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Mailing Lists
Before using your mailing list you must first install the Smartlists software on your domain. This is done by entering your control panel and clicking on the Mailing List icon. Once inside the Mailing List section, you will see a button that you need to click to install the software to your account. It will take approximately 10 minutes for the server to install the software.Once the software is installed, you create your list(s) from inside the Mail Manager in your Control Panel.
After you have installed the software you will see a link inside your Mail Manager named "New List" under a new heading for "Mailing List".
Click the New List link to create the list.You'll see the following screenshot.
Before you can edit or administer your list, you must first provide the system with the Maintainer's email address, the Maintainer's password, and the type of email list you want.
The Maintainer is the person who has permission to edit and administer the list.
Types of lists:
Open List - anyone can send email to the list
Closed List - only subscribers can send email to the list
Newsletter - only the maintainer can send email to the list
Moderated List - anyone can send email to the list but all emails go to the moderator for approval before they go to the entire list
After you fill in the above information and click the "Add List" button, you'll see some quick start information on how to subscribe to the list, etc. (These instructions appear under the Quick Start Guide below.)
Administering your Mailing List
Editing your Mailing List
To send an email to your list subscribers:
send an email to listname@yourdomain.comSubcription/unsubscription/info requests: should always be sent to the -request address of a mailinglist. If a mailinglist, for example, is called "thelist@somedomain.com", then the -request
address can be inferred from this to be: "thelist-request@somedomain.com".To subscribe to a mailinglist: simply send a message with the word "subscribe" in the Subject field to the -request address of that list.
As in: To: thelist-request@some.domain Subject: subscribeTo unsubscribe from a mailinglist: simply send a message with the word (you guessed it :-) "unsubscribe" in the Subject: field to the -request address of that list. As in:
To: thelist-request@some.domain Subject: unsubscribeIn the event of an address change: it would probably be the wisest to first send an unsubscribe for the old address (this can be done from the new address), and then a new subscribe for the new address (the order is important). Most (un)subscription requests are processed automatically without human intervention.
Do not send multiple (un)subscription or info requests in one mail. Only one will be processed per mail.NOTE: The -request server usually does quite a good job in discriminating between (un)subscribe requests and messages intended for the maintainer. If you'd like to make sure a human reads your message, make it look like a reply (i.e. the first word in the Subject: field should be Re: the -request server does not react to replies.
Every submission sent to this list is archived. The size of the archive depends on the limits set by the list maintainer (it is very well possible that only, say, the last two mails sent to the list are still archived, the rest might have expired). You can look at the header of every mail coming from this list to see under what name it has been archived. The X-Mailing-List: field contains the mailaddress of the list and the file in which this submission was archived. If you want to access this archive, you have to send mail to the -request address with the word "archive" as the first word of your Subject.
To get you started, try sending a mail to the -request address with Subject: archive help
Location Of Files To Edit For Your Mailing List
Now your mailing list is ready to be customized to your needs. Before you can add commands to your list, you need to know where the files are to edit and apply the commands to.The location of the files that you will edit for your mailing list are located in this directory: /home/yourdomain/yourdomain-mail/nameoflist/. You can either edit these files from inside the File Manager of your Control Panel or download them to your own PC and edit them as a text file. If you download these files to your hard drive to edit, remember to FTP them back to your account in ASCII mode.
Each file located inside your list directory contains instructions for editing and should be read carefully prior to editing. Following is a screen shot of what your list directory will look like if viewing it from the control panel. We've created a list named "friends" that we are using as an example.
Click the name of your list to see its files:
SmartList is capable of handling subscriber lists upwards of 90,000. There are a few things to be aware of:
1. A large list will take hours to send out, on occasion even over a day, this is not due to SmartList capablities, but to the nature of sendmail and procmail and the handling of bounced mail.
2. It will generate a correspondingly large volume of bounced mail.This bounced mail may need special handling not to choke the list admin's mail box.
3. It is a good idea to refer to the list's documentation and to the SmartList mailing list and archives for information on handling the hugh volume of bounces and for optimization tips for large lists before setting out.
URL's to more information:
The Smartlist FAQ
http://www.animalgenome.org/SmartList/FAQ.htmlAlso helpful:
http://www.procmail.org/You can apply commands to your list by editing the files as indicated above.
Below is a list of commands with instructions.
- What does "uncomment" mean?
- How do I make replies go to the list instead of to the sender?
- How do I make the list Open/Closed?
- How do people subscribe/unsubscribe to the list?
- How do I subscribe/unsubscribe people to my list?
- How do I get a list of the subscribers?
- How do I use X-Command?
- How do I change the admin password for my list?
- How do I turn a non-digest list into a digest?
- How often do digests get sent out?
- Can I force a digest to be sent every day, even if it is small?
- How can I add a message to the beginning of every digest?
- How can I restrict who can subscribe to my list?
- How can I restrict who can post to my list?
- How can I automatically subscribe people who post to the list?
- How can I automatically send files to new subscribers?
- How can I make my list moderated?
- How do I enable 'auto help'?
- How does someone access the archive server?
- How can I restrict who can access the archive server?
- How can I prevent certain people from automatic unsubscription?
- How can I disable automatic unsubscription?
- Can I add comments to the addresses in the dist file?
- How can I tell smartlist to notify me when someone subscribes/unsubscribes?
- How can I change the messages that smartlist sends to people?
- How can I add "[listname]" to all of the mailing list messages for easy filtering?
- How can I add a short message file to the top of all of the mailing list messages?
- How can I add a short message file to the bottom of all of the mailing list messages?
- How can I keep the automatically added messages from multiplying when people quote them all the time?
- How can I add a custom header to all of the mailing list messages?
- How can I remove some headers from all of the mailing list messages?
- How can I remove all of the X- headers from all of the mailing list messages?
- Where can I get smartlist?
- Is there a smartlist mailing list?
- Where can I find more SmartList information?
- Where can I find basic SmartList documentation?
- Can SmartList do subscriber confirmation?
- Is there an easy way to remove duplicates from the dist file?
- How can I keep people from sending HTML/attachments/other junk to the list?
- Is there an archive of the mailing list?
- A list of X-commands
1. What does "uncomment" mean?To uncomment a line in the file, remove the hashmark (#) from the front of the line (if there are more than one, be sure to remove them all), and change the value if necessary. For example, the moderate section in the standard distribution looks like this:
#moderated_flag
##moderated_flag= yes # uncomment this to make the list
# moderated (you must create a
# `moderators' file for this to work)
# set moderator_PASSWORD to get
# stricter checkingTo turn your list into a moderated list, remove the two hash marks from the line that says "moderated_flag = yes", so the section now looks like this:
#moderated_flag
2. How do I make replies go to the list instead of to the sender?
moderated_flag= yes # uncomment this to make the list
# moderated (you must create a
# `moderators' file for this to work)
# set moderator_PASSWORD to get
# stricter checkingIn the rc.custom file, uncomment the line:
reply_to = $listaddr
and set it to something like this:reply_to = "Reply-To: $listaddr"
Although for various reasons this is discouraged, many people want it this way anyway. For more information on why this is discouraged, see
http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html 3. How do I make the list Open/Closed?To make the list closed subscription (i.e. the maintainer has to approve subscriptions), uncomment the auto_subscribe line in rc.custom, and set it to read:
auto_subscribe = no
To make the list closed unsubscription, do the same thing with the auto_unsubscribe line.4. How do people subscribe/unsubscribe to the list?
By sending a message to the listname-request address with the message 'susbscribe' or 'unsubscribe' in the body of the mail, if the list is open they will be added to it, if it is a closed list the request will be forwarded to the list maintainer. The email address to subscribe or unsubscribe would look something like this: listname-request@mysite.com
5. How do I subscribe/unsubscribe people to my list?
By using the subscribe and unsubscribe X-Command. (see list of X-commands) or by simply adding or deleting their email addresses from the dist file in your listname folder in yourdomain-mail directory.
6. How do I get a list of the subscribers?By using the showdist X-Command. (see list of X-commands)
7. How do I use X-Command?By adding an X-Command: header to an email message and sending it to the request address for your list, you can execute commands remotely, see the list of X-Commands for a list of possible X-Commands.
8. How do I change the admin password for my list?The password is stored in the rc.custom file.
9. How do I turn a non-digest list into a digest?You can configure a list to send out digests of accumulated submissions. In order to do so, simply uncomment the appropriate assignment to digest_flag in rc.custom. Digests are then sent out every so often depending on size and age of the accumulated messages.
