How To Harvest Email Addresses From Movable Type
If you have a blog, you probably require that commenters enter their email address before they can leave a comment. This is obviously a good way to control comment spam, but it also a good way to gather email addresses and create a database of email addresses from your blog readers. If you use Movable Type, there isn’t a built-in way to gather all the email addresses of your commenters, but it is possible. All you have to do is create new template. Go to the template section in your Movable Type interface and click on “Create New Index Template.” Give your new template a name like “email-Addresses” and name the output file something like “blogemailaddresses.html.” Uncheck the box that says “Rebuild this template automatically when rebuilding index templates.” Since you will only be using this template periodically to gather email addresses, it is better to rebuild this template manually so you aren’t putting unnecessary stress on your server. Next paste the following code in the “Template Body.”
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>
<body>
<table width="750" border="0" align="left" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<MTEntries lastn="300"> <MTComments>
<tr>
<td width="250"><MTCommentDate format="%B %e, %Y"$></td>
<td width="250"><MTCommentAuthor default="Anonymous"></td>
<td width="250"><$MTCommentEmail$></td>
</tr>
</MTComments> </MTEntries>
</table>
</body>
</html>
Next click “save” and then rebuild the template. Type the address of the file you created in your browser, and you will see a page with a table containing email addresses of everyone who has commented on your site! You can save this page and open it in Excel, or Word, or whatever program you use. To change the template to gather email addresses from more or less entries, change “300″ in <MTEntries lastn="300"> to a larger or smaller number.
Now you are ready to send a mass email with your new database of email addresses. It is probably a good idea to delete the page when you are finished just in case it gets found by a search engine or spammer. When you send out mass emails be polite, and be sure go give them a chance “opt-out” so that your email isn’t perceived as spam. Also make sure you BCC (blind carbon copy) your email recipients to further protect your list. If you do use this template to gather email addresses, protect your reader’s email addresses at all costs. Remember that your reputation with your readers is on the line!
