[Cagles Mill]

One of my sites is bible oriented and contains a daily bible verse. I have had several people ask me if I could email them a daily verse.

Setting up an email list where people can receive a daily bible verse may be worth doing, but I haven't a clue about how to go about doing it. Could anyone give me some pointers to get me started in the right direction? I would prefer an automated system and I do have a bible verse for every day of the year set up in a database.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Boom or Bust]

I use a program called Devicode Response Mailer Professional. It's quite comprehensive and you can do a lot with it. One of the features enables you to broadcast email to a list on a schedule. It can retrieve a file to use as the body of the email. You would need to write a script or program to create the file for the verse each day using data from your database. If it's in MS Access for instance, you could create a VB program or maybe just a report that would write to the text file. Then call the report with Scheduled Tasks in Windows every day before Response Mailer triggers.

[jcswee01]

There are a ton of list servers that you can use, but is seems like most people are using services like ConstantContact.com, StrongMail, Icontact and such. I think GoDaddy even has a service for bulk mailing now

[Rightus]

You might want to use phpList.com from TinCan .. that's an awesome open source alternative to many of the paid programs.

HTH
Rightus

[Cagles Mill]

Thanks for the suggestions, folks. PHPList sounds promising (I like open source programs). I would prefer to try and create my own system from scratch, even if I can't fully 100% automate it. I like understanding the programming process.

If I understand Ed's suggestion correctly, I could even do it straight from Windows without having to run it through the website at all. That is certainly something I had not considered. Of course, it raises the question of how I would make it appear to be sent from my website's email address.

Whatever I do, this is not going to be that quick and simple, is it?!

[Boom or Bust]

Response mailer operates as a pop client, so you can set it up to work with whatever mail account you like.

[Cagles Mill]

Just thought I would update this thread to say I now have a fully automated email system up and running and people are in fact subscribing to it.

I looked at PhpList, but had trouble getting it set up. I also looked at a couple others, but ended up building my own from scratch. Once I realized that PHP has built-in email commands, it wasn't too terribly hard to figure out. I even was able to set up a Cron job to send out the emails each day in the early morning hours.

In order for a person to sign up, they need to submit their name and email address. A message is then sent to them containing a link that they have to click on to complete the registration process (so nobody can sign up somebody else's email). Plus each daily message contains an unsubscribe link (and of course an affiliate link and a link back to the website).

Actually, I'm kind of proud of having built my own system and pleased with the results. Tonight I even built a stats page to keep me updated on how many have started but not finished the sign up process, how many are actually subscribed and how many have cancelled.

[Shep]

I realise that this thread is old and I may not get a response but here goes:

I pastor a church and have been trying to figure out a way to do this without having to use an outside party - which usually includes their banner ads.

Cagles Mill - are you willing to share or at least point me in the right direction so that I can implement such a list?

Thanks,
John

[shuvee]

There are many email systems out there that don't include ads, although perhaps most (all?) of the free versions do have ads. I don't know. I have my own mailing list system which I developed years ago before there were good outside options. What is described in this old thread is only a little piece of what a full mailing list application should do. (Among other things, one must be very knowledgeable about spam issues, and able to keep one's own server from being blacklisted. Developing your own solution is a major undertaking).

In mine, I don't include any ads, and I don't have a free version. I work mostly with small businesses and folk musicians. My list has been in use for 10 years (Gee, same age as AbestWeb; I need a banner too!).

[StangMan23]

I'm assuming most of the email companies out there should offer some sort of an API. Why not have a place on your website where you visitors could sign up for a daily email verse and have it integrate with your email company?

It shouldn't be too bad, we've done it with MailChimp and it works pretty slick.