10. How often do digests get sent out?When it reaches a certain pre-set size limit (set in rc.custom), or it ages beyond the maximum age (3 days).
11. Can I force a digest to be sent every day, even if it is small?Yes, by creating a file called .digest.force in your list directory, a digest will be sent out the next time that flush_digests is run, no matter how big it is (unless it is empty). You should have a crontab entry that runs flush_digests every day (if you want to send out a digest every day), if you want to force a digest every day, using .digest.force is not the way to go, since the file is deleted every time that flush_digests is run, if you really want digests every day, run flush_digests from cron with the -f (force) option.
12. How can I add a message to the beginning of every digest?If you create a file named digest.admin in either the main directory of the digested list or in the archive/latest directory belonging to it, it will be picked up by the next flush_digests and included up front to the actual digest under the heading "Administrivia". The archive/latest/digest.admin file digested list will be automatically removed after the digest has been pushed out. The digest.admin file in the main directory of the digested list will not be removed and is included in every digest.
13. How can I restrict who can subscribe to my list?There are four ways in which you can restrict who can subscribe to a list:
- You can put the addresses of unwanted subscribers on the so-called reject-list
14. How can I restrict who can post to my list?
(the `reject'-file).
- You can create a program (e.g. a shell script) called "subscreen". It must be
executable and will receive the mail address of the prospective subscriber as the
first argument. If subscription for that address is allowed, the program must return
with exit code zero. If subscription is disallowed, simply return with exit code one.
A sample program is provided in the examples directory.
- You can completely disable automatic subscription by uncommenting the
appropriate "auto_subscribe" line in rc.custom.
- You can completely disable automatic unsubscription by uncommenting the
appropriate "auto_unsubscribe" line in rc.custom.You can restrict submissions to people on the accept-list (the `accept'-file). Mail from anyone else will be passed on to the maintainer instead of being submitted. To enable this you have to uncomment the appropriate "foreign_submit" line in rc.custom. By default the accept file is hardlinked to the dist file (i.e. if submissions are restricted, only subscribers can do so). If you want to allow only an even more select group, delink the accept file and edit it to taste. If you'd like to have both the dynamic accept file and a static one, create a new file "accept2", it will be searched in addition to the regular accept file.
If, in addition to notifying the maintainer you want an automated reply to be generated to the submitter which was not in the accept file, then you can accomplish this by simply creating an accept.txt file. Its contents will (like the contents of the help.txt file) be returned to the submitter.
15. How can I automatically subscribe people who post to the list?Instead of rejecting submissions by people not on the accept (dist) list, you can enable "force_subscribe". This will cause people submitting mails to the list to be autosubscribed to the list if they were not in the dist file.
16. How can I automatically send files to new subscribers?You can create a file named "subscribe.files". It can contain any number of archive-server commands. The results (i.e. the files requested) will be sent to the new subscriber.
17. How can I make my list moderated?First create a file named "moderators", it should contain the fully qualified mail addresses of all the moderators for this list (i.e. just local usernames are not sufficient, at least include an @host or host! ). Then uncomment the appropriate "moderated_flag" line in rc.custom.
From then on all mail that does not contain an "Approved: the_address_of_one_of_the_moderators" field is forwarded to all the moderators.
One of the moderators should then resend the mail to the list after adding an "Approved: his_own_address" field to the header (and possible editing the contents of the mail). It will be no problem if several moderators resubmit the same submission concurrently, since the mailing list will filter out duplicates anyway (i.e. only the first one will go out and be archived).
18. How do I enable 'auto help'?By uncommenting the appropriate "auto_help" line in the rc.custom file the list will respond to every undecipherable request message as if it requested help. Messages that will still get through to the maintainer are those:
- that seem to come from a daemon.
19. How does someone access the archive server?
- which look like a reply.By sending email to your listname-request address, with a subject of 'archive'.
20. How can I restrict who can access the archive server?You can restrict archive access to people on the accept-lists (the `accept' and `accept2'-file). Mail from anyone else will be passed on to the maintainer instead of being passed to the archive server. To enable this you have to uncomment the appropriate "restrict_archive" line in rc.custom.
