How do I set up an email newsletter?

Great questions, let’s take a look at each in turn; and then my
recommendation for what you might really want.

A subscribe box on your website is typically creating using HTML forms and
a CGI script.

You place the form on your web page by using <FORM> and <INPUT>
tags. This way you’d create a form that collects the email address and passes
it on to the CGI script when the user pressed Submit.

A CGI script is a program that runs on your web server. For an email
subscribe box it’s typically a small program and in fact most ISPs support
some common CGI scripts already, so it might not even be something you’d need
to create. If you do end up wanting to write or acquire a CGI script of your
own, then you may still need to check with your ISP to see if they’ll let you
install it on the web server.

The CGI script can do pretty much whatever you want it to do. Again, for an
email subscription box typical actions might be to add the email address to a
database or more commonly send email to an automated list manager, or perhaps
even directly to you.

What then? Well, it really depends on how big a mailing list you’re
creating, how much work you want to put into it, and how much you might be
willing to spend. A very simple solution is to simply have the email addresses
sent to you, and then send your newsletter by sending a piece of email TO: all
the recipients. (Bcc’ing might be preferred
to hide everyone’s email address from each other and respect their privacy.)
Another approach might be to have the email addresses sent to one of the free
email discussion list providers. More on that in a second. And the large scale
solution would be to enlist the services of a mailing list service.

And as to creating the email you’ll send to your list … it’s just
email. Using whatever tool you’re comfortable with.

Also Recommended:

Poor Richard’s
E-mail Publishing
Everything you need to know to become a successful electronic publisher.

Now, my recommendation…. if you’re a personal or small or infrequent
mailer, or perhaps if you’re just starting out, use a service like Yahoo Groups. Set up a group there, and instead of
attempting to collect email addresses or manage the group yourself, just
instruct people to join your group. You can set up the group to be “announce
only” so only you can send email to it, if you like. Depending on the provider,
it may also still be possible to have people use a subscribe box on your site
that then sends the appropriately formatted email to the service to initiate
the subscribe process.

One of the reasons I really suggest using an existing service like Yahoo
Groups is SPAM. In order to comply with recent laws and even just public
perception, it’s important to follow some steps when maintaining your list of
email addresses. Steps like “double opt in”, where you confirm each and every
subscribe request with an “are you sure?” response, are now important parts of
SPAM prevention. Services like Yahoo Groups handle this all for you.

Now, for the record, I’ve specifically elected to not get
into the email business. SPAM and email born viruses are making the email
mailing list business very difficult. It’s still quite do-able, but I’d rather
not deal with issues that result such as getting mistaken for SPAM, or dealing
with subscribe and unsubscribe issues that can
result from email viruses.

My solution for both Ask Leo!, and Leo’s Recommendations is to
use RSS as a content delivery mechanism.
This new technology bypasses email completely to deliver content to your
subscribers.