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

[Jay Blanchard]

[snip]
Basically, client wants to sell subscriptions to her electronic newsletter.
Customer can buy a six month subscription or a year subscription. How can
client
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?

Most newsletter programs out there don't have support for fee-based or
time-based subscriptions (or are they out there somewhere?)-- So when client
sends out the newsletter, client will have to check who still has a valid
subscription--and this would be done weekly. If client gets alot of
subscribers,
this might be quite a mess.
[/snip]

How large a list of newsletter clients? Most database programs combined with
something like PHP would be able to handle this type of thing relatively
easily. You would most probably notice a bottleneck at the mail server once
the subscriber list got into the thousands, but if scheduled to be sent
during off-peak hours you could hold this problem at bay for a while. So,
having a script loop through the data and sending newsletters to those
eligible is not far fetched ... and would probably be the way I handled it.

HTH!

Jay

Lead me not into temptation
I can find it myself

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