Best way to deal with user forms

[Craig Schiller]

Hi, all -

I'm probably going to be designing the website for a small regional
government agency. One of the things they're considering is a facility
enabling visitors to the site to submit a form identifying their
interests and/or concerns. These visitors would then be mailed a monthly
newsletter.

We're assuming a maximum of 50 unique responders per month over a 3 year
period, so a possible max of 1800 responders.

My questions:

Would it be most efficient to have a connected database harvest the
email addresses? If so, designing that would be beyond my knowledge and
I'd have to subcontract that portion. What could I expect to pay someone
for that (realizing that the cost of the database software would also
have to be included)?

Would this number of responders be small enough to simply manually
transfer names and email addresses into a standalone database? If so,
what would then be the best method to do a group emailing? And, would it
be relatively simple to do a group emailing in HTML?

Thanks in advance for all of your suggestions.

Craig

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

If your site is hosted on a Windows IIS server and you can use ASP and Access, then this could be
accomplished using the FP database components with no additional cost involved.

I would suggest that you only send email in text format with a link to a newsletter on the site in
HTML or PDF format.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
WEBMASTER Resources(tm)

FrontPage Resources, WebCircle, MS KB Quick Links, etc.
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[Craig Schiller]

Thomas -

Thanks for the response. Unfortunately, as I tried to imply, I'm
unfamiliar with both ASP and Access, and have no pressing interest in
becoming familiar with either. I don't think the organization currently
has a website, so providing them with one that's hosted on a Windows IIS
server shouldn't be a problem.

Your point is taken about sending email only in text format. However,
that doesn't answer my question about the most efficient way to harvest
names and addresses and then create a mass mailing list.

Thanks for your help so far.

Craig

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

Craig,

The point is that by using the FP database components, in most cases you can avoid learning about
ASP and Access. Basically, you create a form, then under Form properties, select to have the form
submit it results to a database, then FP will create the Access database for you or if you really
don't want to use the FP database component, simply have FP write the form results to comma
separated value (.csv) text file. However using ASP and a database you could allow subscriber to
unsubscribe, update their email address or other info.

You could also consider using one of the following:

http://www.topica.com/solutions/index.html

http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/products/online/lb/detail.mspx

If you really want to use database driven function but avoid working with ASP and databases, drop me
an email with your phone number.
--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
WEBMASTER Resources(tm)

FrontPage Resources, WebCircle, MS KB Quick Links, etc.
==============================================

 

[Bob Lehmann]

you can avoid learning about ASP and Access.

Until something goes wrong or until someone wants a tweak or feature.

I would never recommend using the built-in ASP / Access for a customer's
site - especially a government site.



Bob Lehmann

 

[Bob Lehmann]

The most efficient way is the one that you have expressed "no pressing
interest in becoming familiar with". So, you can expect to pay $50 - $125+
per hour to have it done for you.

Bob Lehmann

 

[Craig Schiller]

Bob -

Thanks for the info, but how many hours would you ballpark?

Craig

 

[Murray]

5-10 hours.