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Mirroring
External Mailing Lists (two-way)
Two-way
mailing list mirroring
Web
Crossing can receive mail from an external mailing list and archive
the incoming messages in folders and discussions. Also, Web Crossing
can use its built-in SMTP server feature to send posted messages
out to mailing list servers.
You can
also set both ways at once and generate full two-way traffic between
a Web Crossing conference folder and an external mailing list
server.
The settings
are the same as described in the incoming
mailing list and outgoing mailing list
setups - you just need to set both at once. However, if you are
not careful in the setup of your mailing list subscriber lists
you can run into a frustrating problem:
A
Problem Scenario
- A
message is posted to the web forums.
- That
message is automatically sent to the external mailing list server.
- The
mailing list server sends the message to all subscribers, including
Web Crossing itself!
- Web
Crossing checks its POP3 mailbox for new messages and receives
the incoming message and posts it the conference again. Now
two copies of the same message appear in the same discussion.
There
are two solutions to this problem. The easiest solution is to
just use the new built-in email list server feature. With
Web Crossing 4.0, there is now a very flexible built-in mailing
list server and everything is automatic. If you are anticipating
a two-way mirroring, and would like users to be able to subscribe
to any folder hierarchy as a mailing list, allow user-settable
digest times, be able to send out notifications with URLs to bring
people back into the web forums and other features like this,
you should consider using Web Crossing's built-in email list server
instead of an external email list server. You can see more details
about setting up Web Crossing's built-in email list server in
section one.
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So,
why bother using an external mailing list server since Web
Crossing has a built-in mailing list server? There are several
reasons for this:
- Perhaps
the main reason is historic. In previous versions, Web
Crossing did not have its own built-in mailing list server,
so people had to use external mailing list servers. So
for backward compatibility, this feature is preserved.
- It
is also sometimes convenient to be able to mirror an existing
mailing list, even when the mailing list exists outside
of Web Crossing. This feature allows you to provide searchable
web archives for any mailing list, any where in the world.
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Another
solution, if you want to mirror both ways using an external email
list server, is to actually maintain two mailing lists. One mailing
list contains all the subscribers including Web Crossing's POP3
mailbox address. New messages mailed in by subscribers are sent
to this mailing list.
The second
mailing list contains all the subscribers except for Web
Crossing's POP3 mailbox address. This is the mailing list that
Web Crossing sends mail to when a new message is posted to the
web.
Most
mailing lists are subscribed to by users sending a subscription
request by email to the mailing list server. In the title or the
body of the message you will typically see a command, such as
"subscribe webxharbor-talk" (the actual command differs depending
on the mailing list server you are using.)
The question,
then, is how do you get new subscribers to subscribe to both mailing
lists at the same time? The answer is to do it for them using
WCTL (Web Crossing Template
Language). An example of subscribing
members to a mailing list is available in the WCTL section.
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