PHP and MySQL Web Development - P131: PHP and MySQL Web Development teaches the reader to develop dynamic, secure, commercial Web sites. Using the same accessible, popular teaching style of the first edition, this best-selling book has been updated to reflect the rapidly changing landscape of MySQL and PHP. | 622 Chapter 28 Building a Mailing List Manager Users should be able to unsubscribe from lists they are subscribed to. Users should be able to store their preference for either HTML formatted or plain text newsletters. For security reasons users should not be able to send mail to the lists or to see each other s email addresses Users and administrators should be able to view information about mailing lists. Users and administrators should be able to view past newsletters that have been sent to a list the archive . Solution Components There are a number of components we will need to fulfil the requirements. The main ones are setting up a database of lists subscribers and archived newsletters uploading newsletters that have been created offline and sending mail with attachments. Setting Up a Database of Lists and Subscribers We will track the username and password of each system user as well as a list of the lists they have subscribed to. We will also store each user s preference for receiving text or HTML email so we can send a user the appropriate version of the newsletter. An administrator will be a specialized user with the ability to create new mailing lists and send newsletters to those lists. A nice piece of functionality to have for a system like this is an archive of previous newsletters. Subscribers might not keep previous postings but might want to look something up. An archive can also act as a marketing tool for the newsletter as potential subscribers can see what the newsletters are like. Setting up this database in MySQL and an interface to it in PHP will have nothing new or difficult in it. File Upload We need an interface to allow the administrator to send newsletters as mentioned previously. What we haven t talked about is how administrators will create that newsletter. We could provide them with a form where they could type or paste the newsletter content. However it will increase the user-friendliness of our system to let administrators create a .
