List Management

As part of your hosting package, you have the ability to create and maintain Mailing Lists. The following documentation will get you started.

• How do I create a new list?
• How do I add subscribers to my list?
• What options do I have for my posting policy?
• What is the Bounce Processor?
• What is Feed Mode Distribution?
• What RFC822 Fields do I keep?
• How do I handle subscriptions?

Login to your the interface. Click the List Management Link.

This will open the List Management interface for your domain. Any list created here will become a fully functional address @yourdomain.ext managed by the list owner.

To create a new list, type a unique name in the new list name: field. Assign an owner for the list and provide a brief description. Once these fields are complete, click the Create List button. If successful, you will get a message indicating that you have "Successfully created list [listname]". You are now free to customize your list settings and add subscribers.

At any time you may have up to three unique lists configured on the server. Once you have created three lists, you will be unable to create any additional lists without removing one. To remove a list, simply select the list you wish to remove from the pull down menu and click Delete List. You will be prompted with a warning message like the one below; read through the warning and click OK.

Once your list has been successfully created, you have the ability to add/subtract subscribers and specify list settings. To do so, point your browser to http://webmail.yourdomain.ext and login using the Username and Password of the list owner. After you have been authenticated, click the Mailboxes button of the floating Menu bar. Your new mailing list name should now appear with your subscribed mailboxes. Click the ( List ) link next to your mailing list name to access your Mailing List Settings.

You will now be able to configure the available options for your mailing list. The first section allows you to customize List Description, Character Set, Digesting/Archiving and Verification. We recommend keeping the defaults here, with the exception of Description.

You can also choose to create a unique confirmation message to go out to all subscribers. This is handy is cases where people maliciously subscribe false addresses or incorrect addresses. In order to change this information you must first check and enable Request Confirmations. When this option is selected, the List manager does not fulfill subscription requests immediately. Instead, a confirmation request message is composed and sent to the address that is about to be included or excluded from the subscribers list. The confirmation request contains a unique identifier (Confirmation ID) in its Subject field. When the user receives such a confirmation request, they can simply use the mailer Reply command to confirm the requested operation.

Customizing the Confirmation Request requires a brief study of the variables. The following may also be used in the Welcome and Goodbye messages which also get generated:

• ^O - the requested operation
• ^P - unsubscribe for the unsubscribe and subscribe operations and subscribe(operation) for other operations
• ^A - the subscriber address
• ^I - the confirmation identifier
• ^N - the list name
• ^D - the parent domain name

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Adding Subscribers  

To add subscribers to the your new list, simply click the Subscribers link on the Mailing List Settings page.

The Subscribers page contains the list of all email addresses subscribed to the mailing list. For each address additional information (such as the subscriber's real name, number of bounces from this address, etc.) is listed. Each address can be marked, and you can use the Mark All button to mark all list subscribers. You can use the Filter field to display the subscribers with matching addresses only.

To enter a single email address, just type the address in the Single User field and click Subscribe. You may also prefer to compile a list of email addresses and subscribe them all at once. The file must be a flat text file in order to subscribe the entire list. If any errors occur in processing, the server will let you know in which line the error occurred. The text file should have one email address per line, with several optional fields on each line. If a line contains several fields, they should be separated with the tabulation (TAB) symbol.

Note: When using Netscape and some other Unix browsers, make sure that the file name ends with the .txt suffix. Otherwise the browser won't upload it as a text file, and the file will be ignored.

Feedback

If this option is set to ask Confirmation, all operations performed result in confirmation requests being sent to the specified subscriber address. If this option is set to Send Welcome, confirmation requests are not generated and the subscription modes are changed immediately, but the Welcome and Good Bye messages are sent to subscribers when you unsubscribe a user or subscribe a new user. If this option is set to silently, no messages are sent to subscribers.

Unsubscribe

Mark the subscribers and click this button to unsubscribe them from the list. Depending on the current FeedBack setting value, the LIST module will either unsubscribe them immediately or just send them confirmation requests. If the FeedBack setting (see below) value is Send Welcome, the Good Bye messages are sent to unsubscribed addresses.

