[Techtalk] Alternative ways to implement a mailing list...

[Lucia Sanchez]

Kathryn Andersen wrote:
> On Sun, May 28, 2006 at 10:28:07AM +0200, Jason Landry wrote:
> 
>>Kathryn Andersen <kat_lists at katspace.homelinux.org>
>>
>>Yup Kat, that's pretty much the option domain here; do it myself or
>>hosting. If I have to go "all the way" and run my own server -- looks
>>likely -- my ISP appears "friendly" in this regard; I'm pretty sure --
>>if I read correctly -- that they handle the DNS end as well.
>>
>>In this "ideal" scenario, I would run the website from 1&1 (3 nines
>>uptime, tons of bandwidth, etc.) and Mailman on my Fedora box at home.
> 
> 
> Is it possible to run mail on one machine and web-service on another?
> Well, I guess you could if you somehow set up the DNS to have the web
> stuff go to www.straslug.org (which would be your webhost machine)
> and mail to go to mail.straslug.org or something like that.
> That's a bit more complicated than I've had to deal with myself (I have
> it so that everything for katspace.org goes to my own machine, mail
> AND website.)
> 

It's actually very easy to do, and the obvious answer if you have access
to a different machine that can handle mail.

When you set up a domain's DNS you have to make an MX record, saying
'who' (which machine) handles you mail.  This will usually be
mail.yourdomain.com and then it's up to you whether this is the same
machine as the one you webpages are hosted or another.

It also has added benefits, even if it's the same machine, since you can
configure your webserver to set it's homepage to (for example) Mailman's
general listinfo page if you are accessing http://mail.yourdomain.com
(or make it require SSL), or something completely different if it's
http://yourdomain.com.

Then as far as the mail server goes (the mail.yourdomain.com machine)
all you have to do is to configure it to accept mail to *@yourdomain.com
and you can even set up subdomains for mailing lists (such as
mailinglist at lists.yourdomain.com, etc).

Plus, there's the added benefit of the learning experience if you set up
everything by yourself ;-)  I would say go for it.

-- 
Lu.

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 I will live forever or die trying.
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