email distributing from Access

[Amanda Byrne]

My company wants to start sending out an HTML e-newsletter. The idea is to
get the Access database online (approx. 10,000 accounts). We would have to
put the database on our external web server and then the office would
synchronize the office database with the web server database at night. The
database would have a field for each user that would track whether they were
subscribed to the newsletter or not. Users would have an account they could
log into from the website (ODBC connection).

I'd want the newsletter to have subscribe/unsubscribe capability like a
listserv.

Can someone suggest a program that could interact with my Access database to
mail out the list? Or maybe point me in a direction to help with my research
on list servs with Access and/or database synchronization? My company is a
non-profit, so funding is VERY limited.

Thanks, Amanda

 

[Larry Linson]

If the software configuration of all users is under your control, so you can
assure that users have Internet Explorer 5.5 or later, and the Office Web
Extensions loaded, then you may be able to use Access' own Data Access Pages
for simple database applications on the Internet. Because of the "stringent"
software requirements, you find those most often on company intranets.

Microsoft's current DotNet solution to web-based databased applications is
ASP.NET -- which can be coded in any DotNet compatible language. VB.NET and
C#.NET are the two most popular DotNet languages from Microsoft.

Many people still use the predeccessor, .asp (ActiveX Server Pages), which
does not require the DotNet framework, nor use DotNet languages.

If the server on which this will be hosted is a shared server, on which you
just pay for a domain, space, and traffic, then you'll have to discuss with
your Web Presence Provider what type of software they support.

If the server is your own, or a "co-located" separate server, then you will
have to have a Windows OS on the server to use ASP.NET.

A somewhat simpler, but less flexible and capable, Microsoft product is
Microsoft FrontPage. Using the Database Interaction Wizard, you can create a
<did I point out "simple"> interaction with an Access or SQL Server
database.

There are third-party products, such as Cold Fusion, in varying price
ranges. Cold Fusion was created by Allaire, but the Allaire company has been
acquired. I saw some very nice work done with the (pre-acquisition) Cold
Fusion, back in 1999 and 2000. There is a server component that must be
licensed and installed on your server, unless they have changed the design.

Dream Weaver is another popular product for creating web applications / web
sites.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

 

[Amanda Byrne]

Larry,

Thanks for the response, I know it wasn't a simple question.

After further review and discussion, we are going with a software product
called e-Announce, which is a plug-in for Outlook. I will be able to export
my mailing list to a csv file and use this plug-in. Althoug I won't get the
complete interaction I would like (no auto subscribe/unsubscribe capability),
it's affordable and comes highly recommended.

We do currently use Active Server Page technology on our website, hosted on
a Windows OS machine, so this was not an obstacle.

thanks for the help

- Amanda