Making an Opt-in Mailing List

jerrygarciuh has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Mes Freres,

My client would like an opt-in mailing list script and I am debating whether I should write one or pay for MajorDomo or Mailman (or use NomoDomo) etc. I want whatever we use to do automated additions based on the reply of the user to our subscribe mail.

I would like opinions on whether writing my own is a waste of time.

Additionally I would like to know, if I pursue writing this what modules others are using. I have thus far examined Mail::Audit and Mail::Bulkmail. They look like a good start, but I am still unclear as to how Perl reads Subject or Body to determine an action (subscribe/unsubscribe) to perform on the database.
Any help greatly appreciated.
TIA
jg
_____________________________________________________
Think a race on a horse on a ball with a fish! TG

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Re: Making an Opt-in Mailing List by tachyon (Chancellor) on Apr 11, 2002 at 20:39 UTC
Is it a waste of time? Is it better to drive somewhere and get there quickly or walk there, arriving later but enjoying the fresh air and casual human contact? You will learn from the experience. If you also enjoy it and the end product is functional, relaiable and secure..... cheers tachyon Reinvent wheels if you want to but always be willing to admit you made an Edsell not a Ferrari.	[reply]
Re: Making an Opt-in Mailing List by lachoy (Parson) on Apr 11, 2002 at 21:02 UTC
IMO, the reason mailing list managers tend to be fairly complicated is that they're trying to deal with a non-trivial problem. Personally, I try to do as little as possible managing email because of earlier experiences that gave me a peek of how horrible the problems could get. When mailing list managers screw up (normally because of misconfiguration), they can do so in a spectacularly bad manner, creating an infinite mirror of bounces or worse. Lots of potential for angering many people at once. So I'd install Mailman (which seems to be pretty well respected) and see how it goes. Plus, you might get to pick up some Python along the way and see how good you have it in Perl :-) Chris M-x auto-bs-mode	[reply]
Re: Making an Opt-in Mailing List by shotgunefx (Parson) on Apr 12, 2002 at 09:16 UTC
If for some reasone you don't want to use an existing package, one thing you could do is just use a simple cgi form to do the collecting (since most people sign up when viewing a page anyway). What I've done in the past is they submit their address via form. I generate a random digest and store the email in a temporary place (using Cache::FileCache, etc). I send the user a text email with a link to another script that validates it. The digest is in the url. If it's a valid address, they get the mail, click the link and the program adds them to the live list. Something like this is pretty straight forward to code. Handling a generic list subscribe would most likely be really time consuming. Many nuances I'm sure. -Lee "To be civilized is to deny one's nature."	[reply]