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Inbuilt Newsletter.

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Inbuilt Newsletter.
Hi,

I am switching over from my current newsletter script to the inbuilt one in Links SQL (cause I am betting that a SQL based one will run faster then the old Flat File one that I used).

Anywho - The question I have is how to do I make it so that I can include the persons name in the mailing. I know I can use <%Contact_Email%> - But I want to be able to say

Hi <%Contact_Name%>!,

and so on so it sounds a bit more personal.

I have looked through admin.cgi and subscribe.cgi and found nothing, is it built it or will I have to get one of you to help me with it Wink


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Michael Bray
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Review your webhost, or find a new one at http://www.webhostarea.com


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Re: Inbuilt Newsletter. In reply to
The reason is that the message is parsed BEFORE you edit it. You need to make the changes in the newsletter routines in order to effect changes. If you assign those variables, you can edit the layouts in the source.

Maybe Alex will consider changing this to make it a more flexible and robust system. It shouldn't be too hard to make the newsletter a template as well, and send it out to the list of names.

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POSTCARDS.COM -- Everything Postcards on the Internet www.postcards.com
LinkSQL FAQ: www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/










[This message has been edited by pugdog (edited January 23, 2000).]
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Re: Inbuilt Newsletter. In reply to
But if you can go through and use the <%Contact_Email%> already, I thought it would just be simple to grab the name while your at it...

Oh well - Hopefully Alex will improve it - why does it ask for the name if you can't use it?
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Re: Inbuilt Newsletter. In reply to
I was looking at nph-email.cgi, and the portion that does the template substitution is:

Code:
$msg_mod = &load_template('email', { 'Contact Email' => $address, 'Contact_Email' => $address }, $message);

The problem is, 'address' is passed, but 'name' is not. In order to do that, you'd have to modify the initial newsletter routine to store BOTH the Contact_Email and Contact_Name, and pass them. A bit more complicated.

This is non-standard, and done probably for speed, and to allow removing addresses from the list before sending.

Maybe Alex will look at that on the next go-around and rework it. Looking at it, you _can_ do it, but it will impose a performance penalty because it would involve either looking up the information and passing it to the &load_template routine, or storing it initially. If you look it up, then pass it to the &load_template routine, you can chose which data to send, if your email database has 32 fields like mine, you wouldn't want to just pad it all into a passed hash from the Admin Smile

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POSTCARDS.COM -- Everything Postcards on the Internet www.postcards.com
LinkSQL FAQ: www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/








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Re: Inbuilt Newsletter. In reply to
32 Fields in the email database??? Thats only about 27 more then me Smile

What the heck are they?

First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Secondary Email Address... Postcard they selected...

Oh well Smile - I am gonna make this newsletter my project thingo for this month, I don't see the point in getting there name If I'm not gonna use it Frown
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Re: Inbuilt Newsletter. In reply to
No, actually the postcards data is kept in a different database, and it has nothing to do with the email one. That has only about 17 fields. My main links database has close to 30 fields now!

The email fields are for demographics data, actually, if people give it. About 60% do, so it's worth collecting.

It's so easy to add fields, that you start collecting data.

I'm now collecting "Hits" vs "Site Visits" ie: how many times people read a description vs actually jumping to the site.

You start thinking of all the data you can get that can give you an idea of what people are really doing, and a way to find out what sites are _really_ getting traffic.

Lot's of flexibility Smile

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POSTCARDS.COM -- Everything Postcards on the Internet www.postcards.com
LinkSQL FAQ: www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/