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The database feature within the MySouthWest system is extremely powerful and provides an excellent set of utilities for community and commercial organisations. The MySouthWest system has the capacity to use databases to add dynamic content into web pages. This is quite a specialised task and you really need to understand dynamic code to use it. However, if the Newsletter module was chosen in the Website Wizard process, a database, named Newsletter, will already be set up on the system. This facility is ideal for organisations. This fact sheet will detail how to set up a database from scratch and will also detail the Newsletter database that is already provided on your website if you selected the Newsletter option when completing the Website Wizard process. If you were to edit the Newsletter page on your website you would see that it has been pre-set to allow a visitor to enter data into it. The idea is that you can collect names and email addresses of anyone who is interested in signing up for a newsletter from your group. If you edit the newsletter page (using the HTML editor) you will see that it already includes the little green box which controls this dynamic content. If you delete this green box, this will delete the form from the Newsletter page. It also has a site administrator's hint on the page and it is recommended that you delete this reference. Update the content and save the page. The information that is entered by people visiting your site is saved into a database called newsletter. This database can then be used to send emails back out to all those that have signed up. This is handy as the emails are generated automatically for you and when they are sent they use the MySouthWest system and not your own email system. That means you could send your newsletter to hundreds of people quickly and without it being blocked by your own ISP. (They have a tendency to block multiple email addresses as it looks like you are trying to send SPAM.) Click on databases
under advanced features. You will see the newsletter
database.
Click on newsletter in the right hand window.
This brings up a table called signup. Click on the name of the table.
You will now see the structure of the database. It had two pieces of information for every row in the database: a name and an email. If someone enters their name and email address, it will be saved into the database. Try it by opening a browser window, go to the newsletter page of your web site.
Enter your name and email address and click on the subscribe button.
When you return to the administration window and view the newsletter database, you will see that a row had been added. Your name is listed and so is your email address.
Sending
emails: Once you have one or one hundred emails and
names in your database you can use them to send out a newsletter or
any other type of email. If you click on emails under advanced
features you will get the option to create a new email. If you
click on this you will get a standard email screen. Enter the data
as you would for a normal email; add an attachment if you want and
then click on save. You can either create the newsletter email from
scratch, copy and paste the newsletter text from another document
or send the newsletter as an attachment.
Click on the Create New Email. The next window looks the same as the upload image or upload document window.
You can create a new folder and place your email into it, perhaps a folder for each different topic. For now just place this email in the main folder. Give the email a name and choose to have a HTML email format or plain text format. HTML format will allow you to use different fonts and colours in the email as compared to a plain text format which is exactly what it says, plain text. Click on create new content.
An email editor will open up. The name of the email you have chosen is in the top left hand corner of the screen. The 'From' address will already be filled in with the details that you entered back in the My Organisation section of the site. However, this email address can be edited. The “Email Type” is discussed in more detail further on in this fact sheet in the “Unsubscribe Features” heading. Give the email a subject. To add an attachment, click the browse button and choose a file that is available on your own PC. You will only be able to attach on file attachment per email. Type in the text of the email within the body of the email and format the email to the way that you would like it to look. Once complete, click on Save. You can also use mail merge fields in your email text like in MSWord. To add a merge field in your data you would put the name of the field you wish to display in {} For example… Dear {name} Be aware that the field name is case sensitive and needs to be an exact match to the field name within the database. Unsubscribe Features A feature has also
been built into the email system that allows for recipients of the
emails from your website to automatically unsubscribe from further
mail from your organisation. When an email is sent through your
website an unsubscribe feature attaches to the bottom of the email.
This gives the ability for the recipient to automatically
unsubscribe from all future emails from your organisation or just
for the type of email that you sent. When creating your email you have the choice to select the “Email Type” which directly relates to the unsubscribe feature. There are different lists that you can choose from. (This facility has been built into the system mainly for the use of MySouthWest staff but since the system that MySouthWest uses is the same system that community organisations and businesses use on your Websites then this feature is available to you by default). It is suggested that you either choose the “Community” or “Other” options. This will then use the unsubscribe list selected to remove relevant emails from the list before sending out the email.
