This Options allows you to install the Mailing List program. After it has been installed, you need to create and maintain your mailing lists with the Mail Manager. You can also remove the mailing list program after it has been installed if you do not wish to use it.

Installing The Mailing List Software

Before using your mailing list you must first install the software to your account. This is done by entering your control panel and clicking on the Mailing List option. Once inside the Mailing List option you will see a button that you need to click to install the software to your account. It will take approximately 10 minutes for the server to install the software to your account.

Creating A Mailing List

Once the software is installed you create your lists from inside the Mail Manager in your Control Panel. After you have installed the software you will see a link inside your Mail Manager named "New List", click it to create the list.

After you click add to create your list, you will be taken to a new window giving you a somewhat poor description of your list, just click on the Home link in the upper left hand corner of the screen to return to the Mail Manager. Once you return to the Mail Manager, you will see the name of your new list.

Assigning A List Administrator (Maintainer)

Before you can edit or administer a list, you must first provide the system with the Maintainers email address, the Maintainers password, and the maximum number of emails that can be stored in archive.

Maintainer = the person who has permission to edit and administer the list.

To provide this information click on the list name and you will be taken to a new screen where you provide the maintainers information. Once you fill in the needed information, you will need to click on edit. The system then provides you with the name of the file that you can edit.
Location Of Files To Edit For Your Mailing List

So far you've learned how to install the mailing list software, create list, and assign a maintainer to the list. Now the list is ready to make it do all the neat little tricks lists can do in order to work the way you need them to. Before you can add commands to your list, you need to know where the files are that you edit to apply the commands to.

The location of the files that you will edit for your mailing list are located in this directory: yourdomain-mail/nameoflist/. You can either edit these files from inside the File Manager of your Control Panel or upload them to your own PC and edit them as a text file. If you upload these files to your hard drive to edit, remember to FTP them back to your account in ASCII mode.

Each file located inside your list directory contains instructions for editing and should be read carefully prior to editing.

Adding a list of addresses to my Mailing List

I already have a list of addresses for my mailing list. How can I subscribe the entire list?
Go to your file manager and find the yourdomain-mail folder. Click on that folder and find your mailing list:

The 'dist' file is the distribution list -- the list of recipients. To add a pre-existing list of recipients, copy it into the dist file:

/home/username/domainname-mail/listname/dist

You can add a short list by hand or by cut-and-paste. For a really long list, you may want to download the dist file, edit it using a word processing program, save it as text or ASCII, and then upload the edited file.

The following conditions apply:

One subscriber per line.
Empty lines are allowed.
The mail address of the subscriber must be the first word on the line.
Comments may follow the address (but separated from the address by at least one whitespace character).

Everything preceding the line containing: (Only addresses below this line can be automatically removed) is write-protected from changes (i.e. these addresses can never be automatically/accidentally unsubscribed).

If the line: (Only addresses below this line can be automatically removed) is not present at all, automatic unsubscriptions to this list are impossible.
New subscribers will always appear on the line immediately following the last filled entry in the dist file.

Some sample entries (the preferred format):
joe@some.where
joe@some.where (some comment)
joe@some.where (some comment) (some more comments)
Depreciated, but allowed:

some comment
(some comment)

Not allowed:
(some comment) joe@some.where
some comment

Note: adding to the dist file for a list automatically adds to the accept file as well, unless you have turned off foreign submissions.
Setting up a newsletter

When you use SmartList to send out an electronic newsletter, you limit the submissions accepted to yourself, and tell SmartList not to accept "foreign" submissions. Anyone who signs up will still receive the list but now cannot send to it. If you want all your lists to be newsletters, you can skip the delink step. If you're not sure, go ahead and delink this one.

For the list "listname,"
* Edit the rc.custom file and the rc.init file.
vi /home/username/domainname-mail/listname/rc.custom
uncomment (delete the #s) foreign_submit
comment out (precede with a #) foreign_submit= yes
vi /home/username/domainname-mail/listname/rc.init
uncomment (delete #s) foreign_submit
comment out (precede with #) foreign_submit= yes
* Delink the accept file:
cd/home/username/domainname-mail
type
.bin/delink listname/accept

When these steps are completed, the owner may send to the list by e-mailing to listname@domainname.com. If anyone else attempts to mail to the list, it will be sent to the owner rather than the link. Since the owner is now the only address in the accept file for the list, no other submissions will be accepted. (You may want to type vi accept to be sure no one else snuck in there.)

Note: editing the rc.init file means that all lists created thereafter will also function as newsletters. The hard link would have to be broken for rc.init for a particular list to change this without changing this for all other lists also.

Mailing List Documentation

For Detailed Documentaion:
The documentation for the Mailing List program is located at: http://www.mindwell.com/smartlist/

Article ID: 928, Created: March 15, 2011 at 11:38 PM, Modified: April 8, 2011 at 10:29 AM

Setting Up and Using Mailing Lists

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