Emails, Newsletters, and Updates... Oh My! - Distant Web

Before I get into the meat of this post, I shall go ahead and address a possible elephant. I realize that I have been completely silent on my own websites for almost two full years, and my social media presence has been almost equally lacking during the same time-frame. This is not quite the time or place for me to get into that, but I do hope to soon; most likely on rplauer.com. This post has a more specific purpose, so let's just jump into it.

When last I posted here, I mentioned hitting a snag in a Newsletter script I was working on for my colleague TA Nieman. The original intention had been to get to work on fixing that snag. Unfortunately life happened - including the death of my laptop thanks to Microsoft's inability to respect my choices - and ultimately here we are now.

However, I did finally get a new laptop a while back, and even though motivation has still been an issue I struggle with every moment of every day, I did in fact return to coding.

One of the first things I've done since getting back into the swing of things was to update some aspects that really should have been done five years ago, including (but not limited to):

Email Verification

From now on, all new registrations will be required to verify their email addresses before having access to any email related features. I've also added the ability to change your email address through the My Account section. All email address changes will also have to be verified before the update will be reflected in your account.

Verification is a simple process of having an email sent to the address on file with a link, click the link, and boom, you're verified.

For right now, I'm allowing emails to go through for any previously registered accounts that signed up for Blog Post Subscriptions. However, at some point I will be adjusting the code to only include verified email addresses when sending out those emails.

Contact Us Email

Apparently I never had the Contact Us script send an email to the person filling out the form. This was clearly an oversight on my part, and has since been fixed.

Newsletter

And now the real point of this post. I have finally gotten back to fixing the snag, and while it's not what I truly wanted, it'll do just fine. For the sites that utilize the new Newsletter section, signing up will require a registered account that has been verified. Subscribing and unsubscribing will be as simple as clicking a single link while logged in.

Each Newsletter will have a link to a web based version of the Newsletter as well as the Newsletter itself, and a link to unsubscribe.

Distant Web will technically have the Newsletter enabled, but it's not a real Newsletter; it's enabled strictly for testing purposes only, so please do NOT sign up on distantweb.net. TA Nieman, however, will be a real Newsletter once she gets it set up, so absolutely feel free to sign up for that once it's ready.

I'm not a huge fan of requiring registration in order to sign up for the Newsletter, but it will counter the bot problem I had before. Perhaps in the future I can come up with a better solution to allow non-registered individuals to sign up with their email addresses, but only time will tell.

That's all I have for right now. There's a lot that's been on my mind lately, some of which I'm sure I'd be willing to share if I had the motivation, but motivation is exactly what I have been lacking the last few years. I'm trying to break the stagnation I've felt, but it's difficult.

Hopefully soon I'll post more, either here or on rplauer.com, but until then, take care of yourself, whoever you are, and thank you for reading.

P.S. If you have any thoughts or suggestions on anything covered here, especially when it comes to the site itself and functionality, please don't hesitate to leave a comment.