University of Manchester Students' Union

Mailing Lists

Mailing lists are a good way to be able to communicate with your members, and let them talk to each other by email. Now you've got one, you probably need to know how to use it.

Firstly, people will want to subscribe to your list. There are a number of ways for them to do this -- the first involves sending a message with a subject of "subscribe" to LISTNAME-request@umu.man.ac.uk where LISTNAME is the name of your list. That will start the subscription process. The listserver then sends a confirmation (so that we know that this address does work) which should be replied to.

To unsubscribe from a list, the subject should be
unsubscribe

The above can be made easier for your users by the use of a simple webpage which requires they type in their email address and scripts do the rest.

Limiting who can post

To have a moderated mailing list, you should set the option Privacy Options -> Sender Filters -> should new list member postings be moderated? to yes. And then go to "Membership Management and change # Set everyone's moderation bit, including those members not currently visible (it's at the bottom) to "on".

You can then untick particular people who you want to be free to post.

Approving subscriptions/postings

You will be sent an email which contains a link to approve pending messages or subscriptions.