Kavi Help CenterKavi Mailing List Manager Help
| Chapter 27. Adding and Editing Custom List Types | ||
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Part I. Concepts | 
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Table of Contents
Before adding a new List Type or editing an existing List Type, you need to be aware that the Kavi Mailing List Manager List Type tools offer a great degree of flexibility—and with flexibility comes responsibility. It is entirely possible for the Super Admin to set nonsensical combinations of options in a List Type, especially if the ezmlm-make argument string is manipulated directly. Unless you are an ezmlm expert, it's best to create a custom List Type by cloning a default List Type or custom List Type with a proven track record, then reset just those options that need to be edited.
The Add a List Type and Edit a List Type tools are only available to Super Admins.
These instructions assume you are going to base your custom List type on an existing List Type, and that you will begin by selecting the List Type whose access control settings most closely match your needs. The options are presented in order of importance. If you need any more information on any of these options, see Access Control Options.
Determine what kind of controls should apply to message posting. Select the 'Who can post to the list' option settings that meet your needs (i.e., the -MOUY settings).
Determine whether the public should be able to subscribe via ezmlm email commands or not. Select the settings you want in the following two List Type options: Public subscription requests and Subscription Model.
Determine whether your List Type should have archives and how you should control access to the raw archives. See the preceding section on Archives for more information.
Now select a List Type where these options have the settings you require. If none of the available types matches all your criteria, select a List Type that matches the settings for the first two control points (posting and subscriptions), then configure the list archive settings to meet your requirements.
Once you've been able to identify an existing list type that meets your basic access control criteria, or have found one that is close, most of the heavy lifting is done. Decide whether you will edit an existing type or add a new one. If you are going to edit a List Type, see Changing List Type Options and be sure to read the page help before proceeding, because your changes will affect the configuration of any existing lists based on this List Type. If you are adding a new List Type, begin by reading the page help, set the access control options, then set feature options as desired.
On the odd chance that you need to set options that are not exposed through the tool interfaces, you will have to edit the ezmlm-make string directly, and should only do this if you have acquired enough expertise in ezmlm to fully understand the affect that your edits will have and take full responsibility for the results. See the Ezmlm Quick Reference Guide for information on specific ezmlm-make arguments.
The ezmlmrc rules file is sometimes customized for mailing lists that need to implement a different set of rules than those in the default file, although this is uncommon. The ezmlmrc file must be edited directly by an expert, so this is outside the scope of this documentation except that it is important that the description of the List Type provide an explanation of the behavioral differences between the custom and default rules files so that this information is available for mailing list administrators and support.
When editing a custom List Type or switching an existing mailing list to a different List Type, you need to be sure that you understand the consequences this change will initiate. As usual, access control issues are most critical, but changes involving features can also be non-trivial.
The best way to understand what will change is to do a point-by-point comparison between the old and new List Types and identify every setting that will change (you could do this by looking for differences in the ezmlm-make argument string), then look up each option in Changing List Type Options. This list can't cover every possible repercussion associated with migrating to a different List Type setting, but should give you a heads up on what you might commonly expect to see and some suggestions for mitigation measures.
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| Chapter 26. List Types |  |
Part II. Troubleshooting Guide |