Quick Guide for Administering Mailman Lists

 

This document is for Mailman list administrators on the Central Administration lists (CALists) system.  The scope of this document is not to itemize all of Mailman’s features, but to delineate some of the more commonly used features.  Any users of the CAMail system can request a mailing list on the CALists system by contacting the UIS Help Desk at (617) 496-2001 or by sending electronic mail from your CAMail account to uis_helpdesk@harvard.edu.

Table of Contents

 

Logging Into Your List’s Administrative Interface

Subscribing One or More Addresses

Listing Subscribed Addresses

Removing a Subscribed Adddress

Allowing a Non-Member Address to Post

Restricting Posting to Particular List Members

 

Logging Into Your List’s Administrative Interface

The URL to which list administrators should log into is

 

            http://calists.harvard.edu/mailman/admin/listname

 

where listname is the name of the mailing list.

 

 

You will need a browser capable of supporting cookies to access the Mailman administrative interface.  The password that you should enter is the password for the mailing list, which is mailed to the list owner by the system.  It is not the same as any of the passwords for individual subscriptions.

Subscribing One or More Addresses

 

1. Navigate to Membership Management, then Mass Subscription.

 

2. Set the options such as sending individual notifications to each user/owner for each new address using the radio buttons at the top of the page.

 

 

3. Type in the addresses for subscription in the Enter one address per line below... field or upload a list of addresses by putting the file name in the ...or specify a file to upload (one per line) field.

 

4. Click the Submit Your Changes button.

Listing Subscribed Addresses

Through the web:

 

1. Navigate to Membership Management, then Membership List.

 

2. Use the Find member field to locate an individual member

 

or use the letter/number links, which are present if the list is above a certain size, to locate the address.  The table of checkboxes indicates currently applied options to particular subscribers.

 

Through e-mail:

 

1. Compose a message to listname-request@calists.harvard.edu where listname is the name of your Mailman list.
2. In the body of the message, put who <owner password> and erase any signatures from the message.  The <owner password> is the same one that you use to log into the web administrative interface.  For example, if your password was “mail4u,” then you put “who mail4u” in the body of the message by itself.

 

Removing a Subscribed Address

1. Navigate to Membership Management, then Membership List.

 

2. Click the unsub checkbox beside the address you wish to remove.

 

 

3. Click the Submit Your Changes button.

 

Allowing a Non-Member Address to Post

 

Option #1 (adding as inactive member)

1. Subscribe the address through the Mass Subscription screen.
2. Navigate to Membership Management, then Membership List.
3. Locate the subscriber address.
4. Uncheck the checkbox, if checked, under mod to remove moderation restriction.
5. Check the checkbox, if not already checked, until the nomail category to prevent this address from receiving posts to the list.

 

6. Click the Submit Your Changes button.

 

Option #2 (adding to non-members table – only valid if NOT a list subscriber)

1. Navigate to Privacy Options…, then Sender Filters.

 

2. Enter the address into the List of non-member addresses whose postings should be automatically accepted field on a line by itself.  Please note this field allows for wildcards, which can allowing all mail from a certain domain (enter ^.*@domain, such as ^.*@harvard.edu to allow all @harvard.edu addresses) or a certain account (enter ^userid@.*, such as ^jharvard@.* to allow jharvard from any domain).

 

3. Click the Submit Your Changes button.

 

Restricting Posting to Particular List Members

 

1. Navigate to Privacy Options…, then Sender Filters.  Choose Yes beside By default, should new list member postings be moderated? option.  Click the Submit Your Changes button.  This change will automatically restrict new subscribers.

2. Navigate to Membership Management, then Membership List.  Click On button beside Set everyone's moderation bit, including those members not currently visible.  Click the Set button.

3. Locate the subscribers with the Membership List and uncheck the mod checkboxes beside their respective e-mail addresses, clicking the Submit Your Changes button after each screen.  If posting addresses are not members, follow the non-member address instructions.