Mail Dispatcher - Creative Web Site Tools

To dispatch messages automatically must also set up a CRONTAB command to run once a day on my server. This is a bit tricky and you may need the help of your server administrator to do this for you. Many ISPs do not allow clients CRONTAB configuration access.

Finally, here's what happens next (while I am sleeping peacefully)

At 1:00 AM EST each morning, the CRONTAB command sends a command to run mail dispatcher.
Each time that mail dispatcher runs it reads the current date from the server and dispatches the email message that is queued to be dispatched on that day.
On May 15, Mail dispatcher sends a blank email message to cqtoday-accept-12zAVyz75FNGTPcl@yahoogroups.com.
This "accept" message instructs YahooGroups to immediately dispatch the May 15th ezine to the 2,000 CQ Today subscribers.

	Creative Nuts and Bolts: Useful Web Site Tools
	Mail Dispatcher: A nifty CGI (perl) program to automatically dispatch e-mail from your server
	As webmaster for CreativeQuotations.com I publish three quote-a-day ezines: CQ Today: five Creative Quotations from a famous person born on that day. CQ Women: five Creative Quotations from a famous woman born on that day. CQ Lite: five humorous quotations on a topic of the day, e.g., "The Lighter Side of Bores." I use YahooGroups.com for the management of my subscription list and for dispatching the ezines. This works fine, except that YahooGroups does not provide a mechanism to post and queue the ezines for automatic dispatching. I am obliged to post and dispatch the ezines on a daily basis. This is particular a problem for me, because, as a primary health care systems consultant, I make frequent trips to areas of Africa where there is no easy access to the Internet. However, thanks to the Mail Dispatcher program, I have been able to create a work-around that allows me to post and automatically dispatch ezines for several weeks at a time. First, I have all of my ezine "discussion groups" set in the newsletter mode with me as moderator. That means that I am the only person who can post a message to be dispatch to the subscribers. Second, I create my ezines several months at a time using a combination of mail merge. I create my merge templates in WordPerfect and then merge the selected quotations for each day into the template for that ezine. (That's another useful tool that I will explain later) Third, I post my messages via email to my moderated groups (CQToday , CQLite , & CQWomen ). For example, I copy a message from WordPerfect and paste it into the body of an email message. A message is sent, for example, to cqtoday@yahoogroups.com. Important Note: If you are posting ezines several days in advance, be sure to change the date on your computer to correspond to the date of dispatch. If, on May 10, I post a message to be dispatched on May 15, but don't change the date on my clock, the message will be dispatched by YahooGroups on May 15 with the date May 10! As a result your subscribers will complain that the ezines are getting "lost" in their inbox (because most people sort messages by the date of dispatch). Fourth, after each ezine is posted, YahooGroups automatically sends an email to the moderator (me) asking if I want to approve or delete the posted message. For each message posted I receive a unique "accept" email address, e.g., cqtoday-accept-12zAVyz75FNGTPcl@yahoogroups.com. Fifth, if I want to dispatch the email immediately, I just hit replay and send a blank email to the "accept" address. However, if I want to dispatch the ezine automatically at a later date, I paste the "accept" address into the Mail Dispatcher program residing on my server and select the dispatch date, e.g., May 15. (see picture below) To dispatch messages automatically must also set up a CRONTAB command to run once a day on my server. This is a bit tricky and you may need the help of your server administrator to do this for you. Many ISPs do not allow clients CRONTAB configuration access. Finally, here's what happens next (while I am sleeping peacefully) At 1:00 AM EST each morning, the CRONTAB command sends a command to run mail dispatcher. Each time that mail dispatcher runs it reads the current date from the server and dispatches the email message that is queued to be dispatched on that day. On May 15, Mail dispatcher sends a blank email message to cqtoday-accept-12zAVyz75FNGTPcl@yahoogroups.com. This "accept" message instructs YahooGroups to immediately dispatch the May 15th ezine to the 2,000 CQ Today subscribers. Mail Dispatcher was written by Peter Go for the UNIX platform. This CGI script costs $30. Click here for more information.