Mail list management

[michatmaster7]

Yes, yes. I am was just researching this idea. One of my clients forms is a reservation request form. I'd like to install a checkbox on that form that says "Subscribe me to the Mailing List" - so that when the form is submitted, the email address from a text field I designate (the email field, obviously) is sent over to my Constant Contact account. I'm wondering if there is a way to do this given their existing API.

So... without building a module, there is currently no way of doing this? I wish I was a coder. Maybe I'd understand the CC API.

[alexh]

Plus one vote for me on this one! Maybe some integration with existing open source software would be a solution. For instance, I use PHPList (http://www.phplist.com/), which is a (open source) super powerful application for managing mailing lists.

It sounds like this isn't high on the priority list, but I wanted to give some input! I think it would definitely be a good premium module, I know I would pay for it.

[michatmaster7]

In direct response to this comment:

How about a module for integration with mailing service providers like http://mailchimp.com or http://campaignmonitor.com? That would be easier to implement than your own mass-mailer module, and would be significantly better for ensuring your server's installation of FormTools doesn't get blacklisted as a spammer. As I said before, it is very much advisable to use a service if you're going to send out e-mail newsletters.

Cheers,
Kevin

I just signed up for MailChimp as I, too, would like my existing form to both do it's current function as well as submit a list subscription to my MailChimp account.

My question: Is there a way using an HTML form to have two action attributes? Or two actions in one attribute?

For example: <form action="form_action.asp" action="form_action2.asp" method="post">

Or: <form action="form_action.asp, form_action2.asp" method="get">

The one stipulation I would have... NO JAVASCRIPT. I know there are a few ways to get this done with JavaScript, but I'd rather not go that route if AT ALL possible. I'm thinking, maybe the form submits to FT, then FT resubmits the form to another action. It certainly sounds feasible, but I don't know how...

The current form tag I am using is:

Code:

<form action="<?php echo $_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]?>" method="post">

I also need the same form to do the following:

Code:

<form action="http://someurl.com/formaction" method="post">

If someone gets me an answer that tests out and works, I'd be happy to post a tutorial of how to integrate FormTools with MailChimp.

[michatmaster7]

Ok, I think my last reply was way off, probably due to lack of sleep.

I think that what we want to do here is easy, I just don't know how to write the code. Let's see if I can explain the concept.

In an HTML form, directly following a text input field for "email" I would have a checkbox. I need the form to determine IF that box has been checked. If the box has been checked, then in addition to normal processing, also process the form using the equivalent to:

action="http://somewebsite.com/subscribe/post" using method="post"

If that particular checkbox has NOT been checked, then process the form normally and just skip the above step.

The concept seems like an easy PHP function, I'm just not a PHP coding guy...

[michatmaster7]

Update: I have successfully integrated a form (processed externally via the FT API) with my MailChimp subscription list. Users can now select a checkbox in one of my forms, then when the form is submitted, the first name, last name, e-mail address and IP address (of the user) are passed over to MailChimp via their API code. I am still in testing (more than 9 hours now). I have a few more tests to run and am waiting on a response from the API team about the IP addresses. As soon as I finish, probably by the end of this week, I will post all of the steps necessary to achieve this integration. It's actually much easier than I thought. But their API documentation is not easy to read unless you have much knowledge of PHP coding.

Very exciting news here! Stay tuned!

[michatmaster7]

So I'm almost a year late in responding to this, but I was finally forced to re-learn how to do this as I needed to do it for another client. So, I have posted very detailed instructions on how to go about doing this. You can see my new thread here: http://forums.formtools.org/showthread.php?tid=2414