News Letter, how is it done??

How do I set up a Newsletter on my site? How also can I have people subscribe and receive it via email?

Thanks a lot for advice

Okay, this is an easy one I can take care of

I'm going to use PHP XHTML and JAVACSRIPT if need be, I never wrote one before, there will be NO code other than psuedo.

http://ca.php.net/mail might be of some interest to you

Write a mail script that will mail your news.

Create a database to store all the different news accumulated between mailings.

Don't forget the world is FULL of spam.

You will probably want to automaticaly unsubscribe someone/allow them to unsubscribe themselves, usualy a link in the email text at the bottom. Make sure it works FFS.

Have a time based script on your server access the news database and send out the recent news.

If you're asking to learn code you came the the wrong site, try:
http://ca.php.net/manual/en/index.php

You can look for more features by going to google searching for newsletter software for sale, and program their features into yours. I love inspiration

I actually think this is fairly easy to program. Now a fully featured newsletter software for people who don't know anything about code or are too lazy or whateever the reason they will buy it for, that might be harder to code. Being an OS gui and all you might need to step outside the realm of website development and get vb.net or java or something.

If you're running the site on a local host you will need to properly configure your server so that all mail gets out. With my mail server hotmail and such email sites don't accept my email. I'm too lazy to set it up beyond test purposes :P I may begetting my own static IP to host my site from I hope I hope

Thanks for your response! Well, I am running my site on a Unix Server.

From your response above, you mentioned something about a fully featured newsletter software" but honestly, I did not understand that sentence. I was more interested in that sort of thing becoz I can write that code myself at all, on the other hand, I am very concerned about that comment you made about this software (I am not sure if you meant that it is not good, or what)

Is it as hard as it sounds with all the database stuff? becoz the person I am building the site for doesn't know a thing about websites and I am sure they want to maintain the newsletter. I dont know php (I beleive its the language used here?) Do you think my client can mange to maintain this thing all by herself?

Again, thanks for your advice.

I think what acidfourtyfive is saying, is that if you want a program that has all the bells and whistles for easy maintenance you could by the software or it would be alot of work setting it up yourself.
Check into your friends hosting, some providers include a newsletter program.
If your friends wants easy maintenance of the newsletter you could always create an administration tool to allow access to the database containing the contact emails.