Programming Email Activation Keys In PHP
A PHP registration form, for whatever reason, needs to have a certain sense of security associated with it to prevent spam and malicious activity. One way to ensure that a user is who they are claiming to be is through email verification- or the process of emailing the registrant a unique key and then asking them to confirm it by clicking a link.
Webmasters who have made use of Google webmaster tools will notice they had to go through the same process. After all, before using many features of Google Webmaster tools Google needs to ensure the person requesting the information actually owns the website. We wouldn’t want just anyone on the Internet looking through our records!
When it comes to the large subject of email marketing, any marketer will tell you that “opt-in” accounts are worth much more than accounts that haven’t been verified. This simple fact stems from the belief that advertisers hold: verified email addresses convert into sales or leads much more often than emails that haven’t been verified. This ensures the email subscriber is a real person, and not a spam bot or deleted email account.
Spam is another issue that email activation cures. Some use questions or other nifty tricks that users have to answer before registering a user, but such tricks can be circumvented with some programs. To ensure the registrant isn’t a crafty bot that got past a spam check, and email validation script will function to require actually user reaction- which is usually not done with spam bots.
Sadly, not having email activation functionality can equate into a lost sale. If a client of a business were to register and accidentally enter a typographical error on their email address field, they would never get registered and the business would never get their information. But with email verification, the client will see that they didn’t get a resulting email and will be forced to try again with more care taken this time.
Be sure that once creating an email activation system that you mention to your users that they may need to check their junk email box to read the email. Many email services will now put almost any type of email into a junk email box unless it is from a very popular source that is verified to be trustworthy. This doesn’t mean your website isn’t trusted- just that the spam filter is overly cautious.
Final Thoughts
PHP developers will attest that an email activation script is quite easy to code. Indeed, it shouldn’t take long for one to code it, and having one coded will prove to be an inexpensive task because of its simplicity. For good PHP coders, the process shouldn’t take more than a few hours- which goes to show sometimes the best functionality comes quite cheap.

























































































