looking for mailing list manager recommendations

[Jason Dixon]

On Apr 19, 2004, at 7:49 PM, Chris W. Parker wrote:

> Jason Dixon <mailto:jason at dixongroup.net>
>     on Monday, April 19, 2004 4:32 PM said:
>
>> It helps to know what your requirements are.  I'm happy with Mailman
>> on my Postfix server.  Requires a couple extra hoops for virtual
>> domains, but works great.
>
> oh how i always forget to list these things...!

I've replied to each requirement below with a brief explanation of how 
Mailman handles these.

> i'd like: (and i think this might be pretty standard stuff, nothing
> special)
>
> 1. to know how many email addresses are on the list

Via the mailman admin (web) interface or "$mailman_dir/bin/list_members 
<listname> | wc -l".

> 2. to maintain more than one list

Mailman supports this via unique url.  Example:
http://domain.tld/mailman/listinfo/list_a or 
http://domain.tld/mailman/listinfo/list_b.

> 3. to know when each email address was added

Enable "Should administrator get notices of subscribes and 
unsubscribes?" in the General options section of your list.

> 4. to know if an email address bounced during the last mass mailing 
> (and
> why if possible)

You should get a bounce notification to your postmaster account (at 
least, I do).

> 5. to have, for archival purposes, a copy of each mail that's been sent
> to each list

Mailman saves list archives with the included pipermail.

> 6. for the recipients of each mass mail to not be aware of the other
> members. in other words, i don't want a mail sent out with 1000 email
> addresses all in the cc field! :)

Mailman uses the standard aliases format.  Each email is re-written by 
Mailman and an individual mail is sent out to each client.

> this will not be a public list such as the one we are communicating
> through right now. it's just meant as a place for a company to store 
> and
> manage their customer mailing list with the purpose of sending out
> product notices and event announcements every once in a while.

Obviously, you can control access to the list and/or interface via a 
number of different methodologies available on any Linux/UNIX server.  
Basic Auth (via httpd.conf or .htaccess) on the mailman interface is 
the simplest to come to mind.  Note, however, that creating NEW lists 
still requires some manual intervention unless you a) find some 
software that does it for you, or b) you write a simple CGI to take in 
the most basic list information from the customer "admin" and create 
the lists.  This could be probably be done in under 30 lines of perl 
CGI.

Basic new list creation goes as follows (virtual-specific stuff noted 
as such):

1) $mailman_dir/bin/newlist -q listname at domain.com admin at domain.com 
password (non-interactive)
2) Paste the aliases output into your /etc/aliases
3) If using virtual domains with Postfix, append the virtual domain to 
the new aliases in /etc/aliases
4) Rebuild your aliases.db with "postalias /etc/aliases" (postfix) or 
"makemap hash /etc/aliases < /etc/aliases" (sendmail).
5) If using virtual domains with Postfix, create a virtual alias that 
points the alias to the local server.  Looks something like this for 
the example in #1:

listname at domain.com -> listname.domain.com at localhost.domain.com

6) Reload your MTA configuration to enforce the changes immediately.  
"postfix reload" (postfix) or "kill -HUP `cat /var/run/sendmail.pid` 
(sendmail) or "service sendmail restart" (sendmail on Red Hat).

HTH.

--
Jason Dixon, RHCE
DixonGroup Consulting
http://www.dixongroup.net