Sending Your Email
Now that you have created an email, you can send it out. If you click on send this email it will offer you a choice of what database of people you wish to send it to. You choose and then you send it. Click on Send this email.
The email will be sent to the people listed in the newsletter database. If you had more than one database you could choose between them. Click on Continue to Email Preview.
This will display the email and the first one you preview will be sent to the first person in the database (which in this case would be yourself). If you had 10 people in the database then there would be 10 emails created, or if you had 50 people in the database then there would be 50 emails created and so on and so on. All that is left is to send the email. Click on the Send email(s) button.
Please note: Anyone
can enter their email address if you keep the newsletter web page
visible. Anyone could enter a false email address or if they were
really messing about, they could enter some other person's email
address. You have no way of knowing. So if you are going to use
this as a method for sending out communiqués, then
MySouthWest strongly urges you to put a disclaimer statement at the
foot of your email. Something similar to - If you have received
this email but you did not sign up to the ......... newsletter then
please email ...@... and we will remove you from our mailing list
without further delay.... (Obviously you would have to put your
group's details in the appropriate places).
SETTING UP A DATABASE FROM SCRATCH
To set up a brand new database for your own purposes, access the database feature under advanced features: You will see on the right hand side of the screen a prompt to enter a new database name. Enter the name you wish to call your database and click on create. In this example the database has been called My_new_database. Having clicked on create, the database is listed with the number of tables it has and the date on which it was created.
Obviously, as it is a new database it will not have any tables in it as yet. Click on the database name and add a table by entering the table name and clicking on create.
The new table will be listed.
The purpose of this screen is to enter fields into your table. Fields are the areas that you will actually put data into. Firstly give the field a name. Then choose what type of field it is. Fields can be of various types and the type of field is selected by using the pull down menu next to field type (See next page for a full explanation of field types). You can also fill in a default value that will be in the field if nothing else is entered in its place. You can then choose to make the field mandatory which means that it must be filled in before the data can be submitted. Finally you can choose to make a field hidden so that it would not be displayed on the website but can be accessed by you or other administration staff. This is the standard ‘For Office Use Only’ type of field. Click on create and the field will be created. Repeat this procedure for the various fields you want in your database. FIELD TYPES You have a choice from the following: AUTO-INTEGER – Any arithmetic whole number. Any non arithmetic input will result in zero. Any floating number (number with decimal point) will result in the integer whole number being rounded down. For example if 14.7 was entered the value stored would be 14 BOOLEAN – A field value that can be set to True or False. If an entry is detected in this field it will set true (yes) if no entry made it will detect false (no). If using this field in an online form it creates a tick box. DATETIME – Allows a date time to be entered into the field. However, any entry to the field that does not result in a valid date time will force the current date time to be recorded. FLOAT – Any arithmetic number including decimal places. Any non-numeric entry will result in zero being recorded into the field. INTEGER – See Auto-integer above. The only difference between this and Auto-integer is in the way the computer system stores and retrieves the values and a full discussion falls outside the scope of this fact sheet. If in doubt, use the auto-integer type. TEXT – Any valid text characters will be stored exactly as entered. If using this field in an online form it creates a text box. VARCHAR – Capable of storing a variation of numbers, characters and special keyboard characters. Is entirely matchable against known entries. Preferred method for storing passwords. If using this field in an online form, it creates a one line box (should be used for short entries). ACCESSING YOUR NEW DATABASE You can now access the fields within the tables within your database by clicking on the name of your database table:
If you have decided that your database, or table or fields are no longer correct then you can delete any or all of them by clicking on the appropriate delete buttons listed against them. In the example above, by clicking on delete you would delete the whole of the table called First Table. Please Note: Once
anything is deleted in the database area it cannot be retrieved.
The database section of the administration console DOES NOT have a
versioning feature (see fact sheet
24).
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