Creating a newsletter website 1

[wisch]

I am a college student doing an internship in computers. I have received an assignment and I don't know how to do it. I am supposed to create a newsletter website that allows users to subscribe to receive bi-weekly newsletters. All I know is that I must create a subscriber database and a database of articles for the newsletter. I must write a program that allows a user to sign up for the newsletter, and that allows someone to choose articles and send them out to the users. I don't know where to begin. Should I start with the databases? What language should I program in so that I can work with databases through the internet? I could use help with the general algorithm too.
Thank you very much. I need all the help that I can get.
Rachel

 

[Arion23]

Hi Rachel,

There are quite a few languages that allow you to provide web-interfaces to databases, for example: Perl, PHP, ASP, ColdFusion (to name just a few).

If you having programming experience in C or C++, then Perl might be suitable for you. I havent used PHP or ASP myself, but I would imagine that PHP is relatively easy to learn, and ASP is a good choice if you are using Microsoft's IIS webserver to host the site. Coldfusion is expensive, and probably not an option (unless you can present the assignment from your own PC running an eval version)

If you could provide more information on what platform (Operating System, web-server, database) the assignment is asking you to develop for, we could provide more advice on what languages you might want to look at.

I find it easiest to develop the database initially, then focus on the interface - work out what tables you want to store, and the fields in each table. Perhaps something like:
Table: subscriber
=================
FirstName, LastName, Email
Table: article
==============
ArticleID, ArticleTitle, ArticleContent

The work out what steps are needed in various stages, eg to subscribe:
1. Present Subscribe Form
2. Visitor enters details in Subscribe Form and hits send
3. Take details of form, and INSERT into table subscriber
4. Present Thankyou to user

Likewise for sending newsletters to suscribers.

Hope this helps as a starting point... let us know how you go...

 

[wisch]

Thanks for your help. I've learned C++ and Visual Basic. I'll be working with access for the database. The company I'm working for uses ASP, but I know almost nothing about it. They said I can use whatever I want. I've heard that there is a conection between ASP and VB, but since I know C++ better, should I try Perl (I don't know how to do object oriented stuff with C++)?
Thanks again!

 

[Arion23]

Definitly take a look at Perl - I personally found it easier to learn than ASP.

If you're using an Access database, have a look into the Perl DBI and DBD-ODBC modules, they provide the database functionality for Perl.

You can get a Win32 version of Perl called ActivePerl from ActiveState (

http://www.activestate.com/).

Also, check out WDVL at

http://www.wdvl.com/Authoring/Languages/Perl/PerlfortheWeb/index6.html

- this (and the O'Reilly Perl books) is where I've learnt the majority of using databases with Perl. The site also has tutorials for ASP as well, so you can check out that, and compare the two.

 

[wisch]

Thank you for your advice. I downloaded ActivePerl, but I can't figure out how to run it.(The help says that there are problems running it with Windows95, which is what I have.) I'll keep working at that. Meanwhile I also checked out the wdvl site that you mentioned, and it's got some fantastic stuff! Thanks!