Webtivist

Webtivist is the working title for an online action system, originally developed when I worked at the World Development movement.

Update: I’ve now created a separate website for the webtivist project: webtivist.kimondo.co.uk

It’s a php based system which allows campaigning organisations to host online actions. Webtivist supports the sending of emails to elected politicians, corporations and other activist targets. It keeps a record of emails sent in a mySQL database, and captures the details of activists. There’s also a rude word filter in case of abusive emails.

I’ve now updated this into a basic version which includes nice user friendly instructions, and a separate configuration file where you can setup your actions.

I’ve tried to make it CMS independent – you can use the script on wordpress, drupal et al by uploading the files into a /webtivist folder on your website, and link to the php files from your form.
I’ve called this version Webtivist Basic – it does the job, but there is lots of room for improvement.

The next version hopefully will feature a more user-friendly administration panel and support for twitter based campaign actions.

Download Webtivist on sourceforge

Instructions on how to install Webtivist on your site

The following files (download here) should allow you to setup simple email actions on your website, visitors can send an email to a ‘target’ you specify. Their details are recorded in a database which can be exported as a .csv file, and a copy is sent to you. The script checks for common swear words, HTML and spam language.

The script consists of a html form and accompanying php files.

You need a server that supports php (most do!) and MySQL to store the details.

You’ll also need phpmyadmin which is the standard control panel for MySQL databases, again most webhosts that have databases use this interface.

If you get stuck, drop me a line and I’ll try and help (depending on how busy I am)

I’ve tested this on http://www.123-reg.co.uk/ hosting and it works ok.

How to setup the Webtivist email action system

What everything does:

actionsettings.php = includes the settings for your email target, the copy email to yourself, and the confirmation email send to your activists  also the database connection settings so you can store the details of your activists

action.php = does the actual sending stuff for you (you normally don’t need to edit this file – it should work out of the box, but I’ve commented the file to show what all the bits do anyway)

sampleform.html = example form

1) setup a database on your hosting, and then create a table called with the setup.mysql file. In phpmyadmin (might be called something else by your host) create a new database and then click on the SQL tab – a form called Run SQL query/queries on database (your database name) paste the following code here:

CREATE TABLE online_actions (senderfirstname varchar(100) NOT NULL default ”,
sendersecondname varchar(100) NOT NULL default ”,
senderemail varchar(100) NOT NULL default ”,
senderaddress varchar(200) NOT NULL default ”,
senderpostcode varchar(8) NOT NULL default ”,
sendermessage text NOT NULL,
optin varchar(3) NOT NULL default ”,UNIQUE KEY senderemail (senderemail)) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

*this should create a table called online_actions*

2) Edit the actionsettings.php to include the email address of your intended target + your mysql login details

3) Upload all the files to your website. If you want the form to be in a different location make sure you change

*It’s worth setting up an action to a test email address (i.e. yourself) first to make sure the emails are getting through ok, and that the database transfer is working properly. It is possible to disable the database bit using comments // and the rest will continue to work ok

4) to export your data go back to phpmyadmin, select your database and table and click on the export tab – use CSV for MS Excel data and save as file. Bear in mind that the database just grows in size with each action – if you get a lot of actions you might need to empty the table – I’ve run this up to a couple of thousand entries without any problems.