This is a server and mail agent to run a personal newsletter amongst a group of people. This is a personal hobby which I run for a small number of friend groups.
The main purpose is
- To get into the habit of being a digital vagabond.
- To learn more about SQL, CGI, UX, HTTP, encryption, authentication, etc.
This requires a server that supports CGI. I assume CGI scripts are stored in cgi-bin folder. Furthermore, that you have set up some CGI workflow.
This integrates into my site and some changes will need to be made. In the future I may make this project even more modular with no knowledge of it's surrounding website.
The entirity of this repository should be placed under the cgi-bin folder. There are additional Python scripts which are not included in this repository that sit directly under cgi-bin to direct traffic to the relevant function in cgi.py.
requirements.txt holds all of the python library requirements to run the server. and cron.sh should be run via a cron agent every week on the day you want to send out reminders.
The databases can be instantiated using init.sql
mysql -h hostname -u user database < path/to/init.sql
Assuming you use mysql.
A new newsletter can be created with
python3 create_newsletter.py --title title --email your_email
Note: you will need to make sure you can automatically send mail from the provided email address. I still use Gmail and so the mailer.py script assumes this.
In theory, after setup this runs automatically with no input from you. Inevitably, there are fires to put out, this very much a work in progress and I do not actively support this.