2388 are a lot of people to manage. Do you manage your list manually?

After the third large cocktail party, when the invitation list exceeded 75 people, I realized that writing an information system would be necessary, so I wrote one in Microsoft Access in September, 2003, and I've been enhancing it since then. (I've spent about 1000 hours developing and enhancing this system.) This system automatically sends out the invitations and tracks who has responded.

I'm curious how your system works technically.

In Microsoft Office, you can create e-mails in either Outlook or Microsoft Word. I use Word as an e-mail editor. I then choose Tools / Mail Merge, where the output is an e-mail message rather than a document. The data source is a table in Access. If you're looking to do something similar, give me a call and I'll walk you through it. (In case you're interested, Access is an extraordinarily good development tool for developing smaller database systems.)

Add stuff about browers.

What did you design your database in?

Microsoft Access.

Why Access? I would think a high powered guru such as yourself would use a more scalable DBMS, such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, DB/2, or MySQL.

Since at any point in time, there are never more than a few individuals who are accessing this Web site, scability is not an issue. Access has a zillion features that make database development fast and relatively easy, as compared with the more scalable DBMs.

When you send regular e-mails (as opposed to Evites) to your guest list, which packages do you used for these e-mails?

For those, I use Microsoft Word as my e-mail editor. (Normally I use Microsoft Outlook as my e-mail editor.) I use Word's mail merge feature. The data source is not another word file, but a query in my Access database. The output is not a Word file, but an e-mail message. It all works quite nicely.

How do you input all of those e-mail addresses into Evite for each invitation?

I create a query where one of the output rows is a list containting the person's first and last name, followed by their e-mail address in brackets. The brackets tell Evite the full name of the person plus their e-mail address is contained in the input record.

Which Internet technologies did you use in this Web site?

Primarily DHTML and cascading style sheets ("CSS").

Which software package did you use to write this Web site?

Macromedia HomeSite. It's probably the best HTML editor on the market. For CSS editing and validation, I used TopStyle.

Why didn't you use Dreamweaver?

Dreamweaver is a very powerful Web authoring tool that has far more functionality that I would ever need for this Web site. It is also quite difficult to learn.

Have you used any server side scripting?

Microsoft ASP.Net.

Why ASP.Net?

If you're using a Microsoft DBMS, such as Access or SQL Server, and you're designing a Web based front end to it, using ASP makes a lot of sense.