Managing Mailing Lists: Majordomo, LISTSERV, Listproc, and SmartList: Schwartz, Alan: 0636920922599: Amazon.com: Books

Managing Mailing Lists: Majordomo, LISTSERV, Listproc, and SmartList 1st Edition

by Alan Schwartz (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-1565922594

ISBN-10: 156592259X

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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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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. -- Elizabeth Lewis

From Library Journal

Mailing lists are one of the oldest forms of Internet communication, available to virtually anyone with an E-mail account. Mailing lists are to Java-enhanced web communities what surface roads are to freeways: they get you where you want to be but not as quickly and with less stress. Mailing lists can be served by a variety of free programs such as ListProc, Majordomo, SmartList, and LISTSERV. Schwartz covers them all in detail, with discussions of moderation, digests, archives, administration, and maintenance. Nothing fancy here, just accurate information in a well-written book. For all collections.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (April 7, 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 290 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 156592259X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1565922594
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 0.77 x 9.19 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,696,871 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #270 in Email Administration
- #292 in E-mail (Books)
- #889 in Software Design Tools

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Alan Schwartz

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I'm the Michael Reese Endowed Professor of Medical Education and Research Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I study and teach about how physicians and patients make decisions, and how medical decisions can be improved. I am also Editor-in-Chief of the journals Medical Decision Making and Medical Decision Making Policy & Practice from 2013-2017.

In a past life, I'm was Unix systems administration/security consultant, and the former maintainer of PennMUSH, a software package for running text-based virtual worlds.

In both lives, I've had the great good fortune to have a wonderful family, including a young Irish water spaniel, and many friends (including the online ones around the world). In my spare time, I enjoy latin dancing, contract bridge, knitting, fine dining and mixology, and, of course, reading.

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Essential for Majordomo list administrators

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2001

Verified Purchase

I don't know about the other MLMs described in this book, but if you must administer a Majordomo mailing list, this book is essential. You should also subscribe to the majordomo users list and the list moderator's list (if that applies to you) at GreatCircle.com too, but for having the information you need about how to set up the config files and the users etc for generating digests and so on, this book is quite useful. However, it has some shortcomings - not much information about setting up web archives, or dealing with MIME, etc. And there is nothing at all about Mailman, the other heavyweight mailing list manager. Perhaps an update is due that covers Mailman?

2 people found this helpful

Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2013

Verified Purchase

I purchased this book from to different vendors, received the first in 3 days, however, this company took 3 weeks. Slow service.

Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2001

I bought this book because I needed to familiarize myself with ListProc, Listserve and Majordomo, all 3 of which are used at my University. I got just what I needed. This book covers everything you need to know about these, plus it has some extras which help round out the book. I became convinced that SmartList was useful for my home system, and have installed it, and I also enjoyed some of the articles posted in the book.
My only coplaint about this book was the lack of clarity regarding email headers (which came up pretty often throughout). I supposed I should have read the intro chapter more closely. Still, it really wasn't hard to follow along the book. I enjoyed this book much and can't wait to see the Second Edition. :)

4 people found this helpful

Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2008

I own this book. I bought it when it first came out like I do most of the O'Reilly books. It was a great book when it came out but that was 10 years ago and in internet and open source time that is a lifetime. It's time for a new version of this book to come out to reflect all the changes and updates on the internet and to mailing list software.
I would love to see the next release cover some of the newer open source mailing software like "Mailman". Especially some of the new mailing list programs with MySQL back-ends and full web interfaces, most of which didn't exist when this book was published or not in wide use.
Unfortnately I think it is time O'Reilly phased out this book and requested a second/newer updated edition. Since mailing lists are still pretty popular these days.

One person found this helpful

Somewhat narrow

Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2000

I really hate to give what is a basically negative review to ANY O'Reilly book. However, the focus of this volume -- entirely on four free UNIX mailing list packages -- falls short in two ways: 1. With the exception of LISTSERV, it totally neglects the commercial sphere of mailing list software. Not liking commercial packages is okay; pretending they don't exist, or that there might not be excellent reasons to use one is not. I run two mid-size lists for a non-profit on a commercial web-based service (Onelist, recently become E-list) and felt the omission of this option (even if I do pay for these by including their ads) would be a disservice for anyone just getting started with mailing lists. Just as there are plenty of users for whom Windows is just fine (Linux is not for everyone -- yet), not everyone who runs mailing lists needs to use UNIX freeware. 2. I would like to have seen some sample FAQs. In my experience, running a mailing list is NOT a technical problem, it is a people problem. There is too little in the book addressing that aspect. If you are a sysadmin or ISP deciding which mailing list software you need to provide for free, and how to install it, this is the book for you.

15 people found this helpful

Great.. useful for new or more experienced list managers

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 1998

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.

16 people found this helpful

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