View source for KB 92

===How do I run a Majordomo list?===
  Article ID: 92
  Created: Feb-15-2001

====Question or Symptoms====

    I'm new to mailing lists and would like to run one using Majordomo. Can you 
    give me some information?

====Resolution====

    Running a Majordomo mailing list is fairly easy once it's set up. You manage it
    by sending messages to majordomo. To get a Majordomo list created you'll need
    to contact the SWCP staff and let them know what you want the list name to be,
    who the owner of the list should be (their email address), and if you want a
    custom password, you can let them know that as well.
 
     The first thing you need to know is what email aliases are set up for your list.
    Suppose your list is named house-cats. To send a message to this list you'd send
    mail to house-cats@swcp.com
 
    As the owner of the house-cats mailing list there are two aliases that will reach
    you, owner-house-cats@swcp.com and house-cats-owner@swcp.com. 
 
    When you want to manage the list you'll send a message to majordomo@swcp.com and
    you'll need to refer to the list name in that message, since majordomo manages
    many different mailing lists.
 
    There is one more alias that you can use to save a little time, and that is the
    request address, for example house-cats-request@swcp.com. This alias talks to
    majordomo@swcp.com and tells it the list you're interested in is house-cats.
 
    So if you'd like to subscribe to the house-cats list you can send a message to
    majordomo@swcp.com with the following in the body of the message:
 
       subscribe house-cats
 
    or you can send a message to house-cats-request@swcp.com with the following in
    the body of the message:
 
       subscribe
 
    There are many options and ways to run a Majordomo list. These are all set in
    the configuration file for your list. To request a copy of your configuration
    file you'd send a message to majordomo@swcp.com that looked like:
 
       config house-cats my-list-password
 
    where my-list-password is the password we've given you when we set up the
    Majordomo list for you. You should receive a copy of this file when we first
    set up the Majordomo list.
 
    There are several things to be aware of with the configuration list:
    1. Lines that begin with a # are comment lines and usually give you documentation
       about configuration features.
    2. Options are set with lines that look like:
        option-name = value
       For example:
        moderate = yes
    3. Be careful with email programs that do word wrapping. Be sure you wrapping
       length is set to at least 80 characters otherwise a working configuration
       file can be made disfunctional when comment lines are wrapped. Majordomo is
       line oriented!
 
    Several common methods of setting up Majordomo lists are discussed in the next
    knowledge base article, see reference below.
 
    You may also want to consider using a Mailman list instead of Majordomo. 
    Mailman is a newer list server that's web based. If you're new to managing
    mailing lists, this would be what we'd recommend. See the URL below for more
    information.

====Related Web Resources====

====Related Knowledge Base Articles====

    Article ID: 93 -- How do I restrict posts, moderate, or set up a digest with Majordomo?
    Article ID: 106 -- How do a add or remove a user from a Majordomo list I'm moderating?
    Article ID: 107 -- How do I approve a message on a moderated Majordomo list?