Users Frequently Asked Questions

You can not subscribe to a list

This problem may be due to the following reasons:

• The list owners forgot to process your subscription request: to err is human, and your request might have been lost among many other messages! Resubmit your request before contacting list owners directly.
• Subscription to the list is reserved to a certain category of people. To know more, contact list owners.

You can not log on to the mailing list web interface

This problem may be due to the following reasons:

• You have no password. To be given a password, follow the First login? link from the homepage. You will receive your new password by email.
• You entered an incorrect password. If you have forgotten your password, you can reset it. To do so, follow the Lost password? link from the homepage.
• You are not using the correct username (the email address with which you are subscribed to the list).

In order to avoid any mistake when typing your password, you can type it into another application (such as your email client) and copy and paste it into your web browser.

You do not receive (all) messages sent to a list

This problem can have multiple reasons:

• You have never been subscribed to the list:
  • Maybe you made a mistake in your email address when you tried to subscribe.
  • Maybe you are subscribed with an email address other than the one you are checking.
  • Maybe your subscription request was rejected by the list owners.
  In any case, try and subscribe again.
• You are not subscribed to the list anymore:
  • If your address has been bouncing for a while, you might have been automatically unsubscribed by the system (or even by the list owners). Try and subscribe again after ensuring that your email address will not be in trouble again.
  • If you have not respected the different rules applying to the mailing list, the list owners might have "banned" you...
  • You might also have been arbitrarily unsubscribed by an ill-intentioned person, in case the list is not configured to send a confirmation request for any subscription and unsubscription request... In that case, try and subscribe again.
• Your delivery mode does not allow you to receive messages: for example, it is the case with the 'Nomail' delivery mode.
• Your inbox is full. Be careful: when your inbox is not completely full, you receive only small messages, which makes it difficult to understand what actually is the problem... Furthermore, if your email address causes trouble on a regular basis, you might be unsubscribed by the list owners or by the system. Thus, you should clean your inbox frequently.
• Your inbox is subject to some restrictions: it does not allow you to receive messages with attachments, bans some types of attachments or limits the maximum size of incoming messages; in that case, we advise you to choose the Urlize delivery mode.

You can not send messages to a list

This problem can have multiple reasons:

• You have never been subscribed to the list.
• You are not subscribed to the list anymore.
• You are using another address than the one with which you are subscribed to the list.
• If the list is a moderated list, the distribution of the message depends on the moderators' availability: they can not monitor the list night and day! