Shared web hosting - Chapter 13: Tell-a-Friend System 463 To set up
Chapter 13: Tell-a-Friend System 463 To set up a Tell-a-Friend form, you need to do the following: . Create three messages using Tell-a-Friend message manager. One message is for friends who get e-mail because another friend gives their name and information to your Tell-a-Friend system. This e-mail should introduce the friend to what you have to offer. For example, if you re interested in signing up people for a newsletter, you should state what the newsletter has to offer in this message. This message is created using the taf_frnd_msg.html template file in the template directory. So if you want to control the look and feel of this message, you should modify this template. Make sure if you use any images in the template, the images are directly accessible from your Web site. In other words, use fully qualified path names for images. For example, instead of using 
use 
. Remember: This is a message template for all messages to friends, so don t customize it for a single campaign. Your actual content of the message is entered via the form manager application. The content is inserted dynamically into the message template by replacing the {FRND_MSG} tag in the template. The second message you need to set up is for the originator who submits the friend s name. This is usually a thank-you message for helping you market your product/services/information. This message is sent using the taf_frnd_msg.html template. The actual content of the message is entered via the form manager like the friend s message. The third message is the subscription message and it s sent when a friend actually clicks on the subscription link (in the introduction mail generated by taf_frnd_msg.html) and subscribes to your offer. Note that when a friend decides to unsubscribe, she does not receive an e-mail, but a confirmation of her unsubscription status is shown on the web browser when she clicks on the remove or unsubscription link from the introduction mail. . Create the form with a form action that runs the Tell-a-Friend form processor application. When you set up the form with the Tell-a-Friend form manager, the form action is given to you at the end of the process, so you can simply copy and paste the form action from there. After you ve set up the messages and the Tell-a-Friend form, you can use your form in e-mail campaigns. In the following section, I discuss a Tell-a-Friend campaign from setup to execution.