in order to start building an opt-in mailing list, i'd like to set something up on my site for people to enter there email address and click "sign up." however, in order to make sure the emails are valid, i'd like to set it up so it:

1) sends me an email for each signup
2) also sends an email to the address entered to verify that it's a valid address

how should i go about this?

you need to build a form validator script with a autoresponder. you can find free scripts like this all over the www for free. i think i need to start getting paid for posting this link but here it is one more time hotscripts.com