Utilities: List Settings: Discussion Forum Interface: Message Reading

List Visibility

Defines whether or not this list is accessible in the ListManager discussion forum interface. The options are:

List is Visible (default)

The list is visible in the discussion forum interface if a user clicks "All Forums."

List is Hidden but Accessible if the List Name is Known

The list is invisible in the discussion forum interface if a user clicks "All Forums", but may be accessed directly via URL. Example:

http://lists.example.com/read/?forum=hidden

List is Inaccessible

The list is not accessible in the discussion forum interface by users.

A hidden or inaccessible mailing list does not appear in the discussion forum interface menus and does not appear in the "lists" email command.

Allow Visitors to Read Archives

Defines whether to allow visitors to visit your mailing list and read your archives. Allowing visitors means that the discussion forum interface will allow non-members to read and search the past mailings on your list. They will also be able to get information about your mailing list. A visitor cannot contribute to a mailing list, and cannot receive mailing list contributions via email. By default, this feature is set to "No."

Allowing visitors is often a good way for prospective members to get a taste of what a mailing list is about. They will be able to read past postings to see if the mailing list interests them. If it does, they can apply for membership.

Allowing visitors is also useful for specialized mailing lists, where the information is not confidential, but you do not want just anyone joining. For example, a mailing list discussing Internal Telecommunications standards would want outsiders to be able to read the discussion but, you may want the mailing list to be Private, so that only members of the standards committee can belong to the group. See Utilities: List Settings: New Subscriber Policy: Security for more information on making a private list.

Enable Archive Searching

This option determines whether archived messages are full text indexed and thus text-searchable. By default, this feature is set to Yes.

If you do fully allow text indexing of the archives, members are able to perform very fast word searches of the archives of your mailing list. However, the full text index does consume a great deal of space and may not be applicable to all mailing lists.

If enabled, ListManager removes all the punctuation and numbers, and creates an index based on the remaining individual words. Numbers are not indexed.

A word is anything over 3 characters and up to 30 characters.

ListManager does not index HTML code or attachments. If a message is received in multipart, only the text is indexed. If a message is received with only HTML, the HTML is converted to text and then indexed.

Indexing does not slow down other ListManager processes because it has the lowest priority. Anything else ListManager needs to do, like sending messages, gets done first, interrupting the message indexing. When the ListManager server is completely idle and has nothing else to do, the indexing resumes.

Make Available as a Newsgroup?

This setting determines whether this mailing list will be available as a newsgroup. By default this setting is set to No.

ListManager is capable of feeding your mailing list as a secure, private newsgroup.

If your users have Netscape or Internet Explorer 4 (or newer) they can access the newsgroup with the URL news://server-name/listname. Alternatively, they can get a list of mailing lists and choose the lists they want to use by going to news://server-name. The "server-name" is the Internet machine name of the machine running ListManager, typically the same machine name users receive email from.

If your users do not have Netscape or Internet Explorer 4 (or newer) they can access your group by defining your ListManager as their default Newsgroup server. For example, Forte "Agent" and Internet Explorer 3 use this method.

Note: ListManager implements all the same security for newsgroups as apply to mailing lists. Thus, if your list is set to "allow visitors", then non-members will be able to read your newsgroup without joining. If your list is set to not allow visitors, only members will be allowed to read.

If a user is using Netscape and they try to access a group which does not allow visitors, Netscape will automatically prompt the user for their name (which is their email address) and their password (if they have one). ListManager will then determine if they are a valid user and if they are allowed to read the group. If they are not, they will not get any further access to the group. If they are, ListManager will determine for which groups this name/password combination is valid and allow them access to these groups. If they try to access a group they are not authenticated for, Netscape will again prompt them for a name and password.

Most news browsers do not ask for a name or password as needed, but rather ask for this information as part of the static configuration of the news browser. Agent and Internet Explorer work this way. If they are using one of these browsers, they will need to enter their email address as their newsgroup name and their list password into their news browser, which will allow them access.

One problem with these browsers is that if the user has different passwords on different lists, ListManager will only let the user into the lists for which their name/password combination is valid. Netscape is the only browser we know of which will ask for name/passwords as needed. We recommend that most users use Netscape for accessing ListManager newsgroups, as this is currently the only Newsgroup browser that supports the latest security, multi-server and full text searching features in the NNTP protocol.

ListManager also allows posting via a news browser. Postings via news browsers are treated exactly as if they came in via email. They are subject to all the same moderation, membership and security requirements that normal email is subject to. If a posting via a news browser is rejected, the poster will receive notification of this via an email message.

ListManager also supports Newsgroup full text searching. At current time, only Netscape supports this feature. To use it, right-click on the newsgroup name, and choose "search". You will be able to build a complex boolean search with multiple terms and NOT terms as well. ListManager will execute your search extremely quickly, thanks to its full text index.

NOTE ListManager includes a demonstration version of the newsgroups support. Long messages will be truncated and each message viewed through the Newsgroups interface will have a disclaimer footer appended to it. If you decide that you want to have the full ListManager newsgroups support, you can upgrade to include this feature. Contact your sales representative at sales@lyris.com for more information.

More

1. Utilities: List Settings: Discussion Forum Interface

1. Utilities: List Settings: Discussion Forum Interface: Message Reading

2. Utilities: List Settings: Discussion Forum Interface: New Subscriber Requirements

3. Utilities: List Settings: Discussion Forum Interface: Information About Your List: General