21. How can I prevent certain people from automatic unsubscription?Everything in the dist file preceding the line containing: '(Only addresses below this line can be automatically removed)' is write protected from changes by multigram (i.e. these addresses can never be automatically/accidentally unsubscribed).
22. How can I disable automatic unsubscription?By removing the line '(Only addresses below this line can be automatically removed)' from the dist file, automatic unsubscription will be disabled.
23. Can I add comments to the addresses in the dist file?Yes, as long as the comments are one of the format:
Some sample entries:(the preferred format):
The email address must be the first thing on the line, and must be separated from the comments by a space. 24. How can I receive notification when someone subscribes/unsubscribes?
joe@some.where
joe@some.where (some comment)
joe@some.where (some comment) (some more comments)
Depreciated, but allowed:
<joe@some.where>
<joe@some.where> some comment
<joe@some.where> (some comment)
Not allowed:
(some comment) joe@some.where
some comment <joe@some.where>By setting the cc_requests or cc_unsubrequests variables in the rc.custom file to yes (making sure to uncomment it).
25. How can I change the messages that smartlist sends to people?The messages that smartlist sends out are in the ~slist/listname directory, and can be edited using any available file editor. The files that it sends and their uses are:
26. How can I add "[listname]" to all of the mailing list messages for easy filtering?
help.txt Sent as a response to a help command, or if anything smartlist doesn't understand is sent to the listname-request address. subscribe.txt Sent to new subscribers. unsubscribe.txt Sent to someone who just unsubscribed. archive.txt A description of how to use the archive server, and the commands it understands. In your rc.custom file, uncomment the line that reads "RC_LOCAL_SUBMIT_10 = rc.local.s10", and make a file called "rc.local.s10" in your list directory, in that file put this:
---- Cut Here ----
Be sure to replace "[listname]" with what you would like to be at the beginning of the subject line. 27. How can I add a short message file to the top of all of the mailing list messages?
SUBJ=`formail -zx Subject:` # extract the subject
:0fw
* ! ^Subject:.*\[listname\]
* ! ^Subject:.Re: *
| formmail -I "Subject: [listname] $SUBJ"
---- End Here ----Uncomment the line "RC_LOCAL_SUBMIT_20 = rc.local.s20" from your rc.custom file, and add the following to your rc.local.s20 file:
#
You will also need to create a file called header.txt, which contains the text to add to the message (this file can be empty though, so you can create the files, but only fill them in when you need to add something)
# Adding a disclaimer in front of every mail:
#
:0 fhw
| cat - header.txt28. How can I add a short message file to the bottom of all of the mailing list messages?
Uncomment the line "RC_LOCAL_SUBMIT_20 = rc.local.s20" from your rc.custom file, and add the following to your rc.local.s20 file:
#
You will also need to create a file called footer.txt, which contains the text to add to the message (this file can be empty though, so you can create the files, but only fill them in when you need to add something) 29. How can I keep the automatically added messages from multiplying when people quote them all the time?
# Appending a disclaimer to every outgoing mail:
#
:0 fbw
| cat - footer.txtA small refinement here: if you add something like this:
#
Then (assuming that the phrase "to unsubscribe" appears in your footer.txt file), the footer won't be repeated if some bozo list member quotes an entire message without trimming the footer. 30. How can I add a custom header to all of the mailing list messages?
# Appending a disclaimer to every outgoing mail:
#
:0 fbBw
* ! to unsubscribe
| cat - footer.txtUncomment the line "RC_LOCAL_SUBMIT_20 = rc.local.s20" from your rc.custom file, and add the following to your rc.local.s20 file:
#
31. How can I remove some headers from all of the mailing list messages?
# Adding some custom headers (although it will work, this is not
# needed for Reply-To related headers, see the reply_to variable in
# rc.custom):
#
:0 fhw
| formail -i "X-Subliminal-Message: SmartList is great" \
-I "X-Mailer: procmail, which is great too :-)"Uncomment the line "RC_LOCAL_SUBMIT_20 = rc.local.s20" from your rc.custom file, and add the following to your rc.local.s20 file:
#
32. How can I remove all of the X- headers from all of the mailing list messages?
# To get rid of some headers:
#
:0 fhw
| formail -I X-Mailing-List: -I X-Mailer:Uncomment the line "RC_LOCAL_SUBMIT_20 = rc.local.s20" from your rc.custom file, and add the following to your rc.local.s20 file:
#
33. Where can I get smartlist/procmail?
# To get rid of all X- fields:
#
:0 fhw
| formail -I X-The latest version of Procmail can be downloaded using the link below:
34. Is there a smartlist mailing list?
ftp://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/packages/procmail/procmail.tar.gz
The latest version of Smartlist can be downloaded using the link below:
ftp://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/packages/procmail/SmartList.tar.gz
Top of pageYes, to subscribe send a message to smartlist-request@Informatik.RWTH-Aachen.DE with the word "subscribe" in the body of the message.
