[FX.php List] First Mass email = Too Many Redirects for Safari

[Jonathan Schwartz]

All good questions.


At 11:06 AM -0600 12/19/07, Bob Patin wrote:
>Jonathan,
>
>I guess my first question would be why you're doing this from the 
>browser and not directly from the database.

Up until today, I have done mass mails by exporting from the primary 
file, into a FMP "Emailer" file that uses SMTPIt and POP3it.  That 
has worked well enough, except that it takes a lot of coordination 
between the two files, and it takes time to build the custom email 
(answer to your next question).

I also send "transaction" emails using PHPMailer directly from the 
browser, such as order confirmations, and such.  They are one-offs.

In this particular case, I wanted to resend a transactional email, 
with slight modification, to a subset of the records. (A request for 
people to send payment).  I decided to rework the original email and 
just let PHPmailer do the work by send 100 one-off emails.

That's how I got to where I am.

>
>Assuming that there's a logical reason why this needs to be done 
>from the browser, my second question is whether each email is 
>distinctly different; if not, you could of course send a single 
>email to all recipients using a BCC.

Yes, they are all different.

>
>Third, I use a mail script that someone gave me, called "sock mail"; 
>it's a PHP page with the mail function in it, and I call the 
>function from within my PHP pages. I don't really know *anything* 
>about the sockmail function; it may be the same as PHPmailer, but I 
>don't know; I do know that it's been incredibly reliable for all the 
>sites where I've used it.
>
>Random thoughts... :)
>


The truth is, I'm not totally in love with SMTPit, and I'm exploring 
other avenues.  One of the biggest issues I face is how to allow end 
users to send their own email blasts.  Perhaps I'm different than 
other developers.  My role has turned into a developer/consultant 
where I work with the client during the project and actually help run 
the thing.  To free up time, I need to automate email marketing from 
my solution.  This experiment today was a first step.

J


-- 
Jonathan Schwartz
Exit 445 Group
jonathan at exit445.com
http://www.exit445.com
415-381-1852