10 November, 2005

This test is to try and make a mailing list

So that anyone wanting to be emailed new entries here can sign up.

Thanks to the wisdom of samuraisam, hopefully it will eventually work.

*fingers crossed*
Posted by secretdubai at 12:58 am

29 comments:

samuraisam said...

what is thou trying to do?

10 November, 2005 08:25
secretdubai said...

I'm trying to set up a mailing list so that UAE community members (and whoever else) can - if they want - get new posts here auto-emailed to them.

I've set up a mailing list (so far I'm the only person on it!) at uaecommunity AT topica.com. It works when I email from my account to it - it sends back to me. But it doesn't work when I enter it into the Settings: Email: BlogSend Address (I make new posts, but they never arrive).

However if I put my email in BlogSend Address, new posts do arrive to me, so Blogger must be working.

*annoyed and frustrated and confused*

10 November, 2005 12:41
samuraisam said...

hmmmmm.

Well. the key problem i can think of here, is that the email address that blogger is sending from (i dont know what it is), isn't subscribed to the mailing list, in which case, if it is sensibly designed, would NOT allow any emails from unsubscribed addresses, i.e. no spam.

so you'd have to sign up the email address for the mailing list, but i cant imagine anyway you'd be able to verify or whatever. So setup a new gmail account, set blogger to email new posts to it, then set the gmail account to be subscribed to the mailing list, and then automatically forward all emails with XYZ topic or all emails from XYZ sender to automatically forward to uaecommunity (at) topica.com.

10 November, 2005 14:06
samuraisam said...

ok, as far as i can tell, blogger spoofs the email address on the outgoing email with the account holders address, the mailing list is possibly sensing this as it could be used in a malicious way, and ignoring it.

(code)Received: from bla27.blogger.com (unknown [10.20.1.242])
by blogger.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8999219659
for (sam@samurai-sam.com); Thu, 10 Nov 2005 02:08:01 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: (16344767.1131617281557.JavaMail.root@bla27.blogger.com)
From: samuraisam (sam@samurai-sam.com)
To: sam@samurai-sam.com

so yes, easiest way i can see around this is to setup a gmail account purely for forwarding content on towards the mailing list account.

10 November, 2005 14:11
secretdubai said...

Oh you are so damn clever!

I've done that - [this place here] at gmail, surprise surprise!!

Now I have to wait until topica sends me the membership invitation to [this place here] and then pray that [this place here] doesn't get spammed, or presumably that will spam everyone on the mailing list?

10 November, 2005 15:55
samuraisam said...

well go to settings in gmail, and go to the filters page, then click create a filter.

The subject of email sent from the blogger thing seems to have the title of the blog in it. so you'd have to set anything with the title "UAE community" or whatever is in the title to be forwarded.

10 November, 2005 16:14
samuraisam said...

and this is probably a pretty complex way of doing it, there is probably an easier and more sensible way. I'll research it a bit and see if i can come up with anything.

I *think* you could set the gmail account to check the RSS feed, and then automatically email upon an update, but i'll check it out and see how it'd be done.

10 November, 2005 16:16
secretdubai said...

Hang on am I going to end up with some exponentially spammy relay here?

Blogger.com sends to NewGmail which sends to Topica.

Topica sends to everyone, including NewGmail.

NewGmail then sends that (again) to Topica, which sends to everyone, including NewGmail.

etc

10 November, 2005 16:37
secretdubai said...

OK I figured out a way around the relay: when Blogger.com sends, as you point out, it spoofs from my [sd at gmail] email address.

So I created a filter in the NewGmail account to only forward messages from [sd at gmail] to topica.com.

However, while Blogger.com is successfully sending new posts to NewGmail, nothing seems to be working from Topica. Perhaps it's filtering out all forwarded emails as spam?

10 November, 2005 16:47
samuraisam said...

ahh, crap, that is a possibility that you will.

A account= secretdubai at gmail
B account= UAE community at gmail
C account= topica
well if you tell the gmail address to only forward email addresses from whatever address they come from blogger (presumably A, it'll send from whatever you signed up to the account using), that way the utopia email address should send it back to the B account from the C account in which case the gmail account wouldn't forward it because its not from A account.

/me continues to look for better way.

10 November, 2005 16:52
samuraisam said...

hmm, maybe topica.com doesnt like gmail accounts? is the gmail account verified to use the mailing list?

10 November, 2005 16:54
samuraisam said...

you could set it up to use something like this

but you would require a server that has MYSQL databases et al

My brain is on one of its blank stages again;
but.. you could use http://www.r-mail.org/ , find out the URL of your RSS feed, stick the subscribe button on the side bar/ footer of page and bobs your uncle!, that way it's all hassle free. The rmail server checks every 1-2 hours for new posts, which isn't the end of the world, and is especially good considering it's a free service.

