Hello all,

im about to try and develop a system which can send out automated email reminders for event for users. i have a event sys (http://calmcharity.org/events.php) and would like to enable users to for events they select create a reminder for them, so they can select say if they want a reminder for the even a month then week then 3 days before the event date.

but im not sure how best to go about it.

Any ideas or tips welcome, and as always helpful tips will get some TP

I'm not sure I totally understand what you're wanting and that link has nothing useful on it (as of now), but let me see if this helps:

I am assuming that people are being reminded about events you're listing and not personal events.

You could have a "Remind Me About This Event" link which, when clicked, will take the user to a page where the event is listed. You could then collect their email address and allow them to choose a unit (say, numbers between 1 and 12, inclusive) and a period (days, weeks, months, years) in advance that they'd like to be contacted about. Then, allow an option to remind every day, week, month, or year thereafter. On submission, you'd add their email to a list with the appropriate settings and then run a cron (or use a mailing program) to send out the appropriate reminder.

I'd recommend adding in a confirmation step where they have to click a link in an email sent to the email on file in order to activate their event reminder. Also, event reminders which coincide for a particular email (e.g. they want to be reminded 30 days before 2 events which are on the same day), that one email be sent reminding about both events (this recommendation reduces the amount of email you have to send and the amount the recipient receives which may or may not be a good idea).

Hope that helps.