Secure PHP Development- P117 potx

Figure 15-12: Mapping database fields. Figure 15-13: Creating a URL. Chapter 15: E-campaign System 551 19 549669 ch15.qxd 4/4/03 9:26 AM Page 551 Add a URL of your choice and give a name to the URL. Submit the URL and it should be stored in the database. Repeat this process as many times as you want, to create multiple URLs. These URLs will be trackable. Creating a message Next create a message by clicking on the Add Msg button. You’ll see a screen like the one in Figure 15-14. Create a message to your liking by filling out the form. You can enter the same information as shown in the screen if you want. Figure 15-14: Creating a message. You can personalize the message, as shown in Figure 15-14, by selecting the personalization menu and inserting the appropriate tags. Due to JavaScript limitations, the personalization tag is always appended to the message at the end. You can simply copy and paste it in the designed location.The same is also true for URLs. 552 Part III: Developing E-mail Solutions 19 549669 ch15.qxd 4/4/03 9:26 AM Page 552 If you want to track URLs, you can insert one or more trackable URLs from the URL list. If you enter the URL directly in the message, it will not be tracked by the redirection application. Only URLs that are inserted from the URL list are tracked. When inserting URLs in the message, consider using <a href=””> label</a> instead of inserting raw URL in the message.The automatically generated redirection URLs are not pretty to look at, so they’re best kept somewhat invisible from the average user by using the HTML anchor link tag. After you’ve created the message, you can preview it or save it. If you decided to preview it, you’ll be asked to fill out the standard personalization field values once, because during preview no real list data from the database is fetched. Save the message after you have previewed. Remember that this e-campaign system only sends an HTML message, so you must use proper HTML tags to format your message so it’s rendered properly in modern e-mail clients such as Outlook Express. Creating a campaign After you’ve created a list, one or more URLs (if you want to add URLs in the mes- sage), and a message, you’re ready to create a campaign. Click on the Add Campaign button in the main user interface shown by ecampaign_mngr.php to add a campaign from an interface similar to Figure 15-15. Figure 15-15: Creating a campaign. Chapter 15: E-campaign System 553 19 549669 ch15.qxd 4/4/03 9:26 AM Page 553 Give a name to your campaign, select a list and a message, and save the cam- paign. That’s all there is to creating a campaign! Now you’re ready to execute this test campaign. Executing a campaign Select the campaign from the bottom of the main user interface shown by ecmapaign_mngr.php, and click on the red Execute button. The campaign will be executed and a status message will be shown as shown in Figure 15-16. Figure 15-16: Executing a campaign. Now access the campaign e-mail in your e-mail client program. Viewing a campaign report After you’ve executed the campaign, the campaign report becomes available imme- diately. You can view the campaign report by selecting the campaign name from the main user interface shown by ecampaign_mngr.php and clicking on the Show Report button. If you view the report before any URL is clicked by any user, the report will show no URL track. If you click on a tracked URL in a message and then check the report, you’ll see your track being reported. You can click on the URL in your message as many times as you want, and you’ll notice that the report accurately reports the unique and total URL clicks. Figure 15-10 shows a sample report. Like URL clicks, the unsubscription tracks are also reported in the report. 554 Part III: Developing E-mail Solutions 19 549669 ch15.qxd 4/4/03 9:26 AM Page 554 Security Considerations The checksum algorithm used in making trackable URL links and unsubscription URL needs to be modified before you start using the redir.php and unsub.php applications in real-world email campaign scenarios. At the least, you should change the value of $SECRET in the configuration file. Because the current algorithms are published in the book, someone can easily guess how to defeat them. For example, the computeCheckSum() method in the redir.php application can be changed to: function computeCheckSum() { global $SECRET; $u = $this->getRequestField(‘u’); $uid = $this->getRequestField(‘uid’); $c = $this->getRequestField(‘c’); return ($u << 4) + ($uid << 3) + ($c << 7) + $SECRET; } Here this version uses different bit shifts for $u, $uid, and $c. Of course you should choose your own values to make sure they are not known to anyone. The best approach would be to come up with a completely new algorithm that does not use even the same bit shifting technique. I will leave that to you to develop. Summary In this chapter you learned to develop a simple email campaign system that allows you to send personalized, URL tracked HTML messages to email addresses found in MySQL databases. Note that since the email campaign system uses your default mail transport agent (i.e. mail server), the performance will very based on your mail server’s abilities. Chapter 15: E-campaign System 555 19 549669 ch15.qxd 4/4/03 9:26 AM Page 555 . trackable URL links and unsubscription URL needs to be modified before you start using the redir .php and unsub .php applications in real-world email campaign scenarios. At the least, you should change. campaign Select the campaign from the bottom of the main user interface shown by ecmapaign_mngr .php, and click on the red Execute button. The campaign will be executed and a status message will. campaign report by selecting the campaign name from the main user interface shown by ecampaign_mngr .php and clicking on the Show Report button. If you view the report before any URL is clicked by