We are in the process of setting up an autoresponder (like aweber etc) and are pretty much ready to test.

The service will have a free "lite" version, and then the regular service for a monthly free.

If you are interested in helping us test the functionality of everything I would be pleased to give you the paid service free, which is regularly $20/month.

If you want to give it a whirl, please PM me.

Thanks.

Forgive my ignorance, but just what is an autoresponder?

I like the idea of getting something free:) but I don't really know what it is.
If I can help, I would love to. Unfortunately, I probably am way out of the loop.

If you visit aweber.com or get response.com they do a very good job explaining the benefits of having one.

Here's my quick version.

If you have material you want to automatically send your web site visitors, they enter their email address onto a form and the material is forwarded by the server. You can set it up to have follow-up messages after that.

We'll be having a "lite" version which is free and then a paid version with all the features. I'm offering the PAID version free for life in exchange for someone testing and using the system.

Gin

Hm, isn't this considered a mailing list? As far as I know, an autoresponder is a piece of code that automaticaly replies to e-mail with a pre-defined message. It is useful if you are on vacation and want to let everyone know if they write to you. Or, as you can see at Wikipedia:



Anyhow, I think this is a good idea (the mailing lists web site). If I am correct, there are only a few like those, and I'm sure many people/companies would like to have their newsletter. But what does a user get by paying the monthly fee?

Well, I would love to try this! It would be nice to send emails or new songs from my band to fans by email. How can I sign up?

Also, will this take up disk space or bandwidth? Just wondering.

The bandwidth will be at our end. (I have to trust that it won't be abused.)

Sign yourself up at www.vividelements.com/responder/

Sign up for a free account and I will change it to a paid account in the admin panel.



That definition is in the most "basic" application of an autoresponder. Where it gets VERY powerful is if you use it in conjuction of your web site. If you have information you want to give someone it is sent automatically.

Here's an eample you might use it for:

You can give away a short MP3 clip sample of your music (a teaser). But as far as your web site is concerned it will be on autopilot. They get the file without you having to to anything ... and voila you have a person on your list.

Then you can set it up to 2 days later (or whatever interval you choose) send a second email.

As you build your mailing list, you can email announcements ... upcoming important gigs, or a new CD release ... or you got a new bass player ... or whatever. You use it for follow-up (all on auto-pilot).

It makes your site become a more useful tool for your band. About 95% of web sites don't even understand the usefulness of this technology.

Aweber and getresponse charge $20/month for this service and are very popular with people who "make money" online as opposed to people who just "have a web site".

The reason I'm giving it away free is because we are setting it up. We're new, and need to understand better how it works, and know what types of questions our customers will have. Your account won't be temporarily free. If you use it, you'll have it free for as long as you want it.

There are no graphics yet on the site. We won't be doing that until we know that everything works properly.

Sorry if I'm rambling. But if you have questions please ask away.

Gin

Auto responder configuration using php is simple one!
For me, I'm using one php code to send one auto response to the visitors
who is entering the email ID in my comments page!
I'm sharing the code will all of you!
If you need this one, u can feel free to use this code friends
Here I'm taking the email as input from the users thru one input box named: visitorEmail
and then Im giving the action attribute of the form tag to one php file say, auto.php
like this:

<form method="post" action="auto.php">


And creating one auto.php file to get the values from the input field of the invoker form
and sending one mail to that email!
Im copying the code here!



<?PHP
# ----------------------------------------------------
# -----
# ----- Code From Niran V V
# -----
# ----- http://www.fun.niranvv.com/
# -----
# ----------------------------------------------------

error_reporting(7);

if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'])) {
$ClientIP = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'];
} else {
$ClientIP = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
}

# RegisterGlobals OFF

$FTGvisitorEmail = $_POST['visitorEmail'];


if (get_magic_quotes_gpc) {
$FTGvisitorEmail = stripslashes($FTGvisitorEmail);
}
# Redirect user to the error page

# Confirmation Email to User

$confEmailTo = $FTGvisitorEmail;
$confEmailTo = preg_replace('/[\x00-\x1F]/', '', $confEmailTo);

$confEmailSubject = "Thanks For Visiting";
$confEmailSubject = preg_replace('/[\x00-\x1F]/', '', $confEmailSubject);

$confEmailBody = "visitorEmail: $FTGvisitorEmail\n"
. "\n"
. "Thanks for Visiting\n"
. "";

$confEmailHeader = "From: MyID@MyDomain.Com\n"
. "Reply-To: MyID@MyDomain.Com\n"
. "MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
. "Content-type: text/plain; charset=\"ISO-8859-1\"\n"
. "Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable\n";

mail($confEmailTo, $confEmailSubject, $confEmailBody, $confEmailHeader);

# Redirect user to success page

header("Location: success.html");
exit;

# End of PHP script
?>


Here replace the MyID@MyDomain.Comwith your mail ID!

$confEmailHeader = "From: MyID@MyDomain.Com\n"
. "Reply-To: MyID@MyDomain.Com\n"

Thats all friends!
If you are having any probs with the code, then feel free to ask me!
Thank you all.

Niran

This post has been edited by Niran: Nov 29 2006, 02:12 AM

Niran, will this do sequential autoresopnders too?

For example ... day 1 - message 1, day 2 - message 2 etc.

Gin

No, go ahead! That sounds really interesting. I'm going right now!

I see you have signed up so I have upgraded your membership to the paid version.

At this time there are no tutorials on how to apply this to your web site, but you can still start setting up autoresponders, as they are working.

To have people sign-up for your autoresponder you will need to add some code to your web site. At this point I am adding a bunch of fields and variables, so you can use whichever ones you want. I'm trying to come up with the maximum (within reason) that someone will need to use. Then you can pick whichever ones you want.

for example:

name
email
address
tel
etc etc

Then there will be some variables that you can use for yourself. In my case we will want them to tell us something about their business. (New business? Have a web site? etc). I want to make these variables work for everyone who wants to use them.

The code will end up in your admin panel where it says HTML but not all the fields are in it yet.

At the moment you can set up your first autoresponder, and decided what pre-written message you want to go out to them.

Thanks for signing up. I look forward to your feedback on the site as it progresses.

Gin