New in Version 2.0
Summary of changes:
* New mail and dns engine.
* Performance improvements throughout.
* Lower disk space needs.
* Mail merge feature.
* Lyris List Manager extensions.
* To: address rewriting rules.
* DNS load balancing.
* Relay host load balancing.
* Option to allow Non-members to contribute.
* Easy
deleting from the mail archives.
* Limit archives by date and number.
* Improved optional error mail reports.
* User-defined To: header.
*
User-defined mail header removal.
* Command line parameters for turning off parts of Lyris List Manager.
* Option to not archive a list.
* Option to not text
index a list.
* Web interface now guides you through logical steps.
* Web interface option to send user back to your site after joining.
* Obtain a list of
members with admin "review" command.
* Ability to disable auto-hold of members.
* "quiet" option for "set" and "subscribe".
* New "end" command.
*
ftp links are hotlinked.
* SMTP receiving can be moved to another port.
Detailed Description of Changes:
New multithreaded mail engine provides extremely fast and reliable mail delivery. New built-in caching DNS resolver helps mail delivery be faster, and avoids bugs with some DNS servers. A
sophisticated in-memory indexed caching scheme improves DNS performance by 60% on average.
The performance of the Lyris List Manager server has been improved about 40% overall.
Lyris List Manager is now more efficient in the way it uses disk space. Most sites will see Lyris List Manager disk space usage drop by 50%.
New "mail merge" feature. You can now insert text anywhere in a message (header or body) which specifies that you want text substituted for each user. For instance, you can have Lyris List Manager
automatically substitute each user's email address directly in the message body. You can also use mail merge in your Lyris List Manager Documents, such as the welcome message. Lyris List Manager
uses an in-place mail substitution algorithm that makes this feature extremely fast and efficient. See How can I use the Mail merge feature?.
You can now extend Lyris List Manager with external programs. A program can be tied to an email address (with a responder), to a phrase (with action phrases) to the list manager address (lyris@...)
or to a mailing list posting. Your program can be run before or after the action, and can cause the normal Lyris List Manager actions to occur or be cancelled (for example, stop a message from being
posted). The sample Perl program "lyrext.pl" shows how extensions can be easily written. See How can I extend Lyris List Manager with my own programs?
.
To: address rewriting. You can now specify rewrite rules for changing the To: address of incoming mail, just as you can for the From: address. For example, you can rewrite mail sent to
"listservices@..." to become lyris@.... See Incoming To: Mail Rewrites.
DNS load balancing. You can now specify as many DNS servers as you like, and Lyris List Manager will automatically balance the DNS query load among them, plus keep a centralized local cache of the
results. See DNS Server.
Relay host load balancing. If you want to have Lyris List Manager send its mail through a relay host, you can now specify as many relay hosts as you want, and Lyris List Manager will automatically
load balance between them. See Relay Host.
Option in list settings to allow non-members to contribute to your mailing list. By default, Lyris List Manager only allows members to send mail to a mailing list, and rejects attempts by
non-members to send to the mailing list. This new option allows non-members to post and not be rejected. One aspect of this feature is that you can optionally use "new member moderating" to
moderate the non-member contributions, while letting the member contributions through without needing approval. See Non-Members Can Post.
You can now delete messages from the archives by using the web interface. If you are reading messages and you are a list administrator, a "delete" button appears on the bottom of the page. You can
delete groups of messages (by marking several), or individual messages. If you have full text indexing enabled for your list (which is the default), the archives are correctly de-indexed, thus
freeing up the space in the text index. See Read and Search Messages.
Option to limit the number of messages in the archives for each list. You can now specify how many days, and how many total messages should be saved in the archives for a list. For example, you
instruct Lyris List Manager to keep only the last 10 messages, one week's worth of messages, or leave the default to keep archives forever. See Archive Days.
The optional error mail reports are now much more detailed. A complete SMTP transaction log is included, allowing you to easily track down problems with member's email addresses. If a person
subscribes using the web interface and reverses the data for the name and email fields, Lyris List Manager will detect this and reverse the fields for them. See Error Mail.
You can now define the To: field for mailing list mail to be anything you like. By default, the To: is the mailing list address. For instance, the To: can now be each user's email address, by
defining To: as $subst('Recip.EmailAddr').
User-defined header removal. You can now specify individual message header lines that you want removed. You can also specify Lyris List Manager-inserted headers to be removed.
Remove Headers.
New command line parameters for turning various parts of Lyris List Manager off, such as receiving inbound mail. Run "lyris help" for a listing. See The Lyris List Manager command line
.
New list option to not archive a mailing list's messages.
New list options to not full text index a mailing list's archives. This saves disk space, and means that the archives will not be text searchable. See Archive Searching.
When first installing Lyris List Manager, or when creating a topic, or a mailing list, Lyris List Manager now guides you to the next logical step. Because first setting up a list involves several
steps (create a site, a topic, a mailing list, and an administrator), this greatly simplifies life for the user, since the next step is automatically given.
New "&return=" CGI parameter allows you to jump right to the Web Interface "join mailing list" page, and once the person has joined, they are returned back to where you specified, rather than moving
forward inside the web interface. For an example, see http://www.lyris.com/forms/lists.html. See Send the user back to a web page after Joining.
New option with the "review" command. If an administrator logs in first, with the "login" command, then the "review" command returns a list of members, along with the standard review information.
See Review.
New option to disable, on a list, the automatic "hold" feature. Normally, when a user bounces a great deal of mail sent to them, Lyris List Manager identifies the user and places their membership
status on "hold". You can now disable this feature for a particular mailing list. See Hold Users.
New "quiet" options for "subscribe" and "set" when used mean that the commands do not send a confirming message back when they worked. A reply message is only sent if the command fails. New "end"
command signifies the end of command processing for a message. See Subscribing.
Ability to move SMTP mail receiving to another port. See SMTP Port.
When reading messages on the web, ftp links in messages are now hot-linked. See View a specific message.
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