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Set up Organic Groups

rsbecker
  1. Go to admin/og/og then click the link to Messaging & Notifications.
  2. Check the box Autosubscribe users to any groups that they join.
  3. Click save.
  4. Create a Groups node for the mailing list, i.e. Group1
a.     Unless the group is restricted to a few members discussing confidential matters do not check the Private Group box.
b.     If the group is open to any member check the Registration Form box so members can join or leave the group at their choosing. This makes the election possible, but does not take away authority of the group manager to approve group members before admission.

First steps

rsbecker
  1. Decide who will have access to mailing lists, whether they will be moderated, whether you will allow file sharing, etc.
  2. Install all of the required modules and libraries, i.e. PHPMailer and Mail_mimeDecode (if you will allow file sharing). You will also need to have some Pear libraries installed on the server (see the Readme files with the helper modules). Set permissions for the modules according to your site’s needs.
  3. Create needed content types. You will need at least a Groups content type for your Organic Groups. You might also create a Discussion content type for nodes created from incoming emails. That makes it easier to keep mailing list traffic separate from other site content, which is particularly important if the mailing list is not open to anonymous visitors to your site. I also have an Announcement node type for lists that provide only notifications and calendar entries not open to the public. Announcement nodes have comments disabled.

Modules

rsbecker
Modules — Required
  1. Organic Groups 6.x.2.x-dev
  2. Messaging 6.x.4.x-dev (If you are not already using this version it might be better to use Messaging 6.x-2.x-dev)
  3. Notifications 6.x.4.x-dev (If you are not already using this version it might be better to use Notifications 6.x-2.x-dev)
  4. Mailhandler 6.x.2.x-dev
  5. Mailcomment 6.x.2.0
  6. Feeds 6.x.1.0-beta 11
  7. PHPMailer 6.x.3.1
  8. Feeds Comment Processor 6.x.1.0-beta1 — required by other modules
  9. Chaos Tools 6.x.1.8 — required by other modules

Overview

rsbecker
  Creating a mailing list on a Drupal website appears at first to be a daunting task. But that is largely because many modules are involved and there is no documentation addressing how all of the parts work together.
  If you’re building a Drupal 6 website from the ground up because Drupal 7 doesn’t provide all of the functionality your site needs, OpenAtrium provides a good, almost out-of-the-box solution. But you can build a mailing list on an existing site and get the benefit of some more up-to-date modules not included in OpenAtrium.
  Two lists follow: one of modules you will need, the second including modules you will need to add bells and whistles to your listserv. Most of those are used if you will allow posters to upload files and images attached to nodes and/or comments. A few provide other functionality. For example, if you want to have a moderated list, install Action Email Roles to notify moderators that new posts need their attention. If you want to let your posters send email from more than one email address, install the Multiple Email Addresses module.