Learn LISTSERV 16.5 (Old Version)

There are several ways to subscribe to a LISTSERV list.

Subscribe Through a Web Form

1. For lists that have custom subscription forms, you can just fill one out on a web page promoting the list that you want to join.

Subscribe Using the Web Interface

2. Visit the LISTSERV archives and find the list that you are interested in. On the list home page, click "Subscribe or Unsubscribe" under Options in the sidebar.

Subscribe from Your Inbox

3. Send a SUBSCRIBE command to LISTSERV on the site that hosts the list that you are interested in. Include the list name that you would like to join and your full name.

4. You can also send a blank email message to the list's subscribe address. The subscribe address has the following format: LISTNAME-SUBSCRIBE-REQUEST@SAMPLEHOSTNAME.COM.

5. Every mailing list has a list owner, and you can request to be added to the list manually as well. You can reach the list owner at: LISTNAME-REQUEST@SAMPLEHOSTNAME.COM.

Tip: You will often find the LISTSERV web interface at URLs, such as LISTSERV.SAMPLEHOSTNAME.COM or LISTS.SAMPLEHOSTNAME.COM.

There are several ways to unsubscribe from a LISTSERV list.

Unsubscribe Directly from the Email

1. Most email lists are configured to include an unsubscribe link at the end of each message. To leave the list, simply click on this link.

Unsubscribe Using the Web Interface

2. Visit the home page of the list to which you are subscribed. Then click "Subscribe or Unsubscribe" under Options in the sidebar.

Unsubscribe from Your Inbox

3. Send an UNSUBSCRIBE command to LISTSERV on the site that hosts the list that you want to leave.

4. You can also send a blank email message to the list's unsubscribe address. The unsubscribe address has the following format: LISTNAME-SIGNOFF-REQUEST@SAMPLEHOSTNAME.COM.

5. You can request to be removed from the list manually by contacting the list owner. You can reach the list owner at: LISTNAME-REQUEST@SAMPLEHOSTNAME.COM.

Note: UNSUBSCRIBE is a synonym for SIGNOFF.

Use the web interface and go to either the main archive page or the list home page and click "Get Password" under Options.

Then fill out the registration form with your email address and your desired password. Make sure to enter the email address that you used to subscribe to the list so that you can access password-protected archives.

After you have submitted the form, you will receieve an email with a confirmation link. Simply click on this link to activate your new password.

If you already have a LISTSERV password but cannot remember it, this procedure will replace your existing password with a new one.

Go to the LISTSERV home page or archive index. You will see all the public email lists on the server. Then click on "Log In" either in the top navigation bar or the sidebar under Options (first you'll need to set up your password, see above). After you have logged in, you can use the web interface to browse and search password-protected archives, manage all of your subscriptions and settings, and post messages to the list.

For lists that have been configured as discussion groups, all you need to do is to reply to the list address in order for your message to be distributed to all subscribers.

You can do this directly from your inbox.

You can also use the web interface.

When you're browsing the archives and click to reply to an existing message, just make sure that the "To the List" checkbox is selected on the message posting screen.

If you're replying from your inbox, make sure that the "To" field contains the email address of the sender rather than the list address. If you include the list address, then your reply will be distributed to all subscribers of the list.

You can also use the web interface.

When you're browsing the archives and click to reply to an existing message, just make sure that the "To the Poster" checkbox is selected on the message posting screen.

Log in to the web interface and click "Change Password" under Options.

Then fill out the change password form with your email address, your old password and a new password.

If you can't log in to the web interface because you don't remember your current LISTSERV password, follow the steps to reset your LISTSERV password instead.

If you are authorized to post messages to a LISTSERV list, all you need to do is to send an email to the list address in order for your message to be distributed to the list.

You can do this directly from your inbox.

You can also use the web interface.

First, log in and head to the Subscriber's Corner. From there, click "Post" next to the name of the list to which you want to post a message.

You can now type in and send your message directly from the posting screen.

Log in and go to the Subscriber's Corner. From there, click "Settings" next to the list name.

On the subscription settings screen, simply change your email address in the text box and click "Update Options".

After this, a confirmation email will be sent to your email address as a security measure. Simply click on the confirmation link in the email to confirm the change in your email address.

Log in and go to the Subscriber's Corner. From there, click "Settings" next to the list name.

On the subscription settings screen, check the "Mail delivery disabled temporarily" or "NOMAIL" box and click "Update Options".

Log in and go to the Subscriber's Corner. From there, click "Settings" next to the list name.

On the subscription settings screen, uncheck the "Mail delivery disabled temporarily" or "NOMAIL" box and click "Update Options".

Open any email from the list and copy the host name after the @-sign in the sender name into your web browser. You'll be able to access the list and other public lists on that site.

