Re: "Send to a friend" techniques - a summary

Hi,

Today I implemented the Theatre's "Send to a Friend" feature
(www.qmt.org.uk/whatson/ then select any of the productions to test it out).
There are a few comments and questions I need to address here, however.

> From: "cbirds(at)earthlink.net" <cbirds(at)earthlink.net>
>  I noticed that the code from the car page really is a mailto link type
> of thing, [....] What I thought you were looking for was something that
mailed the article
> or URL seamlessly without the users email client coming into play

The car page is nothing to do with me, it was an example I was sent.  I was
in fact looking at a seamless CGI script that removed the need for the email
client to get involved.  Especially as this causes all sorts of
IE/Netscape/AOL/Add-Brower-Here differences problems.

In the end I wrote my own custom script that is tied to the pre-existing
"What's On" database.

> example, the cgi script would send to the email entered, but in the
> hidden fields there would  be the text copy of the article or the URL

Because the custom script is tied to the database, there is no need to use
hidden fields for this.  The only hidden field contains the title of the
show to be emailed.  This title is then matched in the database and the
relevent details are extracted to be sent in the email.

> But since you don't want to be collecting emails you can say
> so in a privacy statement and we would hope the theatre has a good enough
> reputation that people would believe it. :-)

Indeed, I have added a note in the privacy statement and placed a prominant
link to it on the "Send to a Friend" feature.  I also mention that I'm
tracking IP address (which is already tracked with the site statistics, so
it's not something new to the visitors), the referring page and the title of
the show they send (so the Theatre can see which shows are popular and
whether the "send to a friend" referrals actually lead to more bums on
seats).

> I've found the only modification necessary is to make sure the subject
> line is like this:
> From_The_Theatre instead of From The Theatre otherwise AOL and some other
> browser interpret it as  From%20The%20Theatre.

Again, not an issue with the Perl script I'm using.  Nothing is parsed via
the email client, or via the "GET" method (when I use the GET method to
parse the show title from the main "What's On" page to the "More
Information" page, I use an underscore where spaces would appear, then just
use search and replace in the script to make the underscores appear as
spaces in the page itself).

> From: "Mike Taylor" <lonewolf(at)one.net>
> No, no...I'm not saying "Don't Do It."  I'm simply pointing out that
> there's another side to this coin.

Sorry, I didn't mean it to sound like you were saying "don't do it", your
name on that item was in reference to the example you gave regarding
marketing types.

Thanks to everybody again.

Louise Dade
===============================================
www.classical-webdesigns.co.uk
www.classical-webdesigns.co.uk/falco/ - the Roman sleuth!
www.qmt.org.uk - The Queen Mother Theatre

HWG hwg-techniques mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA