| |
Search
list topics:
List
Request Form
List Access Form
Site Navigation
• List Types
• Class
• Mailman
• Class Lists
• Mailman Lists
• Creating
Lists
• Deleting
Lists
• Frequently asked
questions
(FAQ)
• Glossary
• For List Owners
• Responsibilities
• Common
Tasks
• Add/Remove
Members
• Transfer
Ownership
• Moderation
• For List Members
• Subscribe
• Unsubscribe
• Other
Options
• Listservs
• Help |
 |
Common Mailman List Administration Tasks
This section of the Mailman documentation is organized with the most
common tasks list administrators typically carry out when managing their
lists. If you are new to managing lists, we
suggest you begin with either the section on Creating
a New List or the section Making the Recommended
List Settings. A complete description of all owner configuration options
is available at the web site Complete Mailman
List Administration Tasks.
The most common tasks for Mailman list owners are:
In addition, Mailman list owners may want to read the following information:
Recommended List Settings
Mailman lists are created with the following initial configuration:
List owners can change these configurations
via the list administration web site for their list:
- Access the list administration web site for your list by going to
the web site whose name is similar to:
http://list.mail.virginia.edu/mailman/admin/list_name
Where list_name is the name of your list.
- The first page you see will require you to enter your list password.
Type the password for your list into the box following the words: List
Administrator Password: and click on the Let me In
button.
We recommend that all new list owners access their list administration
web site and first use the Initial Options page to set
the basic configuration options for their list.
In addition to the changes you may want to make from the Initial
Options page, there are a multitude of other list configuration
changes that list owners can make. As some can have unanticipated consequences,
we recommend that you make only those changes in configuration that are
needed for your list.
Note: should you, as list owner, request notices of subscribes
and unsubscribes for your list, you will receive a notice for each id,
even when you are doing mass subscriptions/deletions. If you choose to
enable this option, you may want to disable it prior to using the mass
subscriptions/deletions functions of the Membership Management
Configuration Category.
To set one or more of following list configurations, select the desired
configuration from the To: column and then, usually from
the list administration web site for your list, use the instructions in
the Do: column. You may choose to:
Add or update list description text
Control subscriptions to list
Control who can view ids on list
Control distribution of messages to list members
Allow only members to send messages to the list
Archive postings to the list
|
To:
|
Do: (usually from the list administration web
site for your list)
|
|
Add or edit list description text received
by new members
|
Initial options
Introductory description
Add to or update the text in this field
and then click the Submit Your Changes button
|
|
Require that any subscription to the list
be approved by the list owner
|
Privacy options
Subscription rules
What steps are required for subscription?
Select Require approval -or- Confirm and
approve
and then click the Submit Your Changes button
|
|
Restrict who can view the subscription
list
|
Privacy Options
Who can view subscription list? (default is Anyone)
Select List members -or- List
admin only
and then click the Submit Your Changes button
|
|
Control what messages are distributed
to list members
|
See Moderation page for instructions
on setting up a moderated Mailman list.
|
|
Create a members-only list
|
Initial options
What to do with non-listmember email . . .
Hold
and then click the Submit Your Changes button
Note: for a members-only list, the address subscribed to the list
must match exactly the address in the From: line
of the message to the list for a message to be distributed automatically
to all list members. If a person uses multiple email accounts or
email clients and their address appears in differing ways depending
on which account/client they are using, you can:
subscribe one id for the person to the list using the normal
add list member process
and then
enter a regular express that will tell Mailman to accept their other possible addresses into:
Privacy Options
Sender filters
List of non-member addresses whose postings should be
automatically accepted.
The regular expression will take the form:
^UVa_Computing_ID@.*virginia.edu
(The regular expression begins with a caret, followed by
the person's id, followed by the mail at (@), followed
by .* (period asterisk) followed by virginia.edu
Example: for the id mst3k, you would use: ^mst3k@.*virginia.edu)
All aliases for the person also need to be entered, for example,
mystery@virginia.edu
Remember to click the Submit Your Changes button
when you have entered all the email addresses.
|
|
Store a copy of all postings to the
list on the list information page (i.e., archive the postings to
the list)
|
To archive your mailman mailing list, after your list has been
created, send an email message
to: postmaster@Virginia.edu
and provide postmaster with:
the name of your list
a request that the list be archived
Note: if you are not the owner-of-record for the list, postmaster
will want to know what authority you have to make this request.
While archiving can be put into place at any time, only those messages
that are sent to the list after the archive function has been enabled
will be stored in the mailman message archive for the list.
There is no way to edit an archive for a list.
There is no way to copy an archive to another storage media: the
mailman archive is available only through mailman.
If a list archive consumes large amounts of disk storage space,
we will notify the list owner that we are going to remove the messages
for the earliest year of the archive. All messages for that year
will be deleted. Should permanent storage for all messages to a
list be needed, we recommend that a manual archive be created by
someone on the list.
|
Adding/Removing List Members
Adding (subscribing) list members | Removing
(unsubscribing) list members
Adding (subscribing) list members
To subscribe one or more members, you must:
- Access the list administration web site for your list by going to
the web site whose name is similar to:
http://list.mail.virginia.edu/mailman/admin/list_name
In the above, replace list_name with the name
of your list.
- The first page you see will require you to enter your list password.
Type the password for your list into the box following the words: List
Administrator Password: and click on the Let me In
button.
You should have received information about this page and your list password
when the list was created/migrated and may be receiving email once a
month reminding you of the location of this administrative interface
as well as the password for the list, depending on how you have your
list configured.
