Short Like A Fox

So you want to send out a mass email or you want to create a program that can quickly be changed to send out multiple mass emails. PHP makes this easy. In this example I will assume that you have a list of email addresses you want to send a certain email to. I will also assume that you are keeping this list in a database, but this code could easily be adjusted to use either a hardcoded email address list or list from another source.

<?php

//First connect to the database that contains the email address information.
$user = "USER";
$host = "HOST";
$password = "PASSWORD";
$database = "DATABASE";

$cxn = mysql_connect($host, $user, $password) or die ("Couldn’t connect to server");
mysql_select_db($database);

//Query the table that contains the email addresses. Fill in your own table name here…
$query = "SELECT * FROM theEmailAddresses ";
$result = mysql_query($query, $cxn) or die (mysql_error($cxn));
$nrows = mysql_num_rows($result);

//Who the sender will be identified as. You can put what you want here, but it really isn’t too ethical to place an email address that you don’t control here.
$from = "From: me@mydomain.com";
//A standard email subject line
$subject = "What’s new at mydomain.com ";
//The message
$message = "Hi valued friend,

We now sell cookies at mydomain.com. Be sure to check it out!
Sincerely,
me";

//We’ve already queried all of the email address. Now we just need to send the email
for ($i = 0; $i <$nrows; $i++){

$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
extract($row);
//Replace $email with whatever the column of email addresses is called
$to = "$email";
//Send the email to each email in the database
if(mail($to, $subject, $message, $from)){

//Print the name of emails that were successfully sent. I use this just to make sure that the program hasn’t frozen. In theory their should be a steady stream of names being printed>

echo("$to<br/>");

}

}

?>

This bit of code takes advantage of the php mail() function. This is a very powerful and easy to use function. Remember that with great power comes great responsibility. Try not to use this function for evil.

This specific example is for SMF 1.1.5. I can’t guarantee it will work with any other version.

So you run Simple Machine Forum Software and want to manually enter a user? No problem. I know this problem seems very specific, but the ideas explained here can be adapted to other types of forums and other database driven software packages such as Wordpress. Before we get into exactly how to do this, let’s take a look at how Simple Machine Forums keeps track of users. In the SMF database there is a table called smf_members. The smf_members structure looks like this:

Fields we need to pay attention to:

• memberName - Self Explanitory.
• dateRegistered - Isn’t neccessary, but if not filled out the date registered displays as December 31st 1969. The date is saved as an epoch timestamp. Don’t know how to calculate timestamps in your head? No problem. I use the free generator found here.
• realName - Should be inserted. When I’m not sure I just repeat memberName here.
• emailAddress - Self Explanitory.
• is_activated - Must be set to 1 since we are manually activating a member.
• ID_POST_GROUP - I won’t lie. I’m not sure what this is, but it always seems to be set to 4. So…. I always set it to 4. Not the best way to program, but what can you do?
• passwd - The password you want to give the new user. It is impossible to figure out how to enter without looking at the SMF documentation. The proper code to encrypt a SMF password for the database looks like this:

$passwd = sha1(strtolower($memberName).$password)

In the above line of code, $password is the user’s actual password.

How to Do It:

//First, connect to the SMF database

$host="hostname"; // Host name
$username="username"; // Mysql username
$mypassword="password"; // Mysql password
$db_name="username"; // Database name

mysql_connect("$host", "$username", "$mypassword")or die("cannot connect to server");
mysql_select_db("$db_name")or die("cannot select DB");

$memberName = "ironMan";
$realName = "Tony Stark";
$emailAddress = "ironMan@ironMan.com";
$is_activated = 1;
$ID_POST_GROUP = 4;

$password = “Tony1234″;

$password = sha1(strtolower($memberName).$password);

$dateRegistered = 1216951200; // 7-25-2008 2 AM

$query = "INSERT INTO smf_members(memberName, realName, emailAddress, is_activated, ID_POST_GROUP, passwd, dateRegistered) VALUES(’$memberName’, ‘$realName’, ‘$emailAddress’, ‘$is_activated’, ‘$ID_POST_GROUP’, ‘$password’, ‘$dateRegistered’)";
$result = mysql_query($query) or die ("SMF Error 101.234 ");

That’s all there is to it!