[Mailman-Users] Upgrade mailman-2.1.4 to mailman-2.1.7

[Christopher Adams]

Thanks, Mark. I was aware that list-specific templates could be set up
and I guess I didn't think about the effect of upgrades on them.
As I understand the FAQ, Mailman will look for the templates
first in the list specific directory, and if it doesn't exist, in the
base template directory. We host over 500 lists. Most list owners do not
modify their list information template. In order for most of the lists
to reflect the information that I want, I edited the base template. If a 
list owner has a list specific template,  it will override whatever 
changes I make in the base template.

It looks like, until you actually go to the list information page in the
list admin page and make edits, it uses the base template listinfo.html.
Once you have edited the list-specific listinfo page, it uses the base
template. Even adding the description in the General Options doesn't
create the /lists/<language>/ directory. It still uses the base template
until you go to the page and edit it.

It would be nice if there were specific parts of the listinfo.html page 
that could not be changed by list owners. As it is, it seems that my 
changing the base template listinfo.html is useless for several reasons. 
One, it is overridden when an update takes place and two, it is 
overridden as soon as the list-specific page is edited, which occurs 
with every one of our lists. The only use for the customized base 
template is if list owners don't make any edits to the list info page.



Christopher Adams
Library Systems Analyst
Oregon State Library
503-378-5031
503-932-1004 (general support line)
chris.a.adams at state.or.us


Mark Sapiro wrote:
> Christopher Adams wrote:
> 
> 
>>One thing to keep in mind when upgrading Mailman is that some customized 
>>templates will be overwritten. The significant ones I can think of are 
>>listinfo.html and newlist.txt. So, I always at minimum the templates 
>>directory and copy over the files after the upgrade.
> 
> 
> This is true if you edit the base template in templates/<lang>/, but
> you should never do that. If you install edited templates as described
> in
> <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq04.048.htp>,
> they will not be overwritten during an upgrade.
> 
> Note however that occasionally, base templates need to be modified to
> accommodate some other change, so if you have custom templates, it is
> a good idea to compare them to the base after an upgrade to make sure
> that the only differences are your own changes.
> 
> In this case, there is an easily overlooked change to private.html for
> 2.1.7 that removes the trailing slash from the post URL in the
> template to accommodate the fix for bug 1080943.
>