- Under Configuration Categories, click the option
for Membership Management.
- Click the option for Mass Subscription under Membership
Management.
- Enter one email address per line, or select a location for a text
file to upload, formatted with one address per line.
- Create your list of ids to be added with the following format,
remembering to click the Submit Your Changes button
when you have entered all the member addresses (note that @virginia.edu
is automatically appended to IDs with no domain specified).:
mst3k
tomjefferson@ntelos.net
marthajefferson@aol.com
Mailman will add the ids to your list and display them on the web page
when it has finished. Should you want a record of the ids added, you
would need to highlight the ids on the web page, copy them, and paste
them into a file where you want to store them. Remember that if you
have selected yes (on the Initial Options page) for
the list administrator to receive notices of subscribes and
unsubscribes, you will receive one email message for each id
added to your list.
Mailman lists can have member names as well as their email ids. To
include member names along with their email address:
- add the ids via the Mass Subscriptions page and
then go to the Membership Management -> Membership
List page and add the names, remembering to click the Submit
Your Changes button when you have entered all the member
names.
-or-
- create your list of ids to be added with the following format (note
that @virginia.edu is automatically appended to IDs with no domain
specified).
"M. S. Theatre" <mst3k>
"Thomas Jefferson" <tomjefferson@ntelos.net>
"Martha Jefferson" <marthajefferson@aol.com>
The name must have a beginning and an ending double quotation mark,
the email address must be contained within angle brackets. If you are
using this latter format, you will need to check your list carefully
before you paste the list into the Membership Management
-> Mass Subscriptions page: a missing double quote
or angle bracket can cause not only the id on that line to fail to be
subscribed to your list, but all subsequent ids in the list to fail
to be subscribed, too. Remember to click the Submit Your Changes
button when you have entered all the member names/email addresses.
Removing (unsubscribing) list members
Removing one or a few members | Removing
a large number of members | Removing all members
Although Mailman has the ability to manage automatically membership for
list members whose ids cease to work, at times you may need to explicitly
remove one or more ids from your list.
To unsubscribe one or a few members:
- Access the list administration web site for your list by going to
the web site whose name is similar to:
http://list.mail.virginia.edu/mailman/admin/list_name
In the above, replace list_name with the name
of your list.
- The first page you see will require you to enter your list password.
Type the password for your list into the box following the words: List
Administrator Password: and click on the Let me In
button.
You should have received information about this page and your list password
when the list was created/migrated and may be receiving email once a
month reminding you of the location of this administrative interface
as well as the password for the list, depending on how you have your
list configured.
- Click the option for Membership List under Membership
Management.
- Locate the members whom you wish to unsubscribe in the table of members,
and check the box in the unsub column for each member
you are unsubscribing.
- Click the Submit Your Changes button when done.
Mailman will remove the ids from your list and display them on the web
page when it has finished. Should you want a record of the ids removed,
highlight the ids on the web page, copy them, and paste them into a
file where you want to store them. Remember that if you have selected
(on the Initial Options page) to receive a notice of subscribes and
unsubscribes, you will receive one email message for each id removed
from your list.
To unsubscribe a large list of members:
- Access the list administration web site for your list by going to
the web site whose name is similar to:
http://list.mail.virginia.edu/mailman/admin/list_name
In the above, replace list_name with the name
of your list.
- The first page you see will require you to enter your list password.
Type the password for your list into the box following the words: List
Administrator Password: and click on the Let me In
button.
You should have received information about this page and your list password
when the list was created/migrated and may be receiving email once a
month reminding you of the location of this administrative interface
as well as the password for the list, depending on how you have your
list configured.
- Click the option for Mass Removal under Membership
Management.
- Enter one address per line or select a location for a text file to
upload, formatted with one address per line.
- Click the Submit Your Changes button when done.
To remove all ids from your list:
- Access the list administration web site for your list by going
to the web site whose name is similar to:
http://list.mail.virginia.edu/mailman/admin/list_name
In the above, replace list_name with the
name of your list.
- The first page you see will require you to enter your list password.
Type the password for your list into the box following the words:
List Administrator Password: and click on the Let
me In button.
You should have received information about this page and your list
password when the list was created/migrated and may be receiving email
once a month reminding you of the location of this administrative
interface as well as the password for the list, depending on how you
have your list configured.
- If needed, go to the Initial Options page and set
Should administrator get notices of subscribes and unsubscribes?
to no. Use the Submit Your Changes
button.
- If needed, go to the Privacy Options page and set
Show member addrs so they're not directly recognizable as
email addrs? to no. Use the Submit
Your Changes button.
- Use the Go to the general list information page
link found on the right side under Other Administrative Activities
and use the Visit Subscriber List button.
- Highlight and copy the ids displayed in the Subscriber list.
- Use the link at the bottom of the page labeled list_name
administrative interface (requires authorization) (the name
of your list will appear where list_name is shown
in the given link.)
- Go to the Membership Management -> Mass
Removal page.
- Paste the ids into the box.
- Use the Submit Your Changes button to complete
the unsubscription of the ids.
If needed, remember to re-set the Privacy Options page
and set Show member addrs so they're not directly recognizable
as email addrs? to yes. Use the Submit
Your Changes button to save changes.
Moderation Options
Go to the Moderation section of this
documentation.
Incoming Message Control Suggestions
Some information about controlling the distribution of messages to
you list can be found on the
Mailman Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
web page.
|
|