There is also a digested version of the mailing list, which can be subscribed to by sending a message to smartlist-d-request@Informatik.RWTH-Aachen.DE, with the word "subscribe" in the body of the message.
35. Where can I find more SmartList information?SmartList Utilities and Patches - send email to alan.stebbens@software.com with the subject "send smartlist library".
36. Where can I find basic SmartList documentation?The Smartlist FAQ is at http://www.hartzler.net/smartlist/SmartList-FAQ.html
37. Can SmartList do subscriber confirmation?Subscriber confirmation usually consists of a message that is sent to anyone who wants to subscribe to the mailing list, this message must be returned in order to subscribe to the list, thus verifying that the person who sent the subscribe command is the person that the message will be delivered to, there are a few different subscription confirmation systems for SmartList, which can be found at the following URL's.
confirm 1.1 by Michelle Dick
38. Is there an easy way to remove duplicates from the dist file?
Werner Reisberger's confirm script
Top of pageThis script was contributed to the SmartList mailing list by mark Mark David McCreary, you can run this from your list directory (where the dist file is located), and it will remove the duplicates and sort the entries that appear below the "(Only addresses below this line can be automatically removed)" line.
#! /bin/sh
39. How can I keep people from sending HTML/attachments/other junk to the list?
:
#
# rc.dedup.list
#
# mdm 11/5/97 borrow code from David W. Tamkin, with additional
# suggestions from Martin Konold and Hal Wine
#
#
# This script will sort and remove duplicates from a Smartlist
# distribution file. Smartlist dist files contain a comment line
# that looks like this
#
# (Only addresses below this line can be automatically removed)
#
# Addresses above and including this line will not be sorted.
#
lockfile=lockfile # /usr/bin/lockfile
cat=cat # /bin/cat
rm=rm # /bin/rm
sed=sed # /bin/sed
# create lock file to discourage smartlist running a job
$lockfile -10 -l3600 -r11 -s30 rc.lock
$sed -e "1,/(Only addresses below this line can
be automatically removed)/{
;w slabove.$$
;d;
}
" dist | sort -fu -o slbelow.$$
$cat sl?????.$$ > dist
$rm -f sl?????.$$
$rm -rf rc.lockWe have not located this information as of yet.
40. Is there an archive of the mailing list?Yes, at http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~casterln/smartlist-arc/maillist.html.
41. A list of X-commands.The format for the X-Command header is:
X-Command: joe@somewhere.edu password command
"command" can be anything of the following:
subscribe mailaddress Subscribe mailaddress to the list unsubscribe mailaddress Unsubscribe mailaddress from the list checkdist mailaddress To multigram-match mailaddress to the list (showing the eight best matches) showdist To list the distfile showlog To list the log wipelog To clear the log help To show this command summary info Ditto The exact fieldname defaults to "X-Command", but can customizedsed to whatever you want.
The "joe@somewhere.edu" is always the mail address of the maintainer. Note that this has to match what was specified on the command line of "createlist" when the list was created.
Note that the X-Command: field has to be part of the header, when it's in the body of the mail, it has no effect.
Anytime an X-Command: mail has been processed, the results will be mailed back to the maintainer of the list, and the X-Command: field will have been renamed to X-Processed:.
Although this remote-facility is convenient, some might argue that it presents a security hole. Well, in order to make this hole as small as possible, you can keep the password secret. Also, the exact mailaddress of the maintainer might not be publicly known. You can simply change the X-Command field into something else like X-MyCommand. Above all, since faking mail is a well known possibility it would be ridiculous to take more precautions than these. Besides, if someone indeed manages to sneak in a bogus X-Command:, it will never go unnoticed since the mailing list maintainer (and only the maintainer) will always receive the X-Processed: mail.
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