[Mailman-Users] help!

[Jon Carnes]

On Sat, 2003-12-20 at 19:08, John Bostrom wrote:
> I desperately and immediately need the capability to send email to a
> database of about 3000 people, all of whom are true subscribers to our list.
> We're a small office running Windows XP, with no network or server beyond
> minimal disk space on a subscribed ISP server. I'm basically a former
> database programmer turned web developer, and though I'm a good programmer
> and a quick study, I have almost no php, perl, or other relevant mail list
> coding experience. I've studied phplist and mailman and mailman looks
> slightly less daunting, but I have to be able to install the package and get
> it running in the next two days.
>     Above all, I need something that can work with directly with our
> existing Access donor database, using the existing name and email fields,
> easily and smoothly converting, importing, and updating, so I don't wind up
> having to spend a lot of time sorting out duplications and errors between
> the database and the mailing list.
>     Can someone please help me with this?
> JB

Well unless your ISP has this service up and running then look
elsewhere.  Mailman requires you to have your own mail server up and
running - and it is meant to be installed on a Linux or unix-like
server.

There are several Mail-list ISP's that run Mailman and would be glad to
host the mailing lists for you.  If you like, I can recommend one of two
of them to you (I do support for them). 

Mailman has some nice integration tools, but most of them use text files
for synchronizing the lists.  If you use a hosted solution then you'll
end up using the web-interfaces (or some ftp scripts) to maintain the
lists with your database.  It won't be hard to setup, but it won't be
totally automated.

Good Luck - Jon Carnes