cgi deactivated for mass mailing - what do I do now?

[Mchl]

CGI on my account has been deactivated for mass mailing. My fault, should've checked the TOS before sending my newsletter..
The question is, what do I do to get it reactivated? I've filled the ticket, but I am getting no response from support (got only one message explaining the reason cgi was disabled).
I'm getting a bit frantic, as my site has been offline for more than 36 hours now.

[IanS]

You need to contact support - chat would be the quickest. All newsletters need vetting if they send over a certain number to comply with US laws on spam. There are rules on opt outs etc.

[Mchl]

Thanks for replying IanS

The suport staff say one of their specialists is working on my problem. Now I'm just worried it takes so much time :(

Hopefuly my site will be back online soon. It's been down since Sunday...

[bdw]

Once you have your website back up i would consider using RSS feed instead of email lists. Unless people are paying to be on it of course.

People can subscribe to RSS anyway they want such as browser, aggregator and even email. there are even some rss to email services that give you a form to include on your website for people to input their email. Feedburner even give you the option to add email subscription if you use them to distribute your rss and you can edit the list of emails as well.

I chose this method of sending info as its "opt-in" and you would be less likely to be regarded as a spammer and people can easily un-subscribe. And there are no worries about your MySQL database crashing or CGI being disabled because of mass mailing.

But, that all depends on why your using a mailing list. If its something elite and only available to people who have purchased anything from you or something like that then RSS is probably not the way to go down.

[Mchl]

Thanks for the advice bdw.

Unfortunately my situation is a bit more complicated than that. I have several RSS feeds available, but I also have some subscribers who do not visit my site or might not even know it exists. For them I send out a monthly (more or less) newsletter. It's a bit complicated, if you're interested I might explain it in more detail.

Anyway, in each newsletter I put instructions in two languages (my native and English) on how to get unsubscribed. That would be fine in my country, but I realise US laws might work differently.

[mrmagill]

Once you have your website back up i would consider using RSS feed instead of email lists. Unless people are paying to be on it of course.

This is the very subject I came to the forums to ask about this evening. I want to get my weekly devotional email list going again, but don't want to use someone else's advertising-based service (like Yahoogroups or Googlegroups) as the ads are sometimes inappropriate to my content.

I've used (and do use) may list services on Yahoo before, but never RSS. Could you outline the basic process of setting it up, or resource links to go study it out? It would be running on a PowWeb server on my primary (wordforlife.com) site. There could be as few as 100 members, but could possibly be 4000-5000 before long. I don't want to get into any TOS problems, or violate any email rules (naturally) so your RSS idea sounded interesting... just don't know how to get started.

Nobody pays for the free content, a weekly spiritual story (devotional) is what is planned, a kind of "Minute Message" - to provoke thought. But (ideally) I would like the ability to add/remove specific members to the feed... but that's negotiable.

Thanks for any help -

[Mchl]

RSS channel is (in a bit simplified view) just another webpage on your account. A webpage, that has to comply to a certain well defined format.

You cannot add or remove users from RSS channel. It's entirely up to them, whether they subscribe to your channel or not.

Wikipedia has a very nice article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS) about RSS (with examples and links to specification).

[mrmagill]

Wikipedia has a very nice article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS) about RSS (with examples and links to specification).

Thank you so much for this. I will study it carefulily -- it looks like just the level of detail I need. I wanted to find something that would be -incredibly- simple for users to attach to and remove themselves from that is widely accepted and understood. Is this as simple as stop by a site and click on a button to join the feed?

Since I live in a cave ... :D and haven't used RSS much, about what percentage of the average usership do you think would be familiar enough with the format and usage to say, "Oh! Hey - there's an RSS FEED!" and grab on to it easily if they wanted it? Could it be high as 80% of a random assortment of visitors, if you have experience in this area? It seems like EVERYBODY knows how to be part of a group-mail system (like Yahoogroups or Googlegroups) as they are fairly bumble-proof.. but this idea of come and go as you want sounds great.

Would you (or anyone else) mind suggesting some exceptional freeware RSS readers to start with?

Thanks all -

[snowmaker]

Would you (or anyone else) mind suggesting some exceptional freeware RSS readers to start with?

Well I haven't used any feed readers, and I couldn't recommend one or another, but here are a few freeware ones.. Freeware downloads Misc Categories - RSS Feed Readers at SnapFiles.com (http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/misctools/fwrssreaders.html)

[Mchl]

Most email clients have rss reader capability built in. Personally I use Mozilla Thunderbird.
You can also subscribe to feeds through several web sites. Google offers one (called Google Reader).

As to how many people know how to use RSSs... I guess it depends on the demographic of your vistors. I run a site for mostly technically oriented people, so majority of them know how to use it. Your visitors might be quite a different kind of people.

[edit]

We should probably move this discussion elsewhere