From the LISTSERV home page, simply click on the name of the list in the table or use the search function to find unlisted or confidential lists.

Note that you can't view archives of private lists that you're not subscribed to. Some lists also require you to log in to access the archives.

From the list's home page, go to "Options" on the right and click on "Search Archives". You can also enter your keywords directly into the search box.

Only list owners and administrators are able to delete messages from the archives. Email the list owner to request the deletion. List owners can normally be reached at: LISTNAME-REQUEST@SAMPLEHOSTNAME.COM. The list's home page may also have additional contact details.

Go to CataList, where you'll see links to browse and search more than 50,000 public LISTSERV lists by keyword, host country or number of subscribers.

CataList can be found at:
http://www.lsoft.com/catalist.html

If you know the host name of the LISTSERV site, you can also find all public lists on the LISTSERV home page together with a description of each list.

Follow these simple email guidelines and help make email groups productive and enjoyable for every subscriber:

• Do not use an email group for solicitation, promotion or sales of commercial products or services
• Double-check the addresses in the "To" field before sending an email message
• Include your name and email address in a message to the list for ease of response
• Be descriptive and clear in the subject line
• Always remember that you're communicating with human beings, not computers, who require respect and consideration
• Avoid using a LISTSERV list as a personal blog or chat room
• Only send messages to the list that include relevant information that may benefit the group
• Treat the virtual space of a LISTSERV email group as a professional setting
• Familiarize yourself with the features, settings, options and other capabilities of the LISTSERV web interface and your email client

First, take the list address and add -REQUEST after the list name. Enter this in the "To" field of your email client, type your messages and send.

All non-quiet list owners will receive messages sent to the list's -REQUEST address.

Log in to the web interface and go to the Subscriber's Corner. Then click "Settings" next to the list name.

You can then choose between three types of digests – plain text, MIME or HTML. Digests are a collection of individual messages and are usually sent out once per day or week, depending on the amount of postings that a list receives. These will give your inbox a break if you don't want to receive each individual posting immediately as it comes in.

To set up the web interface to your exact liking, log in to the LISTSERV web interface and click "Preferences" in the main navigation bar.

From here you can hide or show options depending on your expertise level, select your default start page and change your archive sorting and reporting preferences.

Go to the LISTSERV home page or archive index. Then click on "Log In" either in the top navigation bar or the sidebar under Options.

If you have list owner privileges, a "List Management" menu will appear in the top navigation bar after you have logged in.

From the pulldown menu, you can configure your list, add and delete subscribers, generate reports of the lists that you own or your subscribers and customize your list home page and administrative messages.

From the "List Management" menu, select "List Configuration" and "Alphabetic Keyword List".

The keyword that determines who is allowed to post to the list is called "Send". Click on this link in the table to open a screen showing all of the options.

For announcement lists, the most common options are "Owner", which only allows the list owners to post to the list, and "Editor", which only allows email addresses defined by the "Editor" keyword to post to the list. You can also enter the email addresses of additional permitted posters in the "Special" box.

Make sure that the "Confirm" box is checked as a security measure to prevent people from posting to the list by spoofing the email address of a legitimate sender. This option requires the sender to click on a link in a confirmation email before the message is distributed to the list.

To send an HTML newsletter to a LISTSERV list, go to the list home page and log in. Then click on "Newsletter Templates" under Options in the sidebar.

While the regular message posting interface can also be used to send HTML newsletters, the newsletter template system requires no HTML coding and allows you to create a newsletter just by filling in placeholders.

Then select the template that you want to use by clicking on one of the thumbnails, followed by "Next".

On the newsletter content screen, type in your subject line and enter the number of news and feature items that you want to include. Then simply click on the placeholder names to fill in your content and insert your images. A text alternative version is created automatically.

Before distribution, you can send test messages to yourself and your colleagues to make sure that everything looks as expected. Finally, choose whether to deliver the newsletter right away or schedule the delivery at a predefined date and time.

From the "List Management" menu, select "List Configuration", followed by "Alphabetic Keyword List" and click on the "Send" keyword to open a screen showing all of the options.

For discussion groups, the most common options are "Public", which allows anyone to post to the list, and "Private", which means that you need to be subscribed in order to post to the list.

If you have a discussion group that allows anyone to post to the list, make sure that the "Confirm" and "Only Non-Members Confirm" boxes are checked. This will allow subscribers to post freely but requires non-subscribers to confirm their postings before they are distributed to the list in order to cut down on potential spam.

From the "List Management" menu, select "List Configuration", followed by "Alphabetic Keyword List" and click on the "Editor" keyword. Enter the email address of the editor for the list. This is usually but not always the same as the list owner.

