Mailing list

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by rarebeast, May 15, 2008.

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  1. rarebeast

    rarebeast Registered Member

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    Apr 29, 2008
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    Hello everybody,

    I'm making a website and there is going to be a newsletter on it, I need some program or way of making a mailing list without a mail server. And it has to be very easy for people to subscribe. Could anyone help me with this please?


    rarebeast
     
  2. Mrkvonic

    Mrkvonic Linux Systems Expert

    Joined:
    May 9, 2005
    Posts:
    10,215
    Hello,

    Configuring newsletters lists is not a simple thing. Will you be running Windows or Linux? On Linux, you have the innd and fetchnews, but they are quite unfriendly. And they are servers ... hmmm ....

    So, your alternative are php or perl scripts, but you will have to have hosting that supports these scripts. If you can't code in perl or php, then you will have to look for existing templates.

    Hope this helps, so far ...

    Mrk
     
  3. rarebeast

    rarebeast Registered Member

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    i'm making a site and when there are new videos uploaded i need to inform the people that subscribed.....i dont know much about this but would a rss feed work??
     
  4. Mrkvonic

    Mrkvonic Linux Systems Expert

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    Hello,
    Yes, RSS is a great idea.
    I'm doing that on my own site when I update content.
    Mrk
     
  5. rarebeast

    rarebeast Registered Member

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    Is a rss feed hard to make and do you find that much people subscribe to it?


    rarebeast
     
  6. Mrkvonic

    Mrkvonic Linux Systems Expert

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    Hello,
    It's relatively simple. I can show you if you want.
    The thing with RSS, you don't know how many subscribers you have ... At least not the simple ones. But you said, no server-side thingie, so ...
    Mrk
     
  7. rarebeast

    rarebeast Registered Member

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    It would be great if you could show me :) and I don't really know what the server is going to be, I haven't got that far yet but I'd be glad if you could show me how to make a rss feed.

    Thanks.
     
  8. Mrkvonic

    Mrkvonic Linux Systems Expert

    Joined:
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    Posts:
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    Hi,

    Here's an example:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

    <rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">

    <channel>

    <title>Site title</title>

    <link>http://yoursite.com</link>

    <description>My site is ...</description>

    <item>

    <title><Something]></title>
    <link>http://somelink.html</link>
    <description>Something...</description>
    <guid isPermaLink="false">number</guid>

    </item>

    <atom:link rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" href="yoursite.com" />

    </channel>
    </rss>

    Line 1, you define the character set and the version of xml you are going to use.

    Line 2, you declare a namespace; this allows your feed to include advanced content; in this example atom feeds.

    Read more: http://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/howto/declare_namespaces.html

    Line 3, you open a channel. This allows you to use a single feed for several sites, for example, each site with its own channel.

    Line 4, title, you give title to your channel.

    Line 5, link, you link to your channel; in case of site, this is usually the homepage.

    Line 6, description, you describe your channel.

    Line 7, you open an item. Just like channels allow multiple sites per feed, items allow multiple posts per channel. In other words, all your site updates for a particular site will go into a single channel, and will be divided into items.

    To be W3C compliant, channels should include title, link, description, similar to what you have seen above, and an id number, so the feed can tell when you have added new entries, updated or changed them.

    I stated number for id, which is a very convenient way - for instance date + serial, but you can use anything you like.

    More info:
    http://www.w3schools.com/rss/rss_tag_guid.asp

    Then you close the item.

    You can add as many as you like.

    Finally, an atom link (advanced feature that goes with my namespace, above). You might not need this, but to be fully W3C compliant, you should consider it.

    Then, you close the channel and the feed. That's it. The most basic stuff. This requires manual updates any time you make changes. But if works nicely and validates properly.


    You can check my own rss feed:
    http://www.dedoimedo.com/rss_feed.xml (view source for details)

    General info about rss:
    http://www.w3schools.com/rss/rss_intro.asp

    Mrk
     
  9. rarebeast

    rarebeast Registered Member

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    Apr 29, 2008
    Posts:
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    Hello Mrkvonic,

    thanks for that, your site has a lot of very useful information and I have now got your rss feed in my browser.

    rarebeast.
     
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