Intro:
Hello all. I just signed up here because in past I found some very useful information regarding web designing and developing. Since I am new, very new actually :P in this coding world so I really need your help....

Problem:
I have a website, I want to place a short form, which should be a regular newsletter subscription form with field: Name and E-mail address. ( I don't know much about .php).

What I want to get is when user fills the 2 field and submit it, he gets a confirmation message in his inbox in which he has to click on activation link then I want him to get automatic 5 emails for next five days. I am offering a free course on my website and that's why someone will subscribe with it.
It says like " Get 5 easy tips to become a web designer or Urdu speaker or whatever." So I want him to get those 5 tips one by one everyday automatically. And in future if I send any promotional newsletter or news related to my website, so he should also get that as my website subscriber.

I am not willing to use any 3rd party service like those companies which manage your mailing list and all that. No matter how hard it is, I will go with the coding thing and want to do it on my own. (If it's possible)


I hope you guys have understood having read this elaborated post :S

Waiting for your reply

PLease reply soon because I have reasonable visitors on my website and I am losing many potential buyers...

No replies yet?

I don't know if this would completely solve your problem but this is a pretty good example.
http://www.phptutorial.info/scripts/mailinglist/
also heres php emailing from w3 schools. w3 schools is a great site to start learning any markup language its where i started learning php a few months ago and now my site is almost fully automated via php. heres the link for a simpler email example on w3 schools: http://w3schools.com/php/php_mail.asp
that should at least get you started.
also heres something i built off of the w3 schools example.

PHP Code:

<?php
if (isset($_REQUEST['email']))
//if "email" is filled out, send email
  {
  //send email
  $email = $_REQUEST['email'] ; 
  $subject = $_REQUEST['subject'] ;
  $message = $_REQUEST['message'] ;
  $from = $_REQUEST['from'] ;
  $name = $_REQUEST['name'] ;
  mail( "$email", "$subject",
  $message, "From: $name <$from>");
  echo "Sent!";
  }
else
//if "email" is not filled out, display the form
//yes i know the methods i use for closing the tags are depreciated but i wrote this years ago
  {
  echo "<form method='post' action=bulk.php>
  To: <input name='email' type='text' />Ex. emailToSendTo@porvider.com<br />
  From: <input name='from' type='text'/>Ex. yourEmail@porvider.com<br />
  Sender Name: <input name='name' type='text' />Ex. Jon Appleseed<br />
  Subject: <input name='subject' type='text' /><br />
  Message:<br />
  <textarea name='message' rows='15' cols='40'>
  </textarea><br />
  <input type='submit' value='Send'/>
  </form>";
  }
?>

and heres the link http://fgpcinc.netfirms.com/bulk.php
Its pretty amazing how we think everything is so secure but the thing is that anyone can send anything from anyones email address. It will look like its from them at first glance but if you look into where it was sent from and headers and stuff you will see its from php. still pretty cool tho.

Thanks for replying... But I emphasized on creating a script which can send a sequence of emails for next 5 days whenever a user signs up, it should be automatically... So you didn't answer that :S

oh sorry, I'm a little unclear on what you mean. do you mean sending a email daily to all the people that signed up? or a page where you can write a email and it will automatically send it to everyone subscribed?

Maybe RSS Feed can help?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

Originally Posted by miki86

Maybe RSS Feed can help?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

I agree if it is a blog or something and you want them to get an email about each new post a rss feed would work very well. I use http://feedburner.google.com/ to have people subscribe via email and it works very well. almost no effort on your part.