[thelist] How Would You Solve This? (Was: Um--Newsletter/Subscription Management)

[Steve Lewis]

Mark Howells wrote:
>>manage customerA, who signed up in January with a six month subscription,
>>CustomerB who signed up in January with a year subscription, and CustomerC
>>whose
>>subscription has expired?


> A database containing the subscriber info, including an "expires" date. The
> mailing application would reference the subscriber database and only send
> issues to the current subscribers (perhaps sending renewal notices to those
> whose subscriptions had expired recently).


> The exact solution would depend on the scale of the subscriber base and th
> ebudget of the client, but a PHP / MySQL solution would be stable and fairly
> easy to implement.


I agree with Mark's implementation plan.  A 'custom' script for this
would could be very inexpensive.  Furthermore, if the mail was
distributed using a server running Qmail, the addresses could be BCCed
into a single mail message, and Qmail could be trusted with ANY size of
a distribution list without concern for what chaos may ensue.  This is
because Qmail's mail delivery agent handles BCCs inteligently.

While Gina did not mention how subscriptions are created renewed or
canceled, I would point out that when I investigated subscriptions
through PayPal, they had a very nice system for managing such things.
Please do take a look at what they have.  That, coupled with a simple
MySQL table and some PHP scripts would likely do the job very nicely,
and efficiently.

Could take longer to work out specs and manage expectations with the
client than to actualy develop.

--Steve