The Doctor wrote:
Does anyone here know of such package that uses open source?
----- Forwarded message from Customer ---
1. Form Content Security. (FormmailEncoder/Decoder)
As I understand it, on a secure website the content of a submitted form is protected by SSL from the submitter to the server. The purpose of this software is to protect the information while it travels as an e-mail from your server to the client's computer. There seems to be plenty of e-mail-to-email encryption software around, but this was to only *form*-to-Email package I could find. Anything you find that will achieve this goal is acceptable.
NO, it is not usually sent as email from the computer processing the form request to anywhere else. There are usually better ways than email to do this. If you are asking about email from the server BACK to the client (perhaps acking the form submission) then this would be an email to email package. I don't think "form-to-email" makes much sense, except in cases where the server wants to be very thin, so it turns around and immediately sends the form data as email to somewhere else.
OH. Client and submitter are two different people! Nonstandard use of the term "client" in our argot. OK, you want a thin server to conduct the form submission, then email the results securely to a third party (this is your "client"). What we would usually do is handle the form submission with a CGI (which can be written in C or Perl or pretty much any language), then have it "pipe" (Unix term) into a program that would send out the encrypted email. All you need here is a mail program that can do the encryption and can take an outgoing message on standard in. Sorry about the Unix specific nature.
All of this is easy hacking under Open Source.
HOWEVER. Sometimes email gets lost, or a sending cannot go because of lack of scratch file space or something. How will you handle this? If you take the user's form then fail he will be angry because he did the work for nothing (remember IRS flushing tax forms in the 70s?). If you are going to log them on the server, why bother with email, just ftp the log file over nightly.
Doing this with email is kind of a kluge, you should realize that...
2. Newsletter. (NewsLetterPro) We're looking for a high-end package here. The requirements are:
- double opt-in - double-opt out - browser-based administration (sending, viewing lists , etc.) - built-in HTML editor for creating newsletters - ability to import and export mailing lists - supports text and HTML formats, lets user choose - free tech support - full user tracking and reporting (who opens them, who unsubscribes, etc.) - bounce filters (removes from list after X bounces) - ability to schedule deliveries - can collect information (name etc) when the user subscribes, and use it to personalize emails - database is fully secure
The only other package I found that could do all this was .asp...
All this is do-able but unless you can find an already existing package that does what you want, you're looking at hiring a competent and experienced programmer at industry rates. (PLEASE don't think you can hire a high-schooler to do this...)
If you can find alternatives that fully meet the objectives, great. I expect to use these elements (appropriately licensed, of course) on other sites in the future, so taking the time to get trouble-free packages now will enhance the experience for both your customers and mine.
OTOH if you have this done custom it will do what you want, to the extent that you can express what you want, that it is physically and logically do-able, and that what you want doesn't drift during the software development period.
If you use asp there will also be a development (or at least a customization) phase, but there might be things that are doable in a vacuum but that you cannot do because the technical decisions when asp was developed preclude that particular approach.
-- Charles B (Ben) Cranston mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.wam.umd.edu/~zben
______________________________________________________________________ OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org User Support Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Automated List Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED]
