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How can I "scrub" my WP blog for names and email addresses?

by SusanUSA
7 replies
I have a blog that I've been working since December 2007. It's a .com WordPress blog and is in #1 position on all the Search Engine sites so I don't want to host it myself and possibly lose this expensive real estate. The site has nearly 3 million hits . . . and thousands of posts

What I would like to do is scrub the blog and collect the names and email addresses and then invite the people onto my newsletter where that would be an opt-in program.

Does anyone know of software that will go through all the posts that have been left on the blog to collect the name and email address?

Thanks in advance!
#addresses #blog #email #names #scrub
  • Profile picture of the author rosetrees
    Susan - sorry, I don't know the answer to your question.

    Just posted to let you know that the link in your sig doesn't work.
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  • Profile picture of the author David Louis Monk
    Sorry I cannot help you Susan with the way to do this and unless there is software to make the process easy I expect you will have to look into the MYSQL database for the WordPress blog and pull out the information from there.

    You could advertise on say Rentacoder.com for a MYSQL expert to help you, if a Warrior does not come forward.

    David
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    David

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  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    Originally Posted by SusanUSA View Post

    What I would like to do is scrub the blog and collect the names and email addresses and then invite the people onto my newsletter where that would be an opt-in program.
    It is absolutely unclear what is it what you want to do...

    What names, what addresses?
    Are people registered on your wp.com blog?
    Are people just commenting on your blog using their email address without registering?

    Other than the two scenarios above you do NOT have access to any email+name of your visitors.

    BTW, unless your site's Terms explicitely states it you can NOT "collect", for example, your commenters' email and any message sent to them would be considered spam.
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  • Profile picture of the author abnation
    Ok, I might have a solution.
    I'm guessing (correct me if I'm wrong), that you basically want to scrape username/emails from the comments section right? In that case, I might be able to code some stuff up. Just drop me the RSS feed of your blog (comments section must be included in the feed) and I'll get you a very simple scraper.

    I'll be out tonight, so expect it to be ready by tomorrow or so...
    Cheers
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  • Profile picture of the author thebitbotdotcom
    You would probably have to manually dig them out of your MySQL database. However, be very careful doing that. Leaving an email address in a comment is not the same as opting or double opting-in (preferred) to a newsletter especially if they did it years ago. They may complain. If you have good traffic, you would be much better off building a fresh list starting from today using an opt-in form. The G-Lock plug-in is a popular one for Wordpress. Of course, the only problem with G-Lock is the fact that you cannot throttle your emails if you have a large list. Emailing to a large list all at once is a great way to get booted from your hosting service. Additionally, delivery rates are terrible. Just my two cents...
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  • Profile picture of the author Private Label Ebook Shop
    Susan you may be interested in this link Moving from WordPress.com to Self-Hosted WordPress in Plain English - Remarkablogger

    It outlines how to move your wordpress blog to a self hosted wordpress solution. Considering you want to collect names and emails to invite these users to join your list would lead me to assume you want to market to them. If I recall correctly this is against their terms of service.

    Should be something you confirm if this is the case as I have not used wordpress.com in quite some time.
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  • Profile picture of the author patfl
    You can get all the info you want from the WP database, but you could be sued for spam if you e-mail them without their authorization, which they didn't give by commenting on your blog.

    What don't you put an opt-in form on your blog?
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