Mailing List ???

[aisling.farms]

I already have a forum in place with you but with the members I wanted to provide them with an option to sign up to receive special announcements such as something new taking place on the forum or a new admin etc. Is there something I can add as a "topic" or "subforum" for them to sign up but not have to give their email addys out to everyone who has joined the forum?

Kind of like how people subscribe to blogs and receive those new updates.

[GregChapman]

You should set up a "Special Announcements" sub-forum (call it whatever you like). Set the User Permissions for that sub-forum so only those in the "Administrator" group can post (the "Create_topic" and "Reply" permissions). Ask any members who have not subscribed to the top level of your forum to subscribe to that that sub-forum.

If you do the first two things and your members the third, they will receive receive any posts you make to that sub-forum as emails. Any email replies they make will go into a black hole and never appear on the forum. Nor will members be able to post to that sub-forum. (If members have subscribed to the entire forum and additionally subscribe to the Special Announcements sub-forum, they would receive two copies of the special announcements in their email.)

[aisling.farms]

Ok what is the mailing list extra add on then for?

[GregChapman]

If you mean what do you get when you post your URL at the Invite Subscribers Activation Request area. That allows you to get Nabble to generate emails to multiple addresses that invite the recipients to click a link to subscribe to a particular forum or sub-forum.

You can use that facility to invite absolutely anyone to subscribe, not just users of your forum. As a result it has the capacity to be used by spammers hence needs to be requested manually.

While the facility may have some benefit for you, as you suggest that your audience is primarily focussed on using a forum, it is probably better simply to encourage your users to subscribe by having a pinned post in a prominent areas of your forum and a description of that explains the benefits of subscribing to it - plus, of course, a set of posts there that give a clear indication of the emails they would receive.

[aisling.farms]

Ok great I did set up this special announcement and a "how to subscribe" but also requested to have the invite subscribers option as well! Thank you! Helped tons!