I have been rewriting the AutoResponder code to be 100% PHP and not handle email submissions. This change lets me use a typical web page provider to handle the processing.

I started this change a few years ago but didn’t get very far at that time. I decided that it was time to finish the work, or at least get a majority of the changes done to make the package usable.

The AutoResponder, for those that didn’t go to the link above, is a set of programs/scripts/whatever, that let people send my server text messages and get back an automated reply. I use Twilio for the SMS message handling and 1&1 is my current web page service provider. I also use Twilio for some very simple voice messaging capabilities that I will also describe, but that feature is separate from all of the AutoResponder features.

image

AutoResponder Main Page

The new AutoResponder main page is shown above. I decided to get rid of the original main page because navigating to the messages list took two clicks or taps; I wanted it to take only one click or tap. Since I wanted to make this look more like iOS 8 (or 9 or 10), I made this look like an iOS settings page.

In the much older version of the AutoResponder, the broadcast feature, as well as most other message sending functions, were handled by a Windows service written in C++. Now all of the features and handled by PHP on the server.

In my next post on this subject, I’ll show the code and explain my decision making process for some of the original features. then later posts will get into the new work to replace the C++ code with PHP. At least I hope to write more about this. Winking smile