Mark Failed

Mark some subscribers and click this button to tell the LIST module that mail to those addresses bounced. This can be useful in situations when the LIST module fails to process bounce reports automatically, because they come in a non-standard format. Clicking the Mark Failed button will result in the same actions (increased bounce counter, suspension, and warning generation) as caused by receiving a non-fatal bounce from the marked address.

Set Postings

These controls allow you to change the moderation mode for the selected users. You can select some subscribers and set their posting mode to moderated, prohibited, unmoderated, or special.

Set Mode

These controls allow you to change the subscription mode for the selected users.

Each list user (email address) is subscribed in one of the following modes:

• FEED:   In this mode, the subscriber receives list messages as they are posted.
• DIGEST:   In this mode, the subscriber periodically receives digest messages. A digest message starts with the Table Of Contents - the list of the messages posted, followed by the posted messages themselves.
• INDEX:   In this mode, the subscriber periodically receives index messages. An index message is the same as the digest Table Of Contents, but it does not contain the posted messages themselves. INDEX subscribers can see if they are interested in any posted messages, and use the Web interface to read those messages in the mailing list archive.
• NULL:   In this mode, the subscriber does not receive any messages from the list. This mode can be used by whomever posts to the list
• BANNED:   "Banned" users do not receive messages from the list, and they cannot change their subscription mode themselves.

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Subscription Processing  

Each mailing list is a list of subscribers, i.e. a list of E-mail addresses receiving messages posted on the mailing list.

In order to subscribe, unsubscribe, and change their subscription mode via E-mail, users of the listname@domain mailing list should send any message to the following addresses:

When subscription request messages are sent to these addresses, the message From: header fields are used as requesters E-mail addresses.

You can specify who can subscribe to the mailing list, and how they should subscribe.

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Accept Postings  

This setting specifies who can post messages on this mailing list:

• from owner only: Only messages submitted by the list owner (using any secure method) will be posted.
• moderated: Messages from everybody but the list owner are redirected to the list owner for approval; if the list owner redirects a message back to the list, the message is posted.

  Note: this mode can be used to change the list posting policy when the list owner wants to postpone all postings. If you use the from subscribers mode, the New Subscribers setting (see below) provides more advanced moderation options.

• from subscribers: Messages from the list subscribers are accepted for posting; some messages can be moderated (see below).
• from anybody: Messages from any address are accepted for posting.

New Subscribers  

This settings is effective only if the Accept Postings setting is set to "from subscribers". When a user subscribes and starts to post messages, the messages are stored in the list owner mailbox waiting for approval. After the specified number of messages are approved and posted, all messages sent by this user are posted on the list directly without the list owner approval.
Note: this is a very effective way to enforce the list policies and to protect the mailing list from "spamming".

• Moderate All: All messages from new subscribers will be stored for approval (the LIST module will not update the posted messages counter).
• Prohibited: New subscribers won't be able to post on the list (their postings will be rejected).
• Special: New subscribers will be able to post auto-generated messages. This is useful if you want to subscribe this mailing list to other mailing lists.

  Note: When an auto-generated message should be posted on the list and the message is not a message generated by the list owner, the message Sender address (if exists) is used instead of the From address. If that address is subscribed to the list, and the subscriber posting mode is set to Special, the message is posted. You can open the subscribers list and change this setting for individual subscribers. You may want to change this setting to Unmoderated for some users, letting only those users post messages on the list while posting from all other users (and new users) will be either stored for approval or rejected.

Allowed Format

This settings specifies the allowed MIME format for postings.

• plain text only: Only messages in the text/plain format can be posted.
• text only: Only messages in the text (text/plain, text/html, etc.) formats can be posted.
• text alternative: Only messages in the text format or multipart/alternative messages that contain a part in the text format can be posted (for example, a message can contain a text/html part and the same text as animage/gif part/variant).
• anything: Messages in any MIME format can be posted.

Maximum Size

This setting restricts the size of messages that can be posted on this mailing list. The list owner can always post messages of any size, provided they are less than 5 MB.

Prohibit

• Unmodified Digest Subjects: When this option is selected, the Subject fields of all postings are checked. If the Subject is a "reply prefix" (such as Re:, Re>, etc.) followed by this list Digest String (see below), the message is rejected.
• Non-matched Character Set: When this option is selected, the character set used to compose the posting is checked. If the character set is explicitly specified, and it does not match the Preferred Character Set for this list, the message is rejected.

Hide 'From' Addresses

When this option is selected, the 'From' address of the posted messages is modified so that it contains the list address instead of the message author address. If the original 'From' address contained a comment (a real name of the message author), it is preserved. The 'From' addresses in the message archives, digests, and indexes are converted, also. You can use this option to 'hide' the real email addresses of those people who post messages on this mailing list.

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Bounce Processing

suspend subscription for

If this option is selected, it specifies for how long a subscriber should be suspended if the system receives a non-fatal problem report about the subscriber's email address. The unsubscribe after option specifies the number of unconfirmed suspension periods after which the user is unsubscribed.

suspend till confirmation

If this option is selected, a non-fatal error report suspends the address till the subscriber sends a confirmation message. The unsubscribe after option specifies the time period to wait for a confirmation message.

Process a Fatal Bounce as

This setting specifies how the system should process fatal problem reports: as non-fatal, as several non-fatal, or as a fatal problem. If you specify that the system should unsubscribe a user after receiving 10 non-fatal problem reports about the user address, and you specify that a fatal problem report should be processed as 5 fatal, this will tell the system to unsubscribe the user after 2 fatal reports. If you specify that a fatal problem report should be processed as fatal, the system will unsubscribe a user immediately upon receiving a fatal problem report.

Notify Owner When Unsubscribing

If this option is selected, an email message is sent to the List Owner every time an address is unsubscribed because of mail bouncing.

Cleanup List every

This setting specifies how often the system should scan the subscription list. When scanning the list, the system:

• sends warning messages to the subscribers with non-zero bounce counter;
• removes subscribers who sent subscription requests more than 2 days ago and who have not confirmed the subscription requests;
• removes unsubscribed addresses from the list.

Save

This setting specifies which delivery reports should be saved in the listname/reports mailbox in the list owner Account. If you specify unreadable, only the messages that the LIST module fails to parse and process are stored in that mailbox.

Warning Text

These text settings specify the subject and the text of a warning message that is sent to subscribers when their subscription is suspended. Creating warning messages require a brief study of the variables.

• ^O - the requested operation
• ^P - unsubscribe for the unsubscribe and subscribe operations and subscribe(operation) for other operations
• ^A - the subscriber address
• ^I - the confirmation identifier
• ^N - the list name
• ^D - the parent domain name

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FEED Mode Distribution

After a message is posted, it is distributed to all users subscribed in the FEED mode.

The To header field of a distributed message contains the mailing list address. The From, Date, and Message-ID fields (and specified additional fields) are copied from the original posting.

The body of the distributed message is a copy of the original message body. If the original message was not in the MIME format, or if it was in the MIME text/plain or multipart/mixed format (the most common formats), the FEED Mode Header text is inserted before and the FEED Mode Trailer text is inserted after the body of the original posting.

Subject Prefix

This setting specifies the string that is inserted into the beginning of the Subject field of all messages distributed in the FEED mode. When a message is distributed, the system checks the Subject field. If the subject prefix is found after the reply prefix (Re:, Re>, etc.), then the subject prefix is deleted.

insert after Reply Prefix

Select this option to insert the Subject Prefix after the Reply prefix (this helps client mailers to group related messages into discussion threads).

Direct Replies

If the to List option is selected, the Reply-To header field with the email address of the list is added to all distributed messages. As a result, when subscribers reply to distributed messages, their replies are directed to the mailing list by default. If the to Sender option is selected, the Reply-To header is not inserted and user replies are directed to the From address of a distributed messages, i.e. to the From address of the message author (sender).

Header

This setting specifies the text to be included in the beginning of messages distributed in the FEED mode.

Trailer

This setting specifies the text to be included at the end of messages distributed in the FEED mode.

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RFC822 Fields to Keep

Use these fields to specify the names of additional RFC822 header fields to be copied from the original postings to the distributed messages.

• If you want to remove a name, enter an empty string into the name field.
• If you want to copy all header fields, enter the asterisk (*) sign into a field.
• If the To And Cc option is selected, all To and Cc addresses from the original messages are included into the distributed messages (as its Cc-addresses).

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