10 November, 2005 17:02
samuraisam said...

instructions on how to add button here.

i'm testing it now on the atom feed that blogspot provide. if it works i'll let you know

10 November, 2005 17:05
secretdubai said...

Yes - it's verified.

And damnit - I just tried Bravenet, but they do a stupid send-from-web-only thing (ie the mailing list has no useable email name, from what I can work out).

And it seems to only do one a day.

Crapola :(

What I think we need is a mailing list service that is:

1. free ;)
2. has its own actual email address
3. allows subscription invitations to be sent out
4. isn't fussy about sending on a Fwd: mail (fwd from Gmail, or even Blogger.com)
5. allows multiple mailings per day

10 November, 2005 17:06
samuraisam said...

if you want coversations ala proper newsgroup/mailing list style, then a newsgroup is essential, otherwise if just informing users of an update is ok, you could just use the rmail thing.

i'm trialing it now, i'll give you a shout when it works.

I could provide hosting for such a service, as long as nothing like this ever happens again;
It has come to our attention that you are hosting copyrighted and/or
licensed
files and software (aka, 'warez')

/samuraisam/

Please note that the hosting of these files is strictly prohibited by
our T&C

http://order.1and1.com/xml/order/Gtc
4.1.7.
You agree not to infringe any copyright, trademark, patent, trade
secret, or
other proprietary rights of any third party, including, but not limited
to, the
unauthorized copying of copyrighted material, the digitization and
distribution
of photographs from magazines, books, or other copyrighted sources, and
the
unauthorized transmittal of copyrighted software;

Please remove all warez from your webspace immediately.


i'll take a look at the fine print on my current T&C and see what is possible.

10 November, 2005 17:21
secretdubai said...

At this stage, just a notification service - people can still discuss stuff here, where it's more "permanent" and easier than dozens of (angry!) reponses going round and round ;)

Thanks for all your help with this btw. I will check out r-mail.

10 November, 2005 20:43
samuraisam said...

ok.

it appears that atom XML is not the same as RSS (i've never really bothered with RSS readers etc, i just refresh the website every 20 minutes or so which is why everyone's logs show me as having visited for 3 hours).

you need to sign up http://www.feedburner.com , and it'll give you an RSS feed of your blog, then using the rmail thing or whatever it was, i guess you point that towards the page and it starts popping emails out of its bottom.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/OneBigConstructionSite

(me tries this service)

10 November, 2005 22:07
samuraisam said...

yay, i set up my feed reader.

at least 20 blogs checked every 10 minutes (:

now i can reply to peoples blogs first even faster!

they even have RSS feeds on google news. YAY!
i have been missing out on this greatly ):

10 November, 2005 22:28
samuraisam said...

hmm.
have you had a look at bloglines?
some link to it said it could do newsletters, but appears it is false.

/me continues search

10 November, 2005 23:27
secretdubai said...

Just trying that R-Mail now. I've created the feed with Feedburner - http://feeds.feedburner.com/UaeCommunityBlog - and set it to send to [this place] at topica, so let's see what happens.

10 November, 2005 23:36
secretdubai said...

Not working as far as I can see. I subscribed the feed to topica.com - but no confirmation ever came through.

I subscribed it to a personal email, and the please confirm came through immediately. Bloody topica. There must be something similar to topica that isn't so damn fussy, surely?

10 November, 2005 23:42
samuraisam said...

keep in mind these RSS service things will take 1-2 hours to update.

http://www.aardvarkmailinglist.net/

you can use gmail itself as the RSS reader (i think it reads atom feeds), and then forward to the mailing list.

10 November, 2005 23:52
secretdubai said...

If I can find a mailing list that accepts a forward, that would be brilliant. So many of them seem to be web-based only, which is no use. That would mean me manually sending it to the mailing list each time which defeats the purpose.

If only Topica wasn't so sensitive!!

11 November, 2005 00:03
samuraisam said...

i'll try and figure out a solution tomorrow.


now its time for me to sleep

(its 4 am, and one of those christianity TV shows just came on. ARGHHHHH!)

11 November, 2005 00:05
secretdubai said...

Aha - wait a sec - Google Groups may have a solution...

Sleep well!

11 November, 2005 00:07
snow white said...

you lost me a long time ago!

11 November, 2005 00:24
samuraisam said...

hmm. got past the point of any point in sleeping, looks like it may work too (:

trust google to have a solution !


the word verification feature becomes more and more difficult to fulfill the less i sleep ):

11 November, 2005 00:25
secretdubai said...

Oh god sam it doesn't seem to be working - it hasn't emailed out emirati's entry above. Could it be that it only emails out my posts (and if so why the hell why?)

:(

11 November, 2005 02:49
BuJ said...

that's what i call light conversation

11 November, 2005 03:15

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