Hi i own www.altontowersmagic.com and have a mailing list that people sign up to it is run by www.ymlp.com However I wondered if you could tell me how do i make my own. I pay for hosting and have a cpanel i know nothing about php or mysql. So could someone tell me how i make it so that people sign up to the mailing list via my website and then i do the mailing list via my website and not have to use YMLP. Thanks Mark AMD Athlon 64 3500+ sct 939 Gigabyte K8NXP-SlI Radeon X700pro 256mb 1GB Kingston value ram 3200 Audigy 2 ZS 200GB Maxtor SATA HDD DVD Rom

hi, you need a mailing list software installed on your server. Maybe there is one in your cPanel or maybe not (I have phplist in my fantastico on cPanel - but I dont use it) If no mailing list seems to appear in your cPanel, installing one by yourself is actually not very hard to do (no extended knowledge of any programming language needed), but still maybe it can't be installed, if your server's settings won't allow. my advice: use yahoo!groups or googlegroups. I know lots of websites, community, or companies, that uses yahoogorups as their mailing list. I once ran a mailing list on my server and I don't see any advantage other than my domain name as the address and no ads in the e-mails. While if using yahoogroups, everything will be alraedy set & available, the settings are user friendly, can set moderators, a homepage is provided, etc... --- Site of the Day

Oh geez...I actually just coded my own mailing list for a company I'm dealing with (well...almost finished, still have some finishing touches to add), and let me tell you, it was not fun. I have been working on it for a very long time. I would seriously take Laler's advice. If you have cPanel, there are a couple different mailing list software installed, and they won't have the ads and such. Else, just go with something simple like Yahoo Groups or Google Groups. Now that I look at your post again...you might not want something like Yahoo Groups where anyone can communicate via the mailing list? You just want to send information to people who sign up for it? If that's the case, just use a standard form, write peoples' information (including e-mail address) to a database, then using another form, put the information you want to send to people, and have that form mail to everyone's e-mail addresses in the database.

in case he only want a newsletter-typed mailing list then it can still be done with Yahoo!groups, there's an option so only some people (owner/moderators) can post :D and not to mention other feature like archives available, file uploads, photo gallery, simple database, polls, event reminder, etc., and each of those can be set so only accessible by moderators, members, or public... can't compare Yahoo! with YMLP there. *Yahoo! should pay me for saying those :P --- Site of the Day

Ha ha ha! Gotcha...yeah, I've never used Yahoo Groups, so I'm going to take your word for it. =) The only problem I've ever seen with Yahoo/Google groups, is that the messages will often get tagged as spam. This is far less likely using your own server, as you can actually (to a good extent) control your listings (or lack thereof) in spam databases.