How does one collect names and contact info via a form on a website?

Seanie M

Hi there,

Is there software I can use or buy that will allow a website to collect and collate names and contact info into a database, submitted through a website for e.g. email lists, without the need for manually adding such contacts having got in touch via a regular contact form?

Any help is appreciated.

Later,

Seanie.

lil_lisa

I'm assuming this form is on your own site? You're going to need server-side controls to do this. Something like Perl or PHP tied with a database like Oracle or SQL Server. I'd recommend having a read of this if you have none of this on your site.

Seanie M

Thanks for the reply Lisa. I'm not THAT terribly PHP savvy, let alone Perl, but as most servers support these platforms and languages, I was hoping for a little programme to gather that data and do the dirty work for me.

Alternatively, can I double up a contact form to become the gatherer of that info with a php script instead of clogging up an email inbox with submissions?

Seanie.

lil_lisa

Its not extremely difficult, have a look at this w3schools tutorial, it's pretty much exactly what you want to do.

Seanie M

Thanks again Lisa.

That tutorial is pretty good. However, it is only good for gathering the information. Say if I wanted to send all users stored in the table an email, I'd have to select all the email address and copy+paste into an email editor. What I'd like to have is the ability to construct the email from the server-side and simply send it to all the emails in the database. Short and sweet!

Seanie.

SamB64

Seanie,

Ifwhat you want to do is to collect email and contact details via a form on your website, automatically load them into a database and then be able to send either:

• broadcast to the full list (or subsets of that list)
• A timed sequence of emails after they've signed up

What your looking for is an autoresponder.

1-shopping cat is a good one, if a little expensive but it'd easy to use.

You could also try mail chimp, or awber

These all give free trials.

Basically you go through a little wizard which will create a htmal snippet that you add to your website

Hope this helps,

Sam.

Seanie M

Hi SamB64, yep, that is more along the lines of what I am looking for. I have decided on Mail Chimp, which suits me down to the ground regarding personalization, useage, pricing when larger campaigns are needed, etc.

Thanks again guys!

oldat31

Does your hosting package have a newsletter.
People signup to the newsletter and then you can auto send out bulk letters to anyone who has signed up.