Why New Mailing List Management Software
On Thursday, March 17th, UTS will be moving du.edu mailing lists to a new mailing list software called mailman. While our
current mailing list software has served us well for many years, there are two factors which cause us to upgrade to
mailman:
- There are a number of features which mailing list managers have been asking for, such as multiple list managers, replacing the sender of an
email with the mailing list's address, and the archiving of mailing lists - Mailman will allow us to offer these and other
features.
- UTS will be retiring the server which has been
housing mailing lists, and would like to take advantage of the inevitable relocation to improve the functionality for
list managers and subscribers.
To assist list managers and subscribers with the use of Mailman, we've begun a DU mailman frequently asked
questions (FAQ) document. You may also like to review the duties of a mailing list
manager.
Migration Time Line And Effect
- At 5:00 AM Thursday morning, we will disable the web-based mailing list management interface, and the ability to
subscribe to and unsubscribe from mailing lists. Any emails addressed to mailing lists will be delivered to the list's
subscribers as usual.
- List managers will receive an email containing important information about each of their mailing lists - this information
will be needed once we have migrated to Mailman.
- Around 10:00 AM, we will email all list managers a notification that the migration to mailman is complete - at that time,
list managers will need to use a new interface to manage their mailing lists.
Notable Changes for List managers
Web management Interface
The current mailing list management web interface at
http://atlas.cair.du.edu/maillist is being replaced with a new interface.
Instead of logging into a single page which shows all of the mailing lists
which you manage, each mailing list now has it's own management password and
web interface. This will allow you to have multiple managers for a mailing
list if you desire. The new management web interface can be reached via
https://listserv.du.edu/mailman/admin - list managers will not be able to use this interface until we have migrated to
mailman.
Sending Commands By Email To The List Server
Instead of sending mailing list commands to mailserv@du.edu, each mailing list will have it's own address for such requests.
To get more information about the available commands you can send by email, send an email containing the word help to
Listname-request@du.edu (where Listname is the name of a mailing list). Note that you will not be able
to experiment with this until after we have migrated to Mailman.
There are also email addresses you can send email to for specific functions -
such as subscribing to, and unsubscribing from, a mailing list.
for example, to subscribe to the HelloWorld-l mailing list, you can send an empty email to HelloWorld-l-subscribe@du.edu. To
unsubscribe,
send an email to HelloWorld-l-unsubscribe@du.edu.
When we have migrated to Mailman, the mailserv@du.edu email address will reply to any emails sent to it with the above
information about the list specific addresses for sending commands via email. This will buy list managers some time to update
any web pages which refer to the old method of emailing commands to mailserv@du.edu.
Notable Changes For List Subscribers
The following are differences which users (subscribers) of du.edu mailing lists will experience. We feel that these
differences will be self explanatory as subscribers interact with mailing lists, however we are mentioning them
here so that
list managers are aware of them:
Subscription passwords
Each subscriber to a mailing list has a subscription password, designed to add an extra level of security for subscribers.
These subscription passwords are not something that list managers have to manage; subscribers who forget their password to a
particular mailing list, may request the mailing list server to send their password to them. For more information about
subscription passwords, see the section on subscriber passwords in the FAQ.
Web Interface For List Users
Each mailing list has a web interface which anyone may use (depending on the mailing list's settings) to subscribe,
unsubscribe, temporarily suspend delivery (if the user is going on vacation and does not want to be inundated with traffic
from that list), request a subscription password, Etc. The web address for this interface is included at the bottom of
all emails sent to mailing lists by default.
A list of all du.edu mailing lists may be viewed at the list info page
located at http://listserv.du.edu/mailman/listinfo - note that your list will not show up here until we have fully migrated
to using mailman.
Email Subjects Contain The Name Of The Mailing List
The subject line of emails sent to a mailing list will contain the name of that mailing list in brackets - this can be helpful
for more easily spotting emails sent to a particular list. IF desired, this option may be disabled for individual mailing
lists.
For example, if you send an email to the HelloWorld-l mailing list with a subject of "Tonight's Meeting" the subject line
would be rewritten to say:
Subject: [HelloWorld-l] Tonight's Meeting
Informational Footer
AN informational footer is appended to the bottom of all emails sent to a mailing list (these footers are customizable for
each list). The default footer provides the name of the mailing list, and where a subscriber may obtain more
information about, or modify subscription or email delivery options for, the mailing list. The footer for the
HelloWorld-l mailing list would look as follows:
_______________________________________________
HelloWorld-l mailing list
HelloWorld-l@du.edu
https://listserv.du.edu/mailman/listinfo/helloworld-l
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