PopCard Greetings 3.1.4
PopCard Greetings 3.1.4 (PopCard for short) is a free PHP script which you can use to add stylish e-mail postcards to your site. PopCard was originally based on iCards which was a feature of Apple's iTools service which later became .Mac and is now called Mobile Me.
How does it work?
PopCard is (as far as I know) unique in that the card is sent to the recipient as a JPEG image rather than the user having to come to the site to pick it up which makes it a bit more personal than your average ecard:
- The card itself is generated as a real JPEG image.
- The recipient doesn't have to visit your site.
- The user sees the card in their e-mail inbox.
These three important factors make a PopCard greeting message a better experience for the recipient because, just like a real greeting card, there is instant gratification. They don't need to go off to some other site or enter any special passwords, they just see the card in thier inbox.
The technical bits...
To achieve this magic, PopCard makes use of some of the powerful image processing capabilities of PHP and the GD graphics library.
The card image is created by compositing the selected photograph or image and clear, antialiased text together onto a postcard template before converting it into a JPEG image and wrapping it up in a highly compatible MIME e-mail format to be e-mailed to the recipient.
Security conscious
To help reduce the risk of people using PopCard to send spam e-mails, the script uses encrypted form elements which expire within five minutes of loading the first page.
This makes it significantly more difficult for malicious users to create botnet programs to automatically send e-mail using the PopCard script.
Installation
If you haven't already, you will need to download the script (580 KB) to your computer and unpack the archive.
The script hasn't been updated since 2006 but it should still work fine on most servers. The original documentation has unfortunately gone to the great database in the sky but installing PopCard is fairly simple:
- Upload all the files to your server.
- Use your web browser to navigate to popcard.php
Cards from remote files
PopCard has the ability to generate cards from remote files by including them over HTTP. To do this, all you need to do is pass the full URL (including the 'http://' protocol part) to the script in this fashion.
http://www.mysite.com/popcard.php?pu=http://www.othersite.com/jpegimage.jpg
This technique makes it easy for you to integrate PopCard with any image library or website you like. Just remember that it's not cool to steal images from other sites and yes, linking to them like this is stealing..!
The legal bits...
PopCard is a free script provided in the hope that people may find it useful. I've tested it pretty thoroughly and it shouldn't cause any problems but please be aware that if you decide to install it on your server, you do so at your own risk!
The script is released under the MIT open source license which means you can do more or less anything you like with it as long as you ensure the license stays with the software.
PopCard
Downloads
Demo Site
RSS Syndication
