Mailman – Quickstart Guide
Note: In addition to this Quickstart Guide, there is complete Mailman documentation at: http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/docs.html
How It Works
Mailman allows you to create and manage email lists that customers can easily subscribe to (and unsubscribe from). When you create a Mailman list, a series of Web pages are created (called “Public Information Pages), which allow people to subscribe, unsubscribe, and manage their preferences.
Discussion List: By default, a Mailman list allows any subscriber to send email to the list. When subscribing, subscribers can choose to receive each email as it comes, or to receive email in a daily “digest”.
News List: The following link is an example of a list that is used to deliver a
weekly news report: http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/community-news
--this particular list is for sharing news, but is not a discussion list, so
the only person who can send to the list is the administrator. The
administrator composes an email on a weekly basis and sends it to the list, and
subscribers get the news. (See the Managing
Your List section for details on how make this kind of list.)
Accessing Mailman
1) Log in and click Email.
2) Scroll down to the Mailman Mailing Lists area.
Creating a List
1) Access Mailman, and click Add Mailman List.
2) On the Mailing List page, enter a name for your list, the email address of the person who will manage it, and click Create List.
Congratulations! You’ve created a mailing list.
Promoting Your List
Mailman makes it possible to have the computer basically manage the email list for you. People are given the option of subscribing and unsubscribing automatically. All you really need to do is give them a link to your subscription page.
If your domain was mydomain.com, and your list name was mylist, the link you’d give people to go and subscribe to your list would be:
http://lists.mydomain.com/mailman/listinfo/mylist
Then, if you wanted to email the list (be sure to email from the email you entered as the administrator email when you made the list, see step 4 above.), in this same scenario, the email address for the list would be:
mylist@mydomain.com
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Importing Addresses
Mailman allows you to “mass subscribe” a group of people, by copying and pasting a series of email addresses one address per line, or by importing a text file (ending in .txt) that contains one email address per line.
1) Access Mailman, and click Administer.
2) On the Mailman Administration screen, click Membership Management.
3) In the Membership Management options, click Mass Subscription.
4) On the next screen, in the Mass Subscriptions section:
- select the Subscribe radio button
- if desired select the Yes radio button to send a welcome message to subscribees
- enter in email addresses, one per line, or click Browse to select a text file to import (ending in .txt) with email addresses (one per line).
5) If desired enter additional text to be added to the top of your invitation.
6) Click the Submit Your Changes button at the bottom of the screen.
(Note: Sending unsolicited email is a violation of the Terms Of Use and can result in suspension of your account.)
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Managing Your List
The Mailman management screen allows you to change the default settings and perform advanced management tasks.
1) Access Mailman, and select the desired link:
Administer - to adjust the settings for your new mailing list
View Users - view who has subscribed
Delete - delete the list
Note: In addition to this Quickstart Guide, there is complete Mailman documentation at: http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/docs.html
Discussion or News?
By default, Mailman allows discussion, which means any subscriber can post messages to the email list. If you would like to create a mail list that is a “news” list, for communicating information to customers, for example:
1) Access Mailman, and click Launch Mailman.
2) On the Mailman Administration screen, click Privacy options.
3) In the Privacy options, click Sender filters.
4) On the next screen, in the Member filters section:
- select the Yes radio button to enable the filter
- select the Reject radio button to reject postings to the list
- enter in a message to send when someone tries to email the list
5) Click
the Submit Your Changes button at the bottom of the screen.
Customizing Your List Info Page
Mailman is highly customizable and allows you to do things like customize your list info page so that it looks a little nicer than the automatic settings. The list info page works just fine if you don’t customize it, but you may want to make it look more “professional”, and you may not want to have all the options displayed.
To customize the list info page (or any of the other public pages), access Mailman, select the Administer link, and click on Edit the public HTML pages.
In order to customize the list info page, it is helpful if you explore how to make a Web page by learning some HTML (www.w3schools.com), and you may also wish to learn how to use a program like Photoshop, or a free image editing program like GIMP (www.gimp.org).
Example List
The example list is one that is used at a website. At the following address, a link to the list subscription has been placed towards the bottom of the page:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Friendly_Language
“Visit the Friendly Language Mailing List page and subscribe to get the weekly news report.”
The link leads to the mailing list “info” page, (which is the subscription page), found at:
http://lists.cftwinc.com/mailman/listinfo/friendly
This is how the example mailing list looks:
