I want to set up a mailing list for a local charity, for the purposes of discussion/announcement between members of the club.
mailman jumps out simply because it's all I know (and by "know" I mean I've used and administered lists hosted by lug.org.uk but that's it). So I thought I'd see if there are others I should consider.
What ideally I want to achieve is:
- A single list, with all members emails in it, mapped to something obvious like "everyone@<charity>.org.uk" - Messages sent to the list from members of the list get circulated automatically - Messages sent to the list from non-members get moderated: -- At moderation there are options to reject, accept, or accept and add sender to the list as allowed sender (not receiver), ie for the many of us with multiple email addresses who might email from any but only want to receive to one - Web interface for easy admin by people other than me
The normal mailing list subscribe/unsubscribe stuff I don't need as the list will be managed by me and/or others (the GDPR stuff is handled separately).
I manage an Ubuntu server which hosts the website but not currently mail for the charity's domain so there's going to be some configuration to do there (and probably some fresh questions when I get there) but for now: is mailman the tool I want?
On Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 9:16 AM Mark Rogers mark@more-solutions.co.uk wrote:
I want to set up a mailing list for a local charity, for the purposes of discussion/announcement between members of the club.
mailman jumps out simply because it's all I know (and by "know" I mean I've used and administered lists hosted by lug.org.uk but that's it). So I thought I'd see if there are others I should consider.
What ideally I want to achieve is:
- A single list, with all members emails in it, mapped to something
obvious like "everyone@<charity>.org.uk"
- Messages sent to the list from members of the list get circulated
automatically
- Messages sent to the list from non-members get moderated:
-- At moderation there are options to reject, accept, or accept and add sender to the list as allowed sender (not receiver), ie for the many of us with multiple email addresses who might email from any but only want to receive to one
- Web interface for easy admin by people other than me
The normal mailing list subscribe/unsubscribe stuff I don't need as the list will be managed by me and/or others (the GDPR stuff is handled separately).
I manage an Ubuntu server which hosts the website but not currently mail for the charity's domain so there's going to be some configuration to do there (and probably some fresh questions when I get there) but for now: is mailman the tool I want?
-- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER
main@lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!
You could try discourse, it has a feature that allows people to use email as the interface if they don't want to use a browser.
On Tue, 28 Jul 2020 at 10:28, Dennis Dryden ddryden@gmail.com wrote:
You could try discourse, it has a feature that allows people to use email as the interface if they don't want to use a browser.
I'll take a look, thanks.
Maybe I should better explain my objective though.
At present, emails that need to go to everyone, such as meeting minutes or treasurer reports, are sent as email with all recipients (~25) in the To: line. That works and is what everyone is used to. But it has some issues:
- To send an email to everyone means finding a recent one that (say) the treasurer has sent out, and copying all the recipients from it. It's cumbersome and error prone, and not great on a mobile.
- When someone changes their email, or leaves/joins the group, for some time afterwards the copy+paste method will get the wrong recipient list by not picking the right email to copy from, so people will be included who shouldn't be or missed who should be included.
- Sometimes emails are sent to "everyone" plus "others" (eg recipients of money raised by the charity). It's far too easy for them to end up copy+pasted into an unrelated email.
So I'm trying very hard to hide the "mailing" list aspect of it. A simple forward of email to everyone@<charity> would work except it's open to spam (and a bit messy to maintain). So the idea of using a mailing list like mailman was for the filtering of emails outside the recipient list more than anything else.
I have installed mailman3 as an experiment and have it all up and running, web interface and all, but there doesn't seem to be a way to maintain the membership list which means I've got stuck (and the docs for mailman3 are mostly absent as far as I can tell). Maybe I need to try the older mailman versions but I know their web interfaces aren't very friendly for non-tech users I might ask to help admin the list.
On 28/07/2020 18:30, Mark Rogers wrote:
On Tue, 28 Jul 2020 at 10:28, Dennis Dryden ddryden@gmail.com wrote:
You could try discourse, it has a feature that allows people to use email as the interface if they don't want to use a browser.
I'll take a look, thanks.
Maybe I should better explain my objective though.
<snip>
Can I tentatively suggest Mailchimp? I'm not entirely sure it does *exactly* what you want but there is a free option for up to 2000 recipients. And it is a doddle, once you've got the hang of it. Several smaller orgs I get emails from use it.
Bev
On Tue, 28 Jul 2020 at 18:58, Bev Nicolson lumos@gmx.co.uk wrote:
Can I tentatively suggest Mailchimp?
