Mirroring External Mailing Lists (in) - A Non-Programmer's Guide to Web Crossing

Web Crossing provides the ability to mirror external mailing lists. Using this feature you can:

Web Crossing also has its own built-in email list server that works in cooperation with the Web Crossing database closely, allowing users to subscribe to any folder, folder hierarchy or even individual discussions. This built-in email list server can send full postings, mail notifications containing URL links back to the web and even digests at user-settable times. See section one for details on using Web Crossing's built-in email list server.

So, why bother using an external mailing list server since Web Crossing has a built-in mailing list server? There are several reasons for this:

Perhaps the main reason is historic. In previous versions, Web Crossing did not have its own built-in mailing list server, so people had to use external mailing list servers. So for backward compatibility, this feature is preserved.
It is also sometimes convenient to be able to mirror an existing mailing list, even when the mailing list exists outside of Web Crossing. This feature allows you to provide searchable web archives for any mailing list, any where in the world.

When using an external mailing list server, Web Crossing works in cooperation with the external mailing list server (such as LetterRip, ListSTAR, majordomo or any other mailing list server) as shown in figure 1.

Mail is received by the mailing list server.
Received mail is checked to see if it is for an existing mailing list and that the mail is from somebody authorized to send mail to the mailing list. After these checks, the mail is sent to all the subscribers of the designated mailing list, directly to the users' mailboxes.

One of the subscriber mailboxes is special. It will be used by Web Crossing to receive new messages for a Web Crossing folder. You designate the mailbox account name and password while editing the folder settings.

Note: Since Web Crossing provides its own user mailboxes, you can use a mailbox on your Web Crossing server for this. Or you can use any POP3 mailbox anywhere. Web Crossing will access any POP3 mailbox to retrieve mail sent by your external mailing list server.

Web Crossing will act like a POP3 mail client and check for new mail every two minutes in the designated mailbox.

If new mail is present, Web Crossing mail services will receive the mail and send it to the designated Web Crossing folder.
Web Crossing will then examine the title of the message. If the title is the same as an existing discussion (ignoring such things as "Re:" at the beginning of a title), Web Crossing will post the mail as a new message in the matching discussion. If Web Crossing cannot find an existing discussion that matches the title, it will automatically create a new one. This method allows mailing lists to be archived on the web in a searchable and organized format that is also easy to browse through.

An example: Setting up a folder to receive messages from a mailing list server

For an example, let's say we want to archive a "Q and A" mailing list with a "Q and A" folder here in Web Crossing. We have created a mail address called qanda@webxharbor.com on our mail server for this.

In order to check mail in that account, POP3 mail programs such as Eudora, Outlook Express or Netscape Mail must go to the popmail.webxharbor.com server and login to the qanda account using the password qandasecretpwd. These are just the typical POP3 mail settings everybody receives from their Internet provider for setting up their own mail program.

Using this information, lets setup mail list mirroring inside the "Q and A" folder inside Web Crossing.

First we go to the "Q and A" folder and click on the small Edit button or the large Edit Folder button in the Toolbar. Then we select Mailing List Settings and enter the needed information, as shown in figure 2.

That is all that is needed. As soon as this is set, Web Crossing will proceed to check the specified mailbox every two minutes. If there are new messages present, they will be received and posted to a discussion inside the folder - creating a new discussion if necessary.