Mailing lists

[allison]

I don't fully understand mailing lists, although I see the option for Mail archives.

How can I set up my forum so that new posts are emailed to members?  For members already signed up, what will be required for them to sign up for emails?

Thanks!

[GregChapman]

allison wrote

How can I set up my forum so that new posts are emailed to members?

You can't! The individuals who wish to must subscribe themselves to a mail list. As a forum administrator you cannot force anyone to receive email copies of posts.

Note also that within a Nabble forum, it is possible to subscribe to:
• All posts in an entire forum
• All posts in a specific sub-forum
• All replies to a specific topic

To subscribe to any of these, visit the appropriate page and go to:
Options > Subscribe via email

When they do this they'll reach a screen where they can select a range of options, such as receiving a daily digest of posts or each post as it is made.

For members already signed up, what will be required for them to sign up for emails?

You need to careful with your terms. "Members" has a distinct meaning in the Nabble context. They are users of your forum who have specifically been granted that status by you as forum administrator - normally because you only want specific people posting or you want to provide a special area for premium users to which other users don't have access.

I always try to distinguish "Members" from "Users" (those in the Anyone group, literally anyone who visits your forum) and those who are "Registered" (Users who have supplied and verified their email address). Many forum a administrators talk of "Members" when they mean registered users.

I don't fully understand mailing lists, although I see the option for Mail archives.

A "Mail List" is a method of carrying on communication to a large group of people via email. There is specialist software for such things. The trouble with email is that there is no record of what took place before you joined a mail list. That is the major advantage of a forum. It allows you to see the complete history of all previous posts.

A Mail List archive is a store of messages previously posted on a mail list. Nabble provides its forum service so that mail list owners can provide a record of previous posts to new subscribers.

Be warned, it can produce a very untidy forum if you attempt to mix forum users with those who communicate via email.

Many email users reply by top-posting their response above the original post text. On a mail list, if there are many replies from many people this can produce enormous messages requiring vast amounts of scrolling on a forum, to find and distinguish the new content from vast tracts of quoted material.

It is probably best to decide decide whether you are to promote your Nabble application as forum or as a mail list with an archive provided by Nabble and not to mix the two kinds of user.