Guidelines for Local Church Mailing List Management

Understanding Mailing Lists, how to set them up, and how to manage members and moderators

Summary

We want local church IT helpers and local church leaders to be confident to:

  • set up their own Mailing list systems;
  • include new members in mailing lists; and
  • adjust moderators for various mailing lists.

Understanding Mailing lists

The advantages of Mailing lists

Managing users and lists

Create a new user account

  1. Request it@vision100.org to add you as a user.
  2. Go to http://vision100.org/wws.
  3. Click 'First login?' on the left hand side.
  4. Fill in your email address to get a password sent to you.

Creating a new list

  1. Click on 'Create List'
  2. In 'List Name' type the name of the list. This will appear before @ in the email address, eg. committee@vision100.org - the list name would be 'committee'.
  3. Choose list type.
  4. For contact lists, where anyone can communicate with the people on the list, select 'Hotline'.
  5. For team lists, where they are for communication between committee members, select 'Discussion list'.
  6. For announcements lists, where only church leaders and those who are approved, select 'Newsletter'.
  7. For subject, type: a basic description of the group/team, eg 'Finance Committee'.
  8. For topic select, the most relevant sub-category.
  9. For description, type a basic description of this list.
  10. Click 'Create List'
  11. Select 'Admin' in the left hand bar.
  12. Select 'Manage subscribers'.
  13. Follow 'Adding members to mailing lists' procedure (below). Note: if migrating lists from other mailing list programs, send an email to it@vision100.org requesting that the old mailing list be deleted and an alias be set up which forwards messages to this new mailing list.

Adding members to mailing lists

  1. Click on the 'admin' button next to the mailing list you wish to edit.
  2. Click on that and you should get Manage Subscribers down the left hand side.
  3. On that screen, click "Multiple add", upon which a template screen shows you how to add multiple people. Enter one person on each line as shown (email address first, then space then their name)
  4. Click "quiet" before clicking add subscribers so that it doesn't send them a welcome message about the list.

Adding people to be moderators

  1. To add people as list owners, so that they can moderate emails, select 'admin' for that list
  2. Select 'Edit list config' under 'Admin' in the left hand sidebar
  3. Select 'List Definition'
  4. Type in their name and email address under Owner
  5. Select 'Update'
  6. Ask them to go to the mailing list URL.
  7. Ask them to select 'First Login' under the login box
  8. They will be sent an email address with a password to login