I need an autoresponder without the opt in function

[orfeus123]

[jkikerx78]

I think I found what your looking for. Bravenet has a set of webtools that are free to use, you only have to register to get them. Once you choose a tool, you get a code that you can copy/paste to any site you own.

Go to

Register...then find the section that says "web tools".
Find the tool that says "Email Forms"

They give this discription: Auto-Responders:: Auto-send pre-written replies to form submitters. (There is no mention of opt in on this tool, where they did mention it on a seperate tool...so hopefully this will work for you.)

Good Luck
James

Send me a private message sometime and let me know if there is anything else you need.

[Steve MacLellan]

Most hosting accounts come with what is known as single autoresponders. When someone sends mail to one of these, you get a copy of the message the person sent. The person would get the discount code. If you have a control panel on your website, you should be able to set this up from there.

If you want something a little fancier you could visit hotscripts.com. They have a number of cgi scripts there (many are free) that you could download and install. I have seen ones there that will write the users information to a flatfile and send them a pre-configured reply. Benefits of this message is you can specify a thank you page and an error page (if they didn't supply all of the requested information. Then when your employer needs a report, you could import the contents of the flatfile into an Excel spreadsheet.

You can automate this task if you have Excel enabled for Web queries. This would likely have to be installed from your disk. My version of Office is 2000 and this isn't something that is installed by default. Once installed you can set the query to run at a specific time using Windows task scheduler (assuming you have an always on connection). This will automatically start the process so that Excel will download and import the contents of the flatfile at any given time.

It should also be noted that you don't necessarily have to look for a new form script either. If you are using a form on the website now that you like working with, you can probably and a sub function into the cgi script that will do this for you.

Suppose you had $file defined as the flatfile to open. You have the flatfile uploaded as an empty notepad text file to your cgi-bin, and have the permissions set to allow for reading and writing. Then you could add something like this to the form script you are using:

open(OUTPUT, ">>$file");
print OUTPUT "$date\t$contents{'Name'}\t$contents{'Email'}\t$contents{'Comments'}\t\n";
close (OUTPUT);

I'm not sure if all of the code posted above will appear here -- some of it might be stripped, but the whole point is that it is a pretty easy task to get a cgi script to write variables to a flatfile.

Hope this helps.

Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan

[Steve MacLellan]

On another note, if you don't have Excel web-enabled, you could provide your boss with a little bat program that he could double-click on and immediately have the flatfile downloaded to his desktop. Again, this could be automated using Windows scheduler too, if you wanted to.

You wouldn't need any special programs to do this. Even without having or knowing how to use an FTP program, all computers understand the FTP protocol.


As soon as a batch file initiates an FTP connection, your computer is running in that shell and no longer working out of the batch file. So the way to do it is to include another file into the batch file that contains all of your FTP commands. Then once this script is completed you're back to the batch file to complete any other tasks contained within it.

Sound confusing? It will be easier to explain by showing you the files:

So, here is the contents of my batch file called "2bat.bat"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

@ECHO OFF
FTP -s:login.txt your_domain.com
CSL
EXIT

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

when this batch file is run it calls the login.txt which contains
my username, password, and other FTP commands. Here is the
contents of login.txt:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
username
password
cd www/cgi-bin
get flatfile.txt
bye
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Then everytime he wanted the flatfile, he would double-click the icon on his desktop and provided he was connected to the Internet, the flatfile would be automatically downloaded onto his desktop.

Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan

[kbteam]

Hi,

http://getresponse.com is an autoresponder that allows you to put a form on your website for people to fill in and then get your report/email, etc. You can set it up so they don't have to "double opt-in" by clicking on another confirmation link.

Hope this helps!!

Kathy

[Lynn Terry]

[orfeus123]

[Steve MacLellan]