I have created some minor sites but now I need to create a site for my clients that will require sending email from the email address they will need to upload with the email address of their client and data needed for information requested by their clients.

So, I need to know the basics of some simple maintenance (capable of being performed by the client) to upload email addresses/information then trigger a function to send information uploaded to the email address supplied.

Any suggestion or pointing to some examples would be great!

Thanks in advance.

Gary Hebb

Not sure if I understand your question, but have you looked at CoffeeCup Form builder? Or else you may be needing a CMS, which is outside of the scope of CoffeeCup Software at the time being.

That was a pretty confusing 2 paragraphs Gary, I really can't make heads or tales of what it is you actually want.

If I try to guess, then I'm going to assume you have multiple email addresses that you'd like people to be able to send email to? Or maybe you have multiple people you have sending you things via an upload function? I'm not quite sure. Can you please be a little bit more specific and clearer on exactly what you need?

This is done with server-side logic. Unfortunately, every platform does this a little bit differently, so you will need to gather a little bit of information about your current hosting environment. Not all hosting providers allow server-side logic, some bare bones providers only allow plain HTML pages in which case you will need to migrate to a different hosting provider.

What (if any) server languages does your hosting provider support? There are three major languages ASP, php, and ColdFusion each has good points and bad points (for example ColdFusion is alleged to have the shortest learning curve but requires more server resources and has a larger attack surface).

Maintenance is generally done by a Systems Administrator (that is one of the things that you are paying your hosting company to provide). Although, I believe you are referring to the list or database of email addresses (depending on exactly how many email addresses you anticipate being stored).

You may also need to determine your specific email server configurations (asp for example will need smtp settings)

The good news is once you determine the language and database there is probably already several modules or engines that support what you want already built such as Joomla or dotNuke. In addition depending on your level of comfort and time their are also several commercial services available that provide easy-to-use commercial email services online that guarantee compliance with anti-spam regulations, and legislation (for example automated opt-out links), for a recurring charge.

If you are hosted on a Linux server CoffeeCup's Website Access Manager might do what you want.

If you could provide a little more detailed information on your server environment and also what information/data (does the end-user wish to upload and send files if so do they want to store them on the server and provide links; a must if the files are large. what about link expiration or email them as attachments? does the end-user just want a simple online editor to create say a newsletter in HTML and a second page to add and delete recipients?) needs to be uploaded that would be a big help too.

Sorry for the confusion.

I write custom software. My clients have a special need to send annual reminders to their client base. We have always mailed these reminders but postage cost are forcing a new look at starting the process of emailing the annual reminder. I want to start with one client to perfect the process. Each client will have to decide who they want to host their site or I can find a hosting site for this function, which may be the best option.

I will write a custom program (not web software) to build a file which will have the necessary data created for uploading to the host. They (client) will need to do the upload themselves, I assume using a basic FTP process.

Once they upload the data with the email address and other information contained in the file I build, they will need to send the data upload to their clients.

From what I see, I think building an Access type datafile would work best for the data to be uploaded.

I don't see this as a complex problem with a lot of special needs, just the transfer of a data file the user creates monthly and setting up a process to loop through the table, sending the data to the email address uploaded as part of the process.

Also, don't see it anywhere but does Coffee Cup do hosting?

My first thought is that very few web hosting companies will allow an executable in a public folder for security reasons. This means that you'll need to either by or rent physical or virtual server.

Have you considered just writing a MS Access application and distributing the Access runtime?

It would handle everything you want to do (email, DB, logic engine) in one package and would run on any windows machine so require a much smaller investment in hardware, especially since you only want to actually run the routine once a year.

If you truly want this to be hosted on the net then you might consider asp .net and write server side logic that parses an uploaded file into an SQL Server then generates your emails.