My problem (well apart from my problem of explaining what I mean in one go!) is that I need all members of the club to be able to email the group, it's a many-to-many thing not one-to-many.
If it was just for me to send emails to the group MailChimp would work, I think, but unless I'm missing something it won't do what I need here.
On Wed, 2020-07-29 at 09:22 +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
On Tue, 28 Jul 2020 at 18:58, Bev Nicolson lumos@gmx.co.uk wrote:
Can I tentatively suggest Mailchimp?
My problem (well apart from my problem of explaining what I mean in one go!) is that I need all members of the club to be able to email the group, it's a many-to-many thing not one-to-many.
If it was just for me to send emails to the group MailChimp would work, I think, but unless I'm missing something it won't do what I need here.
Do you have a machine that's up most or all of the time and reasonable broadband? Yes? Why not run it yourself? I've done this in the past, running Postfix on a Solaris server and manually setting up mailing lists on it. There must be better solutions now, e.g.;
https://www.linuxlinks.com/mailinglistmanagers/
The only "gotcha" I'd be wary of is spam, especially if any of your members get compromised by one of those "mail everyone in your address book" malware.
Rgds,
H.
On 27/07/2020 09:15, Mark Rogers wrote:
I want to set up a mailing list for a local charity, for the purposes of discussion/announcement between members of the club.
mailman jumps out simply because it's all I know (and by "know" I mean I've used and administered lists hosted by lug.org.uk but that's it). So I thought I'd see if there are others I should consider.
What ideally I want to achieve is:
- A single list, with all members emails in it, mapped to something
obvious like "everyone@<charity>.org.uk"
- Messages sent to the list from members of the list get circulated
automatically
- Messages sent to the list from non-members get moderated:
-- At moderation there are options to reject, accept, or accept and add sender to the list as allowed sender (not receiver), ie for the many of us with multiple email addresses who might email from any but only want to receive to one
- Web interface for easy admin by people other than me
The normal mailing list subscribe/unsubscribe stuff I don't need as the list will be managed by me and/or others (the GDPR stuff is handled separately).
I manage an Ubuntu server which hosts the website but not currently mail for the charity's domain so there's going to be some configuration to do there (and probably some fresh questions when I get there) but for now: is mailman the tool I want?
Yahoo groups are still going, despite rumours to the contrary. Nev
Hi,
how about looking at alternatives ;) https://alternativeto.net/software/mailman/?platform=self-hosted
there are some commercial ones but free and open source do exist. - Wordpress mailing group (if the charity site is on WP) - http://mlmmj.org/ or which you already mentioned mailman (well maintained and regularly updated)
Cheerio! Bart
śr., 29 lip 2020 o 18:30 Nev Young alug@nevilley.org.uk napisał(a):
On 27/07/2020 09:15, Mark Rogers wrote:
I want to set up a mailing list for a local charity, for the purposes of discussion/announcement between members of the club.
mailman jumps out simply because it's all I know (and by "know" I mean I've used and administered lists hosted by lug.org.uk but that's it). So I thought I'd see if there are others I should consider.
What ideally I want to achieve is:
- A single list, with all members emails in it, mapped to something
obvious like "everyone@<charity>.org.uk"
- Messages sent to the list from members of the list get circulated
automatically
- Messages sent to the list from non-members get moderated:
-- At moderation there are options to reject, accept, or accept and add sender to the list as allowed sender (not receiver), ie for the many of us with multiple email addresses who might email from any but only want to receive to one
- Web interface for easy admin by people other than me
The normal mailing list subscribe/unsubscribe stuff I don't need as the list will be managed by me and/or others (the GDPR stuff is handled separately).
I manage an Ubuntu server which hosts the website but not currently mail for the charity's domain so there's going to be some configuration to do there (and probably some fresh questions when I get there) but for now: is mailman the tool I want?
Yahoo groups are still going, despite rumours to the contrary. Nev
main@lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!
On 30/07/2020 11:18, B D wrote:
Hi,
how about looking at alternatives ;) https://alternativeto.net/software/mailman/?platform=self-hosted
there are some commercial ones but free and open source do exist.
- Wordpress mailing group (if the charity site is on WP)
- http://mlmmj.org/
or which you already mentioned mailman (well maintained and regularly updated)
Cheerio! Bart
Learning from Bart's search terms, this has what looks like a useful page on the pros and cons of the alternatives and some detail about mailman too.
https://www.whoishostingthis.com/compare/mailman/
HTH.
Bev
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B D -
Bev Nicolson -
Dennis Dryden -
Huge -
Mark Rogers -
Nev Young