[thelist] how to set up a mailing list

BT Bigpant bigpant at btinternet.com
Thu Feb 21 04:33:01 CST 2002


I recently wrote a mailing list application in php/mySQL which works well,
but my isp has told me I'm not allowed to run mailing lists on their server,
"opt-in or otherwise", and I am limited to sending 100 SMTP emails per day
from php. This is already a problem, and can only get worse.

I have considered simply stripping the email addresses out of the database
and using outlook to send the mailshots, but I wish to run a viral marketing
campaign using the subscribers' ID in a link ( eg.
http://www.philparker.f2s.com?ref=1 ) to tot up the number of referals
generated by each subscriber. This makes every email different. I thought of
writing a java application to connect to the database and send the emails
via my pop account.

While this is all very good for my development as a programmer, I kind of
feel I'm missing the point somewhere. Having just read Daniel J Cody's
description of how evolt works, I feel I am running down the wrong alley. I
was particularly interested in Daniel's description of server side scripts
that deal with incoming emails/bounce backs.

I would really like to develop my own mailing applications and keep control
of my own database. Are there reasonably priced isp's that will let me do
this. Or is there a better way to do this ? I have no experience of using
any other mailing system. Any advice would be most appreciated.


TIA
Phil Parker




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