Learning PHP
Usually when I learn something related to computers I give myself little practical assignments. SME is trying to send out an email marketing campaign right now but they are having a few problems. Their email is an HTML email consisting of a form that does a "mailto:" when submitted. Basically this is an internet command to open up your outlook/outlook express/etc and try to send out an e-mail. I figured it would be more practical to use a bit of scripting so I had them setup a test account for me on their server and messing around I found out that they support PHP and MySQL. flipped through my ebooks and went through a few examples and put up a quick PHP page that could write to a new MySQL database. Honestly this makes the most sense, but I guess the email is only to request information so they only needed the customer's data mailed to info@hksme.edu.hk.I had quickly handed in my assessment papers at United Oriental College, making sure with Candy that I had handed one in for each student, and since SME also paid me I ran down to the bank to cash in my cheques. Back at SME I basically worked on one the PHP scripts for a few hours right up to my English class at night. Mr. P L Chau likes to remind me way too much that he needs it done, especially since this is completely volunteer. There is a lack of skill in the system here.
I had signed up with a monthly plan finally, I ended back with Smartone/Vodafone. I don't know why really but I was use to them and I really like their marketing and choices. I'm not a fan of Leon Lai so constantly seeing his face advertised for Three HK I didn't really feel like joining. Because they gave me a new SIM I had to copy my phone numbers back into my card. So I did that after I had dinner with some of my students.
posted by Tempest7 @ 11:00
3 Comments:
PHP's mail function should be more than sufficient for all your needs. Realistically given the requirements you have, storing into a MySQL database is overkill unless you plan on harvesting that data and using it to create some metrics.
Yeah, so I went ahead and changed it. But really there was kind of a scandal where someone was harvesting all this data and selling it to marketing.
This reminds me of when they were sampling bone marrow and forgot to record the data at first. What a loss of information. I love databases I think everything should be put into one. This was a marketing operation as well, surprisingly they don't have the foresight to store that wealth of information. Or IT just didn't tell them that they could.
You'd be surprised... I just finished working on a project converting a bunch of formmail e-mail submission forms into an amalgamated PHP/MySQL project because the person processing the individual emails was manually keying in each email into an MS Access database. So now they receive a daily CSV file every day that they just import directly saving hours of work each day.
That being said, there's a huge difference between data and useful information. As always, the design needs to fit the purpose.
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