[H-GEN] Archive search

[Bruce Campbell]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
[ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]

On Fri, 25 Apr 2003, Harry Phillips wrote:

> I don't know if this has already been discussed but I can't search the
> archives.
>
> "The requested URL /humbug/search.html was not found on this server."

Yeah yeah, I'm still working on the fancy archival search (reimplementing
google in your spare time is hard ;) )

> What I was originally going to search for is Mailing list manager
> suggestions. I know Humbug uses Majordomo for it's lists, what other
> suggestions do people have? Easy of use, configuration, options, speed etc?

It depends how much you care about these options, and there are also some
that you haven't covered.  What you should be looking for is:

	Subscribers:

		(Un)Subscribing Interface:
			ease of use
			assumptions on subscriber's capabilities.
				(eg, web-only vs mail-only vs combination )

		Extra Options:
			subscriber only, no post.
			'vacation' mode
			digest mode

		Delivery:
			Timely
			delivery format (HTML vs plain text vs GIGO)

	Administrators:

		Installation:
			Dependency on particular MTAs?
			Dependency on privileged access (root)?
			Easy to read config files?
			Documentation?

		(Un)Subscribing Interface:
			ease of use
			bulk?
			CLI?

		Options:
			Bouncing mail detection?
			Overhead to implement user options.
			CLI or Web or Both?

		Delivery:
			MTA dependancy?
			Cost to run (eg: volume charging)
			Turn-around time

Now, we went through the above checklist when moving away from qmail (MTA)
and majordomo (MLM) [1], and ended up with postfix (MTA) and mailman (MLM)
[2].  Other people might end up with something completely different.

--==--
Bruce.

[1] Main reason; no-one really liked qmail, and tracking of mail through
    the logs its not easy.
[2] mailman does need a better CLI to do some more estotic things.


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