Re: Mailing list manager on NetBSD

[Niels Dettenbach <nd%syndicat.com@localhost>]

Am Donnerstag, 10. Januar 2019, 04:21:38 CET schrieb Mayuresh:
> - Do I really need a specialized mail manager software or can I just use
>   .forward (or procmail) to bounce the mails to registered members?
There are a lot of people who manage a "mailing list" by their mail client. 
But even if they use BCC for "hiding" the recipients, there are email system 
who do not "filter out" BCC addresses - so this is a security leak, as a lot 
of spammers and viruses today use the email content archive of hacked systems 
to find valid addresses.

list processors like mailman provider much more then just "mass mailing" - 
they handle and filter bounces, answers and memberships semi to full 
automatic.

and most mail servers just allow a limited amount of recipients or smtp 
commands in one email. so larger mail "explodings" has to be batched wisely.

But more important: they provide Email Headers which are required for email 
lists and typical list management / usage of clients.

> - I do not need automated subscribe / unsubscribe, this being for a closed
>   group of size not exceeding 300/350. Manual registration, with very
>   occasional changes is fine.
This hardly depends from what you look for. If you just want to send a 
"newsletter" once a month this may be OK for i.e. up to 50 recievers, but if 
you have more recievers the amount of work for maintaining the list is 
getting significantly higher then setting up a mailman list. 

The most of the lists we host for customers have less then 300 users. few of 
them of then only have 30. if a user exoperience the comfort, they usually do 
not use any "hand built lists" anymore for me then a few recipients.

in europe it is difficult to provide such a "hand list" by law, users should be 
allow to unsubscribe with "one click".

setting up mailman is not a big thing - even filling it up with a larger list 
of recipient addresses and names (just copy in addresses linewise (including 
names  evenpossible with "Name <adress>") i.e. - from a calc/excel export or 
similiar).

usually even a closed list have to be managed by a admin - including unwanted 
postings or spam treatments. mailman offers web gui and console tools fir such 
things

we use exim as MTA/MDA SMTP service as it is perfectly to configure for 
mailman and very ressource efficient in handling mass mail in different ways.

- I need "member-only" restriction for posting to the list email id, which
  I think procmail can manage.

This is much easier to handle with mailman - after setup. It offers web access 
for the list members too, headers / footers, auto "cleaning" of Headers (i.e. 
MDS requests etc.) btw.. This may be done with a compley procmail and 
fiddeling by hand too, archiving., archive management and much more - but hey, 
mailman does this out of the box / default while it allows any thinkable list 
processing setup.

> - I do need a web archiver with thread view etc. (and ability to write
just enable "list archive" by click in mailman admin gui.

>   text pattern searches of my own on the mail texts), for which there
>   might be alternatives that do just that - archiving. (E.g. HyperKitty
>   which mailman uses, which can be used standalone also.)
You may use grep or similiar on the archive files, but these are just raw. 
There are many types of existing setups with some search / indexer software 
to advance mailmans archive with search functionality.

or just (if it's a public archive):
https://wiki.list.org/DOC/How%20do%20I%20make%20the%20archives%20searchable



good luck,


niels.
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 Niels Dettenbach
 Syndicat IT & Internet
 http://www.syndicat.com
 PGP: https://syndicat.com/pub_key.asc
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