Some of my most popular articles are about Flash^R animated ecard websites. Many of my readers have emailed me for help in starting an ecard site of their own. In the next few articles, I will show you how to set up an ecard website with the free Sendcard ecard script by Peter Bowyer. After we get Sendcard working on a website, we will convert it into a Facebook app.

Sendcard is an ecard script written in PHP and works with several databases. The reason I chose Sendcard for this tutorial is because it is less overburdened with numerous features which can make customizing the script difficult, especially when we begin to work on the Facebook app. It also has an easy installation wizard. The author has documentation and tutorials on the Sendcard website.

Although it doesn't have numerous features, it does has a nice set of features.

• It's Free and released under the GPL-compatible Artistic License
  
  
• There is a support forum on the Sendcard website https://www.sendcard.org.
  
  
• It's mail feature supports scheduled/delayed sending of email message and multiple recipients.
  
  
• The program's layout is based on templates which can be customized.
  
  
• Automatic deletion of old cards.
  
  
• Users can add Emoticons and music to the ecards. They can also set the font face and font and background colors.
  
  
• It's modular based and extendable with plugins.
  
  

The author has created several plugins and sells them for a small price. There is an image uploader, address book and blocklist plugin for spam prevention.

The first step in creating the Facebook app, was to set up the Sendcard script and customize it for my client's website. I did the set up and testing on my local PC. Once I got the script working correctly and designed the look of the app to match the website, I was ready to build the Facebook app. Of course, the set up and testing of this part of the app could not be done on my local machine but on Facebook itself. That's way it was so important that we first worked on customizing Sendcard.

Sendcard Copyright by Peter Bowyer and licensed under the GPL-compatible Artistic License.