Mailman is overall a great mailing list server, but the current version isn’t easy to add features to without getting into the code. Mailman’s code is easy to modify, however, once you know where to look and even if you don’t know Python. The main thing to remember is that, unlike other languages, indentation matters in Python.
And, of course, you’ll need to redo these changes every time you upgrade.
- List all Mailman members
- It’s nice that Mailman divides members up when the membership list gets large, but sometimes it’s useful to be able to see all members at the same time.
- Add a JavaScript toggle to membership management
- Another useful task—especially now that everyone is visible at once—is to be able to quickly check the checkboxes for either “unsub” or “mod”. The easiest way to do this is to add a JavaScript toggle to the HTML.
- List suspended members
- Sometimes it’s nice to be able to see all of the suspended members of a mailing list. This mod will do that.
- View Mailman config files
- You can use Python and pickle to look directly at Mailman’s config.pck pickles.
More Mailman
- No distutils? Install Xcode
- If Distutils is not available on Mac OS X Leopard, install the Xcode developer tools. Also, the upgrade process I followed for upgrading from Mailman 2.1.9 to 2.1.12.
