GNU Mailman v2 Management Differences |
This document outlines the changes from version 1.1 to version 2 of Mailman from the perspective of list managers. Items that have been added in version 2 appear in bold, while items from 1.1 that have been removed from version 2 appear in italics.
General Options |
Mailman's general options allow you to specify most of the ways that your mail list will interact with the web server and how it will present itself to the users. The text in the "setting" should match the settings that you see in v2 of Mailman. The description content provides a brief description of each setting as well as guidelines for use when appropriate.
Setting |
Description |
| Where are replies to list messages directed? Poster is strongly recommended for most mailing lists. | When poster is selected, the reply-to line
will be written by Mailman so that
persons hitting reply in their mail
program will send their response back to
the individual who posted the note.
When this value is set to "this list" the reply-to
line will be rewritten so that persons
hitting reply in their mail program will
send their response back to the list itself. When this value is set to
"explicit address" the Reply-To header will use the value that is
provided in the field below.
While the program suggests that this be set to poster, you should consider the purpose of the list in selecting this value. Lists that intend to focus on discussion are best set to "list" to encourage conversation. Lists used for announcements are best set to poster to prevent unwanted traffic and the inadvertent broadcast of replies. |
| Explicit Reply-To: header. | If the reply-to header is set to "explicit address above," the value in this field will be used in all outgoing list messages. |
| Number of outgoing connections to open at once (expert users only). | Option removed. |
Mail-News and News-Mail Gateway Settings |
In the event that you find it useful to gate your list traffic onto USENET, you can use these settings to set up the service. Note that you may need to talk to your system or network administrator to make sure that your news server will work nicely with this list gateway.
Value |
Description |
| Should mailman perform a catchup on the newsgroup? | This setting tells Mailman to begin gating the newsgroup content to the mail list beginning at the moment that the setting is evoked. Saying yes will effectively mark all of the previous news postings are having been read, and Mailman will ignore previous postings to the group. |
Auto-Responder |
A new feature in Mailman v2 is the inclusion of Auto-responder functionality. This feature allows a list administrator to specify that automated responses be sent in a number of different circumstances. The top of this screen shows a number of strings that can be inserted into the response text in order to craft responses with text that is specific to the list that is using the auto-responder.
Value |
Description |
| Should Mailman send an auto-response to mail list posters? | If yes, then Mailman will automatically send the response text (entered below) or a specified attachment to persons sending mail to the list address. This may be useful, for example, in sending FAQs or list participation guidelines to senders. |
| Auto-response text to send to mail list posters. | This field contains the text that is mailed to all posters to the list address when the auto-response feature is turned on for the list address. If you would prefer to send a file as the automatic response, you should specify and upload the file using the field below the text box. |
| Should Mailman send an auto-response to email sent to the -admin and -owner addresses? | This setting allows you to specify auto response actions to be taken if you would like to have replies sent to the list owner/administrator. |
| Auto-response text to send to -admin and -owner emails. | This field contains the text that is mailed to all posters to the list address when the auto-response feature is turned on for the list -admin and -owner addresses.. If you would prefer to send a file as the automatic response, you should specify and upload the file using the field below the text box. |
| Should Mailman send an auto-response to emails sent to the -request address? If you choose yes, decide whether you want Mailman to discard the original email, or forward it on to the system as a normal mail command. | Version 2 of Mailman allows you to intercept mail traffic sent to a list's administrative address. In addition to sending an automated response, you may also specify whether the system will discard the message or forward it along to the administrative command handler. This may be useful in informing users about list use or enforcing membership rules. |
| Auto-response text to send to -request emails. | This field contains the text that is mailed to all posters to the list address when the auto-response feature is turned on for the list -request addresses.. If you would prefer to send a file as the automatic response, you should specify and upload the file using the field below the text box. |
| Number of days between auto-responses to either the mailing list or -admin/-owner address from the same poster. Set to zero (or negative) for no grace period (i.e. auto-respond to every message). | This setting allows you to determine the frequency with which people will receive auto responses send to auto-responder active addresses. Setting this value to zero means that a response will be sent for every posting to the active address, otherwise additional responses will not be sent to a given user until the number of days specified by this field have passed. |
Other Administrative Activities |
1. When a posting is held because it was posted by a non-member. If you are running a list on which only members can post, items that are being held for review will appear in this section for your review. As the list administrator you have four actions available on this screen.
When choosing the action you will have two additional options:
Mailman allows you to customize the look and feel for many of the pages that are accessible by your list subscribers. This is nice if you want to take the time to "brand" web pages. The following pages can be customized: