Anyone used any E-FAX? Sending Email/Fax At Specific Time - PHP

[ArmoVanBuuren]

Hi there for my site I need to have a guestlist on my site than users can sign upto then at about 8pm the data can then be sent to the clubs via fax to put the people on the guestlist.

Has anyone had any experience of E-Fax from websites to send information to individuals/organisations?

Could you tell me the best way of going about this process in php?

My website is here: tooNight.co.uk

Would be a great helpif someone else has done this and could give me a few pointers.

 

[Dj_Jestar]

Quick Q - does it have to be via fax? You (the club) could create a mail account and have the website send to that instead, will be easier and most probably cheaper (e-mail will only cost how ever much your host charges for email enabled hosting, i.e. peanuts, where as the fax requires a telephone line and probably licensed software)


As for the task - collecting the info at a set time is easy, create a PERL or similar script to collect the relevant info from the DB, then create a cronjob to exec the script at whatever time you like. The costly bit will be the telephone line and the software needed to communicate over it.

 

[ArmoVanBuuren]

Yeh preferably via efax as we are just a website set up to advertise club nights on, we need someway of sending the data for the people on the guestlist and assume not many clubs have computer that is always on recieving email. So fax would ideally be the best option, been looking at automated efax companies where you can send them an email and they will then forward it onto the fax number contained in the email address, this would be good as an automated email could be sent like you said above at a set time.

Would the perl script to send the table with the info from the database at a set time be much coding?

Edit: this website doesnt look too pricy for efax via email http://www.dataoncall.com/internet-fax-service/unifax.jsp

 

[Dj_Jestar]

No, not really much at all It'll just select the data, then arrange it into a presentable table.

It might be worth while having a sign up option for the clubs to select "receive via fax or email" as you'll be surprised how many clubs have email now, even if it is only the owner's home email account.

I take it you'll be sending to multiple clubs? If so, the process (in very weak pseudo) will be:

select clubs
  for each club
    select guestlist members
    generate table
    send table
  loop