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Managing Mailing Lists Majordomo, LISTSERV, Listproc, and SmartList

By Alan Schwartz
First Edition March 1998
Pages: 290
ISBN 10: 1-56592-259-X | ISBN 13: 9781565922594
(Average of 1 Customer Reviews)

Book description

This book covers four mailing list packages (Majordomo, LISTSERV, Listproc, and SmartList) and tells you everything you need to know to set up and run a mailing list, from writing the charter to dealing with bounced messages. It discusses creating moderated lists, controlling who can subscribe, offering digest subscriptions, and archiving list postings.
Full Description

Would you like to set up an electronic discussion forum for your customers? Or how about a mailing list to announce meetings of your local hobby group? Email is the universal Internet application, which makes mailing lists an ideal vehicle for creating electronic communities. All you need to run a mailing list is access to a system that is connected to the Internet, a mailing list management software package, and a bit of know-how, which is where this book comes in. Managing Mailing Lists is full of practical information for the list maintainer and system administrator alike. This book covers four mailing list packages: Majordomo, LISTSERV, Listproc, and SmartList. All of these packages run on UNIX systems; LISTSERV runs on a number of platforms, including Windows NT. If you are a system administrator, Managing Mailing Lists tells you what you need to know to pick a mailing list package and get it up and running on your system. It also offers advice on working with the people who are actually maintaining mailing lists on your system, so that you can give them the support they need to run effective, useful lists. If you are charged with establishing and running a mailing list, Managing Mailing Lists covers everything you need to know about setting up and maintaining the list, from writing the charter for the list to dealing with bounced messages. Depending on what mailing list software is running on your system, you'll need to work with your system administrator to set up various aspects of the list. This book lays out all the decisions you need to make and tells you what information you need to pass along to the administrator. Mailing lists offer a great deal of flexibility. For example, you can create a moderated mailing list, so that you can control the content on the list, or you can let anyone post whatever they want, for a more free-form discussion group. You can also exert control over who can subscribe to the list, if you want to limit membership based on certain criteria. You can give your subscribers the option to receive individual messages or message digests and you can archive list postings and make them available to your readership.

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Book details

First Edition: March 1998
ISBN: 1-56592-259-X
Pages: 290
Average Customer Reviews: (Based on 1 Reviews)

Featured customer reviews

Oldie but a goodie, March 04 2008

Rating:

Submitted by David L [Respond | View]

When I bought this book back slightly before the dawn of time, I was in the process of standing up several corporate mailing lists to interact with our sendmail gateways. All of this sort of stuff was new to most of us and this book was a great help.

Like all of the ORA blue books, it is straight UNIX. No pointy-clicky stuff here. Instead you get solid command line, text based configuration files and basic troubleshooting techniques for getting your lists running and keeping them running.

It is beginning to show its age in that it no longer covers some of the more modern listserv systems (like mailman) with web based frontends, but it is still a great reference for explaining what a listserv is and how it should be managed and used.

Managing Mailing Lists Review, April 09 1998
Submitted by Jacob Haller [Respond | View]

The easiest thing to do after you read a reference book
is complain, so let me start by saying that I think that
this book is quite well-written and would be a good
resource for anyone wanting to get started using a free
mailing list server on a Unix machine.

That being said, as an experienced LISTSERV maintainer, I
didn't learn much new. (Since I generally only looked at
the LISTSERV and general material, that's mainly what I'll
be talking about.) I'll mainly be using the book to loan
to people who want to learn more, and I'll definately quote
some of the material in the handouts I give to new
listowners.

A couple of gripes: It wasn't clear to me before I got the
book that it would cover LISTSERV _Lite_, not LISTSERV
Classic. It's an understandable decision to make since
Lite is free, but this could have been made clearer on the
cover.

Another issue is that this book was Unix-only, which I
also didn't realize until the book arrived. I had
assumed that it would give some coverage to the different
platforms, but (although it mentioned which of the mailing
list packages were available for other platforms) stuff
like installation instructions, etc. was all for Unix
versions of the products. Again, I don't have a gripe
with that decision, but I would have liked to have known
about that before I got the book. (Now someone will point
me to a place in the book's description that made that
clear, I'm sure.)

But all-in-all I liked the discussion of mail protocals,
the sort of things you should be thinking of when you
set up a mailing list server or create a mailing list,
the comparison of the different packages, and the
information on LISTSERV Lite, and I'll definately be
loaning this book to the LISTSERV-administrator-in-
training that I'm supposed to be bringing up to speed.

Read all reviews

Media reviews

"…gave me a solid foundation in several major mail list programs."--Daniel Fishman, Database Trends and Applications, February 2001

"You will be hard pressed to find a book that can compete with Alan Schwartz'
Managing Mailing Lists in the field it covers." --Professional Webmaster, December 2000

"Nothing fancy here, just accurate information in a well-written book. For all collections." --Thomas Gillespie, Library Journal, July 1998

"If you're ready for the nitty-gritty of administering a mailing list, Schwartz's Managing Mailing Lists is a comprehensive resource." --Elizabeth Lewis, amazon.com

"I have to speak up here because this new O'Reilly book (Managing Mailing Lists) recently saved my butt. I was installing majordomo 1.94.4 on an older SCO Unix® machine and my test list kept giving me "permission denied" errors. I've installed majordomo quite a few times, but I'd tried all my tricks and was still stumped. I swallowed my pride, reached for this book, and had my list running within a few minutes." --Jim Johnson, Journal of Open Computing

"A great book! This book covers both server and list administration for Listproc, Majordomo, SmartList, and LISTSERV Lite. It starts of by covering the basics of an email message and a mailing list, and what mailing list software does. It even covers how you can do some basic mailing list functions with sendmail without using an MLM (Mailing List Manager). While the software this book covers are mostly UNIX-specific, this book is a must-have for anyone wanting to install and run mailing list management software. In one book you can see the different features of the leading UNIX-based MLM's, and get an honest appraisal of their relative strengths and weaknesses. You may have already have decided on one MLM, but this book may change your mind!

"Not just for server administrators, this book covers all the issues with respect to managing a mailing list. Learn about how to run a moderated list, or how to offer a digested version of your list. This book is also well laid out -- with multiple 'layers'. As you read on things are covered in greater detail. The last chapters are an in-depth reference for the commands and features of each MLM covered."

--A book review, by David Barr, http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~barr/managing-maillist-review.html

"Although mailing lists are hardly one of the more glamorous aspects of Internet communications, they remain one of the most useful, effective, and popular methods for group discussions. Many organizations and businesses use them to keep in touch with members and customers. But while mailing lists are simple to use, they can be confusing for newcomers to run.

This comprehensive guide is for anyone who wants to run or manage a mailing list, including the busy system administrator who needs to ensure that user-owned mailing lists run as trouble-free as possible. Schwartz concentrates on UNIX systems and software because they are well proven, stable, and free (plus, most mailing lists are based in UNIX systems). Discussions of UNIX systems and commands can be dry, but Schwartz is thoughtful enough to interject some humorous examples. He covers the technicalities of list operation, including the selection and use of all the leading software. He also goes into the pros and cons of the various strategic questions that list managers must face, such as whether or not a list should be moderated or whether or not to allow nonsubscribers to post to a list. This book will save any new list manager a great deal of time and trouble.

--a book review, by Elizabeth Lewis http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156592259X/002-6548871-9997267

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