Chapter 18. Managing a Simple Mailing List

This chapter provides the first of several hands-on, small projects designed to pull together your PHP and MySQL knowledge. In this chapter, you'll learn the methods for creating a managed distribution list, which can be used to send out newsletters or anything else that you want to send, to a list of email addresses in a database.

The mailing mechanism you'll use in this chapter is not meant to be a replacement for mailing list software, which is specifically designed for bulk messages. The type of system you'll build in this lesson should only be used for small lists, fewer than a few hundred email addresses.

In this chapter, you will learn how to

• Create a subscribe/unsubscribe form and script

• Create a front end for sending your message

• Create the script that sends your message