Pre-Installation Considerations

ListManager is a 3-tier Internet application, and requires careful planning before installing in your network. Here is a series of steps to be considered as part of the installation process. Using these steps as a checklist before installing ListManager will ensure the best possibility for a smooth installation.

SMTP Routing

For each site, you may wish to set up distinct domain names (e.g. lists.example.com). You’ll need to have an MX record created for each distinct hostname that routes incoming email to ListManager (e.g., bounces, unsubscribes, list postings, etc)

You may also wish to have a distinct URL for the web server that is used for handling opens, clickthroughs, clickstreams, action tags, etc. You will need a DNS A record which points to the IP address of the ListManager web server you have provided for recipient interaction (which may be distinct from the ListManager webserver you are using for administrative purposes)

Webserver

ListManager provides its own proprietary webserver, and it is required to use and configure ListManager.

Apache and IIS are not required and cannot be used instead of the provided web server.

You may wish to set up a stripped down version of the web server in your DMZ for handling interactions with the public, and keep the full administrative version of the webserver behind your firewall for internal use.

Network Architecture and Firewall Issues

ListManager has a number of TCP and UDP connections it establishes and for which it acts as a server.

How are you planning to route SMTP, DNS an traffic in-and-out of ListManager? Are you going to have ListManager talk directly to the Internet, or have it relay email through another server?

Database Preparation

ListManager uses your database to contain the data it needs to send and receive mail.

Before installing ListManager, you'll need to install the client tools on the system on which ListManager is going to be installed. ListManager will need to use the libraries provided by the client tools for database connectivity

Next, create the database (user/schema for Oracle) for ListManager to use.

Make sure you can connect from the ListManager host machine to the database using the client tools (Enterprise Manager or Query Analyzer for MSSQL, SQL*PLUS for Oracle, psql for Postgres).

Character sets may be an issue (especially for Oracle). We support single byte character sets (such as ISO8859P1 (or equivalent) Western European encoding). If you use UTF-8 (or another multi-byte character set) as your base character set, you risk corruption of you messages and other data. Please see the user manual for the proper environment variable settings to use with ListManager.

Mail Server

Routing mail to your internal mail servers can require some tuning of ListManager. ListManager typically performs its own DNS resolution, starting with the root name servers and top-level domain (TLD) name servers. When it tries to resolve your internal email addresses, it will try to connect to the outside IP address of your corporate mail server, which may be blocked by your firewall. Add an MX entry to the DNS bypass area of ListManager to route mail to the internal IP address (Utilities: Administration: Server: Server Settings: DNS Bypass).

Integration of ListManager with Existing Processes

How are you currently sending mailings and maintaining a database of customers? How will you integrate ListManager into this environment? This Manual contains details at the database level for how we maintain data; it may be worth consulting with the Lyris technical staff to clarify details. Also, how your current mailings map onto our list and segmentation capabilities may need to be clarified.