[NBLUG/talk] Volunteers for Project

Walter Hansen gandalf at sonic.net
Sun Jul 17 16:01:06 PDT 2005


I have a possible project for a local community service. I think it's
quite possible and I think I could do it if I had the time to invest in
such a venture.

There's a local mail list that is having some growing pains and there is
work being done on a web BBS/forum list/whatever you want to call it to
make things more efficient. However a sizable portion of the group clings
to the mailing list format.

Myself I think that interoperability is the solution. In other words when
a post is made to the mailing list, it is replicated in the correct forum
on the web page and when a post is made on the web page, it is replicated
on the correct mailing list. There are actually a couple different mailing
lists.

The web forums are done using a modified product written in php and I
don't think alot can be done from that side as the server it's on doesn't
seem to be capable of hosting the mailing list (perhaps I'm wrong). The
form page uses an MySQL database. If there were a way to host the mailing
list from the same server space that would be ideal, but wasn't able to
gather much information on this sort of possible solution.

The forum is capable of sending individual emails when posts are made to
it so I had thought that for one direction fake users could be created and
pointed to the mailing lists. This would get posts from the web site to
the list, but has a major problem. The fake users posting from the list to
the site would in turn generate a repeated post to the list.

I think the simplest thing to do is to set up fake users that are actually
programs, probably using procmail as I remember. When a post is received
from the site that was not generated by the fake users, it would be
emailed to the mail list. When a new post is received on the mail list,
the program would log into the site and post in on the appropriate forum
there.

This requires the sort of account access that is rare these days, but the
list/site owner has a sonic.net account. I think that he could have this
traffic route through his normal email or perhaps (even better) through a
mailbox account at sonic; but I'm not sure of procmail filters on such
accounts.

Anyway, I think that this can be done. I think that someone familiar with
procmail and mailing lists could easily set up most of this. I know that
the logging on and posting to the site is quite doable and have coded
stuff like this before. The thing is I don't really have the time for a
project like this. I have a store, a church, a job and a wife that are all
begging my time and I'm very behind in stuff that should have been done
long ago.

I could probably help out with the code on logging into a site and posting
as I do that all the time (at least in perl).

I think that such a system would please everyone and avoid conflict for
the mailing list and the forum site. Some of you probably already know
what list I'm referring to. I've talked to the moderator before about such
a system and he is favorable to it, but he doesn't think it can be done.

Hell, I was going to set up a system like this between the DarkSide and
it's internet page back in days when BBSes were dying out, but then I got
a little bit more of a life and didn't do it.

So I thought I'd come here and see if others might be interested in
helping out.

Walter Hansen




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