As the subject lines states, I'm setting up a system whereby a user
can subscribed to various newsletters that are sent out automatically
at varying intervals.
The advice I'm seeking, before I get into development is in the best way
to setup the db tables...
The main tables (among less important ones) I'm considering (MySQL) are:
- categories (Category_ID, Category_Name, Category_Description)
- subjects (Subject_ID, Category_ID, Subject_Name, Subject_Text)
- recipients (Recipient_ID, Recipient_Password, Recipient_EmailAddress,
Recipient_EmailType)
- registrations (Registration_ID, Recipient_ID, Category_ID, Subject_ID,
Registration_Date)
The idea would be to allow users (recipients) to sign up for one or more
newsletters.
My approach so far is to let users sign up and create a user account.
Then they can sign up for one or more newsletters.
The main question is how to handle the form info for the newsletters for
which they sign up.
- use check boxes with the same name for the newsletter and loop through
the values,
creating a new record in the "registrations" table for each newsletter
registration?
i.e., there would be one record in the "registrations" table for each
signup by a recipient
per newsletter (This would be important because there would be a
series of ordered
newsletters per category (topic) which would need to be sent, then have
the "Subject_ID" field,
which represent each newsletter in a series, containing the ID of the
last newsletter sent,
which would be updated when each new newsletter in the series is sent.
This way,
a recipient would be receiving the correct newsletter in the order
regardless of when they sign up.
I'll stop here without getting any deeper and making this longer...
Advice anyone? Anyone done this kind of thing?
I've been setting up email newsletter systems for websites for a few years,
but nothing quite this complex...
Thanks for the advice...
Rick
Rick Faircloth
White Stone Media
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