[BlueOnyx:07208] Re: Can't delete virtual sites since mailman

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Darrell,

> Michael, is there a benefit to allowing Mailman to be an option of each
> site created whether than making it a default feature?

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand that question right, Darrell.

Say you have a box with "base-mailman" support installed and there are no 
active sites on it. In that case Mailman will be running (if it's enabled 
through "Network Settings" / "Services" / "Mailman". However, the only list on 
it will be the default Mailman mailing list, which is mandatory and which 
cannot be really used as a list. It's simply used for internal administrative 
purposes of Mailman.

When you add a virtual site to the server, this site will be created with all 
the services that you enable for it (PHP, CGI, SSL and so on). But by default 
that site won't have a mailing list either. 

But you can create a mailing list (or multiple of them) which is/are 
associated with that site under "Mailing List" in the site management of that 
site.

So to create a list, click on "Site Management", choose the site in question, 
click on "Mailing lists" from the lefthand menu. That shows the existing lists 
for that site - if there are any. Click on the "Add" button to add a list.

The only mandatory fields are the "List name", which must be alphanumeric and 
all lower case.

Once the list is created, click the "edit" icon next to the list to see which 
"List Address" was assigned to the list. This is an automatically created 
email alias for your list. If your list is named "support", then the list name 
may be something like "133-support at www.yourdomain.com".

The number prefix there is ugly - I know. However: How else would one deal 
with cases where multiple siteAdmins want to create lists with the same name? 
Like "support" or "info" or therelike. Sure, one could treat this on a "first 
come, first serve" basis and if the list name is already taken, the GUI could 
say so and ask for another name instead. The old Majordomo integration handled 
it in a similar way, though. There the prefix was also automatically added.

So once your list is set up this way, you can use it. In the "Subscriber" tab 
of your list you can add local or remote subscribers to the list.

In the "Advanced" tab you can configure some of the more important settings 
and can also set a username and password for the list administrator. You will 
need that password when you access the native Mailman GUI through the "Mailman 
Admin Interface" button at the bottom of that page.

Once you have added yourself as subscriber, you can post an email to the list 
address from the subscribed email account to see if it's all working for you.

If a site is renamed, the list will be renamed as well. 

If a list is deleted, then all subscribers are removed from the list and both 
the list and its archive will be removed.

If a site is deleted and has one or more mailing lists, the lists and archives 
will also be deleted.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber