validation link via email

Question

When a user subscribes to my newsletter via their email address, using php, how would I send them an \'Activation Link\' via email to confirm it is their email address and n

Answer 1

Generate a unique ID and store this together with the username/password within some temporary database entry for the new user.

$tmpID = uniqid();

Then, adapt the link in you eMail-body to e.g:

$body = "Please click the link to activate your email \n
http://www.activationlink.com/activateAccount?activate=".$tmpID;

If the user requests /activateAccount on your server, check the database entry against the $_GET['activate'] parameter, and set the user activated (if it matches).

In order to make sure your database does not just get more and more entries, you could use a cron-job who clears entries older than e.g. 24h.