If you want to define additional moderators, use the "Moderator" keyword. For lists with multiple moderators, you can select either "All", which means that all moderators receive notifications of messages awaiting moderation or "Round-Robin", which means that the load is shared among the list of moderators.

Finally, set the "Send" keyword to "Editor". The "Confirm" and "Hold" boxes should also be checked. To cut down on potential spam ending up in the moderation queue, select "Non-Members and Editors" under "Confirm Applies To". This will require non-subscribers to confirm their postings before they are forwarded to the moderators for approval.

From the "List Management" menu, select "List Configuration" and "List Configuration Wizard".

Then enter two to three sentences describing the purpose of the list and click "Save". The description will be automatically included on the list home page.

CataList is the official catalog of public LISTSERV lists. To add an HTML description, use the "List Management" menu, select "List Configuration" and "List Configuration Wizard".

Then enter or copy and paste the HTML code describing the purpose of the list into the text box and click "Save". The HTML description will also be used for the hovering information boxes in the list archives.

Note that your list needs to be configured "Confidential= No" in order for the list information to appear in CataList. The server must also run in "Tableless Mode" or "Networked Mode". Contact your server administrator for more information about the server's runmode.

If you are running LISTSERV 16.5 or later, you can add a privacy policy to your list's home page by editing a single template. From the "List Management" menu, select "Customization" and "Web Templates".

Use the search box to locate a template named "PRIVACY-POLICY".

Then enter or copy and paste your privacy policy into the text box in HTML format and click "Save".

A link to your privacy policy will now be automatically included on your list home page.

LISTSERV offers many types of customizable information messages. To create or edit them, use the "List Management" menu, and select "Customization" followed by "Mail Templates".

Then select "Frequently Modified Templates" from the pulldown menu to narrow the list down to the most common messages.

From the menu, you can select the "WELCOME" template to add a welcome message to new subscribers or the "FAREWELL" template to add a farewell message to departing subscribers.

Then simply enter or copy and paste your message into the text box and click "Save".

Bottom banners are useful for including unsubscribe instructions, privacy policies or other legal disclaimers. To create a bottom banner, use the "List Management" menu, and select "Customization" followed by "Mail Templates".

Then select "Top and Bottom Banners" from the pulldown menu to narrow the list of available templates.

There are two bottom banners, one for HTML messages and another one for plain text messages. Choose the one that you want to edit and enter or copy and paste your bottom banner into the text box. The automatic bottom banner will now be appended to each message posted to the list.

From the "List Management" menu, select "List Configuration" and "Alphabetic Keyword List".

The keyword that controls everything related to the list archives is called "Notebook". Click on this link in the table to open a screen showing all of the options.

Use the "Access Level" pulldown menu to choose who should be able to view the list archives. The most common options are "Public", which makes the archives available to everyone, and "Private", which makes them only available to subscribers of the list. You can also select other options, for example "Owner", which restricts access to the list owner only.

There are two ways to add a LISTSERV subscribe and unsubscribe form to your website. You can either take advantage of the subscription management page of the LISTSERV web interface or you can write a script that sends email to the subscribe and unsubscribe addresses of the list.

Using the Web Interface

The easiest method is to take advantage of the subscription management page of the LISTSERV web interface. You would simply create a form on your website that submits data to this page:

<form action="http://SAMPLEHOSTNAME.COM/scripts/wa.exe" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="SUBED2" value="LISTNAME" />
<input type="hidden" name="A" value="1" />
<input type="text" name="p" placeholder="Name" />
<input type="text" name="s" placeholder="Email Address" />
<input type="submit" name="b" value="Subscribe" />
<input type="submit" name="a" value="Unsubscribe" />
</form>

Just replace LISTNAME with the name of your list and SAMPLEHOSTNAME.COM with the URL to the LISTSERV web interface.

Using the List's Subscribe and Unsubscribe Addresses

If you want a fully self-contained subscription mechanism, you can use the list's subscribe and unsubscribe addresses instead. Every LISTSERV list has two dedicated addresses that allow you to either subscribe or unsubscribe by sending an email to the appropriate address.

The subscribe address has the following format:
LISTNAME-SUBSCRIBE-REQUEST@SAMPLEHOSTNAME.COM.

The unsubscribe address has the following format:
LISTNAME-SIGNOFF-REQUEST@SAMPLEHOSTNAME.COM.

You can then use a similar form as above, but instead of submitting the data to the LISTSERV web interface, you would submit it to a custom script that you have programmed (for example, using PHP or ASP) that sends an email message to the above subscription addresses with the name and email address inserted in the "From" email header. The email message can be otherwise blank.

This method provides maximum flexibility but does require some programming knowledge.

From the "List Management" menu, click on "Subscriber Management".

Then select the list that you want to add subscribers to and click on the "Bulk Operations" tab.

