i need some help setting up a mailing list.  I created a mail list called everybody@chiaddicts.com.  In the section labled, "host name this list prefers" the default value was venus.lunarpages.com.  when i went to the general list information page and subscribed my email address...nothing happened.  i did not get a confirmation email.  so i changed "host name this list perfers" to chiaddicts.com.  this time when i subscribed, i immediately received a confirmation letter in my inbox.  i replied to the email, as per the instructions, which sent the email to Everyone_chiaddicts.com-request@chiaddicts.com.  instead of automatically adding the email to the list...nothing happened.  i did however receive the reply email in my default email account which is chiadd2@chiaddicts.com.  I must have something setup wrong.  what do i need to do to configure this properly.

Also, is there anything i can do to change the email addresses listed in autoresponse emails to the friendly version.  what i mean is, in the above example, could i get the confirmation email to use everyone-request@chiaddicts.com rather than everyone_chiaddicts.com-request@chiaddicts.com.

your help on these matters are greatly appreciated.

After many hours of experimenting and some guess work and NO help from support nor the docs.  I think I got it working.  For this discussion I will assume your domain is "chiaddicts.com" and your list is called "everyone".

(1) After you create the list you need to go into the list's general settings and change the value for "Host name this list prefers" from the default (ie: venus.lunarpages.com) to your own domain name (ie: chiaddicts.com).  Nothing works without fixing this first.  This you figured out already.

(2) Now several of the messages sent from the list server use non-working return addresses.  For example, "everyone_chiaddicts.com-request@chiaddicts.com".  The correct address is "everyone-request@chiaddicts.com".  To make this work I added a forwarder (alias) to my domain to forward from "everyone_chiaddicts.com-request@chiaddicts.com" to "everyone-request@chiaddicts.com".  

(3) You also need a forwarder for "everyone_chiaddicts.com@chiaddicts.com" to "everyone@chiaddicts.com" so postings to the list will work.  The email messages from the listserver say to post to the longer address when in fact the short address is the one that actually works.  But you can work around with the forwarder.

(4) In the list settings, under the Privacy options.  One of your choices for new subscriptions is to require it to be confirmed, approved, or confirmed+approved.  Don't select confirmed+approved, this choice doesn't work, it will do the confirmation but then stop and not do the approval.  You can select just approval or just confirmation but don't select both.

I'm still testing to make sure it works all the different ways it can be used by subscribers but my list seems to be working with these changes and settings now.
--GaryM

gary@mggm.net

I am glad you two worked it out. I think i will add this to our faq. Thanks!