It took only a little more than a day to add a nifty feature to our college web site.

Now when people look at a page providing details about a course, they can enter their email address and/or SMS text-capable phone number to receive notification when that course's start date, start time, or meeting location change (or if it's cancelled).

When a person requests such notifications, their information is saved into a database table, along with the currently known details for the class. Then, periodically, this database is checked for differences against the master course list. If differences are detected, a script sends out email with the relevant details.

At that point the course details are updated in the request table to bring it up-to-date and watch for future changes (preventing repeated messages for the same change). Once a course starts, the update request is deleted.

The cool factor here is that all the (major) cell phone companies provide an email address to send SMS text messages to their customers' phones. Thus, people simply indicate what service provider they use and our script generates a very short message, which is sent to both their email address and/or phone, depending on their preferences.

The boss and the college dean should be happy to hear about this after I test it a little more. So far it's working perfectly which is a happy ending for the week.