From here you can do several types of bulk additions and deletions of subscribers.

To add subscribers, simply create a plain text file containing the email addresses and names of the subscribers, one address per line:

james@example.com James Black
jenny@example.com Jenny Brown
jonathan@example.com Jonathan Gray
jill@example.com Jill Green
john@example.com John White

Make sure that the "Add" option is selected. Then upload the file containing your subscribers and click "Import".

Note that when you're using these bulk operations, subscribers are not notified that they have been added or deleted.

From the "List Management" menu, select "List Reports" and "Subscriber Reports".

Then select the email list that you are interested in from the pulldown menu.

A report will be generated with a list of all of your subscribers, including their subscription settings.

From the "List Management" menu, select "List Reports" and "Subscriber Reports".

Then select the email list that you want to work with from the pulldown menu.

A report will be generated with a list of all of your subscribers, including their subscription settings.

Use the checkboxes to select the subscribers that you want to delete from the list, and click the "Delete Selected Subscribers" button.

Use the "Send Email Notification of Changes" checkbox if you want to send an automatic email notifying the subscribers that they have been removed from the list.

From the "List Management" menu, select "List Configuration" and "Alphabetic Keyword List".

Click on the "Owner" keyword in the table to open a screen showing all of the list owner options.

Then simply enter the email addresses of the list owners that you want to add, one address per line, in one of the two text boxes. You can also change existing list owners. "Quiet" list owners have the same privileges as non-quiet ones, except that they don't receive any error messages or other administrative mail from LISTSERV. Note that every list must have at least one non-quiet list owner.

Digests can be useful on busy discussion lists and allow subscribers to opt to receive a collection of individual messages in a single email instead of receiving each individual posting immediately as it comes in.

To enable digests for your list, locate the "List Management" menu and then select "List Configuration" and "Alphabetic Keyword List".

Click on the "Digest" keyword in the table to open a screen showing all of the digest-related options.

Then select "Yes", followed by how often the digest should be sent out. Possible values are "Daily", "Weekly" and "Monthly". The volume of messages on your list will dictate the most logical option. You can also specific the time (daily digests), weekday (weekly digests) or day of the month (monthly digests) when the digest should be sent out.

LISTSERV offers a filtering template that allows you to enter rules to filter messages based on content.

To configure the content filter, use the "List Management" menu, and select "Customization" followed by "Mail Templates".

Use the search box to locate a template named "CONTENT_FILTER". Then simply enter the filtering rules and click "Save".

Each rule consists of a pattern and an action. The pattern allows you to check the mail headers, including sender and subject line, or the body of the message for the objectionable content that you want to filter. The action lets you specify what to do with messages that match the pattern.

For example:

ALLOW means that the message is allowed and all remaining rules are ignored. This option can be used to allow certain senders to bypass filters.

REJECT means that the message is rejected. LISTSERV sends an email to the person who posted the message with the reason for the rejection.

MODERATE means that the message is forwarded to the moderators to be manually approved or rejected.

DISCARD means that the message is discarded with no notification to the person who posted the message.

Topics provide a way to run an email list where several sub-topics are being discussed. Subscribers can then choose the topics that they are interested in and only receive email messages related to those topics.

To enable topics for your list, locate the "List Management" menu and then select "List Configuration" and "Alphabetic Keyword List".

Click on the "Topics" keyword in the table to open a screen showing all of the options.

Then simply enter the name of the topics, one topic per line, in the text box. Topic names should not contain spaces, colons, commas or special characters. Note that you can change the name of a given topic at any time, but you should never change the order of the topics. If you want to remove a topic, replace it with a comma. List owners can define up to 23 topics for a single list.

When posting messages to the list, the topic is designated in the subject line, for example: "Marketing: Meeting on Tuesday at 9 a.m.".

As opposed to topics, which offer a mechanism to discuss and subscribe to sub-topics on a single email list, sub-lists divide these discussions into separate lists, while still allowing a mechanism to communicate with all subscribers of all sub-lists by sending to the super-list.

The super-list and each sub-list are created just like any other email list. To connect them together, use the "List Management" menu and then select "List Configuration" and "Alphabetic Keyword List".

Select the list that you want to configure as the super-list, for example ALL-DEPARTMENTS, and click on the "Sub-Lists" keyword in the table to open a screen showing all of the options.

Then simply add the names of all of the lists that you want to configure as sub-lists of this super-list by entering them in the text box, one list per line.

Now each department can communicate on its dedicated list. To send an important announcement to all members of every department, for example, you can simply send a message to the ALL-DEPARTMENTS super-list, which will distribute it to the subscribers of all of the sub-lists. If someone is subscribed to multiple sub-lists, duplicates are automatically suppressed so that each person only receives one copy of the announcement.