Creating mailing list webpage?

[jbw]

I'm currently building a website that requires a mailing list in the contacts page but I'm a bit baffled as to how they work. Do I create a form that points to the mailing list script? If so does the mailing list software store all the email addresses and names of all the people that sign up? I guess I'm really after some background knowledge on mailing lists.
Also does anyone know of a tutorial for creating a form for users to sign up to a mailing list?

Many thanks,
jbw

[Fang]

All your questions can be answered with; yes.
A PHP mailing-list tutorial
An simple alternative is paying for one from your provider.

[jbw]

Thanks for the reply fang,
I had a quick browse of that tutorial and I'm a little baffled. I plan to get the hosting company to setup the mailing list manager so that should ease my workload somewhat.

If I create a form, on my webpage, and add name and email fields to it how do I get the form to send these to the correct place when the user clicks the 'add to mailing list' button? Is that where the action and method tags come in?

How does the mailing list manager differentiate between the name and the email fields? Is all this done via the mailing list manager?

ta,
jbw

[Fang]

The action value, the mailing list script, is where the form values are sent.
If you use a mailing list manager from your provider the form definitions will be explained in the help file.

[jbw]

Thanks again fang. I managed to sort it all this morning in about 20mins.
As you said it was a simple case of looking in the help docs, I imagined it to be something far more convoluted.

ta,
jbw

[Fang]

Writing your own mailing list would take a lot longer than 20mins.