I guess that there is a separate list for
questions about SmartList. I'll subscribe to
that (once I find the address) and possibly
repost this question there.
However I'd like to ask this here anyway.
I've just started my first general discussion
mailing list.
All of the mailing lists that that I've configured
under SmartList before were of the "Announcements"
sort -- and most of them were configured for people
to subscribe via a web page. Those are exception
easy to create under SmartList -- just delink
~$listman/$listdir/accept from ~$listman/$listdir/dist
(where $listman is the list manager's account and
$listdir is the name of the list). Then you just
put the mail addresses of all the people who are
allowed to post announcements to the accept file
and let your CGI script add the names to the
dist file (after checking the reject list, of course).
My list does seem to be working but I have two
gripes. The first was that it didn't seem to accept
subscriptions requests if the body was empty
and the subject just said "subscribe." I hacked in
a recipe that seemed to solve that.
Now it doesn't seem to accept subscribe requests where
the subject is blank and the body contains the
subscribe request. I thought I hacked that it --
and it worked from my test account on the local host
but I'm still getting subscribe requests diverted
to me.
One other problem: It seems that some people need to
subscribe to an address that differs (usually only
slightly) from their real address. They use the
syntax:
subscribe
other(_dot_)address(_at_)different(_dot_)host(_dot_)intheirdomain
SmartList seems to bounce those to me as well.
So far I've simply cut the requests and pasted
the addresses directly into the 'dist' file.
I'm sure that will work -- but they won't receive
the initial "Welcome to the list" message and
it'll clearly get to be tiresome.
More importantly I'd like to use something like
Majordomo's optional verification routine. That
sends a message to the new subscriber with a
randomly generated authorization string -- and
requires them to verify their acceptance of the
subscription request by simply replying to the
auto response.
This sounds reasonably easy to do in procmail --
but I'd sure like to just use someone else's
recipes for it rather than writing, testing and
debugging the thing myself.
So, the questions are:
1. is there a tested patch to SmartList
that handles subscribe and unsubscribe
requests on the subject *and* in the body?
2. is there a tested set of recipes to
implement a request verification subsystem
to SmartList.
Thanks in advance for any responses. If the answer
to either or both of these is "no" or "not that we know
of" I'd like to hear suggestions about how to implement
and test these options and how to get them rolled into
the main SmartList distribution.
Jim Dennis,
Starshine Technical Services