Creating a Mailing List Manager with PHP - Conclusion (
Page 6 of 6 )
By using PHP creatively and intelligently,
creating small, powerful application such as a mailing list manager can ease
your administration tasks, and automate much of your busy work. Using an all
file-based system such as this means you can put it to immediate use without
access to a database. As mentioned before, the one major drawback of using files
for storage is scalability – with lists over 500 names, modifying these scripts
to use mySQL tables would be a wise move.
These ideas can also be
extended to other applications which can really be a boon to your users, and
keep them coming back. One of the best simple applications these scripts could
be easily modified to perform is a "Question of the Day" sort of setup.
Putting
a number of questions in a mySQL database, and using cron-activated scripts to
grab a question a day from the database would be a near-autopilot solution which
looks very sophisticated, but requires almost no administration. Think about
innovative uses of these techniques and how you can use them to encourage
visitors to register with you and return for more.
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