers. We need one simple input email box in the site by which
visitors can submit their email address.
<?
echo
" <table border='0' width='100%' cellspacing='0'
cellpadding='0' bgcolor='$mail_bgcolor'>
<tr><td><font face='Verdana'
size='2'>Submit your email address and receive daily one
joke in your mail box</font></td></tr>
<tr><td align=center>
<form method=post action=newsletter.php><input
type=text name=em size=15><br><input type=submit
value='Signup'></form>
</td></tr></table>";
?>
This
will display one input box for the visitors to add their
email address to subscribe to newsletter.
Next
step is to add the email address to our database. We will
receive the email address in the page newsletter.php and
before inserting to table we will like to validate the email
address. Here
is the article explaining php form validation.
We will check the email address and if we found the
email address format is correct then we will add to our
database.
$status
= "OK"; //
setting the flag to check the status
$msg="";
// setting the variable for message
if (!stristr($em,"@") OR !stristr($em,"."))
{
$msg="Your email address is not
correct<BR>";
$status= "NOTOK";}
echo
"<br><br>";
if($status=="OK"){// Now the email is valid and we
can add to our database
$query=("INSERT INTO nl_subscribe (em,status) VALUES
('$em','subscribe')");
$result=mysql_query($query);
echo "<center>THANK YOU <br>Thanks for
subscribing to our newsletter and any time you can
unsubscribe by clicking a link in your
newsletter</center>";
}
else {echo "<center>$msg </center>";}
// this will display the error message if email
address is not valid one.
?>
This
will complete the form validation process of the email
address and insert
data to the table. The table structure is here to use.
CREATE TABLE nl_subscribe ( em varchar(75) NOT NULL default '', status varchar(10) NOT NULL defult '') TYPE=MyISAM;
Now let us create one interface for the site admin to use for sending the newsletters to the subscribers. We will store the code in a file inside the admin director with all login managements. Here we will discuss only the posting message part with unsubscribe link.
Here is the table to display the text box to enter the message
<?
echo "<form method='post' action=postmailall.php>";
echo "<table border='0' width='100%' bgcolor='#C0C0C0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='0'> <tr>";
echo "<td width='54%' bgcolor='#99CCFF'> <font face='Verdana'><b>Post Message </b></font></td>
<td width='46%' bgcolor='#99CCFF'> </td>
</tr><tr>
<td colspan=2 align=center> <font face='Verdana'>Subject of message</font></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan=2 align=center> <input type=text name=sub></td> </tr><td COLSPAN='2' align=center> <input type='submit' value='Send'> <input type=reset value=Reset></td></tr>
</table> <input type=hidden name=sendmail value=yes></form>";
?>
This
is to display the text area for the admin to enter the
subject and body details of the mail. Now let us see how to
send the mails. We will format the mail first based on the
data we receive from the form.All the pages should have one
unique link at the bottom of the pages to unsubscribe from
the list. So
let us prepare the link to be attached at the bottom of each
newsletter.
$pt2="http://$SERVER_NAME$SCRIPT_NAME";
$pt2= substr($pt2,0,strlen($pt2)-21);
This will prepare url up to the root of the page to
add the unsubscribe page name here .
Please note that the number 21 is the file name
length including the extensions.
Now let us collect the email address from the database
$query="select em from nl_subscribe where
status='subscribe'";
$result=mysql_query($query);
while($rowdata=mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
$msg2=$msg."<BR>To unsubscribe <a
href=$pt2"."unsub.php?email=$rowdata[em]>Click
HERE</a>";
mail($rowdata[em],$sub,$msg2,"$mail_type");
}//end
of while loop
This
code will collect all email address from the table and will
post to the subscriber with unique link at the bottom for
unsubscribing. This is upto the sending the mails part. Now
let us work on the unsubscribing part of the script. As we
have one unique link at each of the newsletter and on
clicking that link the script will take us to the page where
the email address can be removed or unsubscribed. We have to
do two things here , first is to receive the email address
from the query string and check the database. If the email
address exists then unsubscribe or if it does not exists
then display a error message.
$result=mysql_query("select
* nl_subscribe
where em='$email' ");
$rows=mysql_num_rows($result);
if ($rows > 0){ // email exists so let us change the
status to vacation or unsubscribe
$result=mysql_query("update nl_subscribe set
status='vacation' where em='$email' ");
$msg="Your
email address $email removed from our list
<BR><BR>You can signup any time by visiting
signup page<br>";
}
else { // email address is not there in our database so display the
error message.
$msg="As
per our list Your email address is not there with us.
<BR>You can contact our site admin <br>";
}
echo
"<center>$msg</center>";
This
is a simple email newsletter management script and many more
functionality can be added to this to get the best result.
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