1. maillist server in eu (was RE: missing posts???)
Robert Craig wrote:
> It would be fairly straightforward to set up a mailing list server,
> written in Euphoria, and running on RapidEuphoria.com.
> I have all the technical knowledge needed to do it, and the
> "hacker" in me wants to do it. However the business person
> in me sees the following problems:
>
> * a month to get a crude version set up,
> with Web interface, e-mail delivery, digests etc.
>
> * another month to polish it
>
> * ongoing maintenance, trouble-shooting and tweaking, forever
>
> * addr.com (my Web hosting company) might not be any more
> reliable than Topica at pumping out e-mails to 380 people, 50 times per
> day
> addr.com does crash sometimes, and the mail server has died at
> other times
>
> * I might have to pay addr extra $ per month
> because of the increased bandwidth I'd be using.
>
> * Euphoria gets some exposure by being in the Topica index
>
> * Topica might get better. Yesterday, some messages were taking hours
> to get through, but today most messages are only taking a few minutes
By this ... am I assuming if someone else was to write a maillist
server in Euphoria you would host it????
As you say it's actually a huge job when you start talking about
web interfaces and digests etc ... it would be an interesting
project though.
I'd be interested in being part of a team to produce such a software
package ... anyone (with hopefully some web or email experience)
interested?
Regards,
Ray Smith
http://rays-web.com
2. Re: maillist server in eu (was RE: missing posts???)
Ray Smith writes:
> Is another alternative to use existing mail server software and host it??
> Mailman is the defacto:
> http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/index.html
My host has majordomo installed, and allows people to use it,
but I don't know how reliable my host (addr.com) would be
compared to Topica. I'm not sure if they would allow me to install
mailman, and in any case, I don't want to be the guy who has to
trouble shoot a bunch of Python code when things crash mysteriously
and the list is shut down.
The trouble with most alternatives to Topica, is that I would
have to go to a lot of trouble, and everyone would have to resubscribe,
just to evaluate the performance of the new system. If the new system
wasn't much better, it would be a huge waste of time.
BTW, Topica is performing well today. They sent an e-mail
stating that they have resolved their problems with Hotmail.
These problems had been slowing their whole system down,
as well as causing delivery failures to Hotmail users.
A few months ago, I was serious enough about writing
a mailing list server in Euphoria, that I figured out a
staged approach to weaning ourselves off Topica.
It would allow us to move back to Topica if the performance
of addr.com proved inadequate. It would involve serving
mail to an increasing portion of the subscribers directly from addr.com,
while the rest are served by Topica. It was interesting,
but it's very hard to justify the time, and my confidence in addr
has declined since then.
Regards,
Rob Craig
Rapid Deployment Software
http://www.RapidEuphoria.com
3. Re: maillist server in eu (was RE: missing posts???)
Ray Smith,
> I've never heard of Majordomo ...
It's a fairly old and somewhat primitive mailing list system.
> does it have a web interface?
Not built-in. There's a free 3rd party interface available,
but it's not set up on my host.
> is it advertiser supported?
It's free. No ads, but I might have to pay a small amount
for the extra bandwidth required.
> I'm sure if majordomo had similar functionality as Topica many people
> would be willing to subscribe and give it a test for a few months.
> Still keep Topica up and running ... just let some of the hard code
> eu users give the alternative(s) a pounding!
> If it doesn't work out ... nothing is lost.
Today I had them set me up with a majordomo list.
I'll take a brief look at it, but at first glance it seems to have
a difficult user interface that will turn people off,
and create extra work for me. All commands have to
be typed in the body of the message you send to it,
and you have to "be careful to remove your signature lines,
or type END, or a line beginning with '-', before your signature starts,
or you will get error messages ...".
Regards,
Rob Craig
Rapid Deployment Software
http://www.RapidEuphoria.com
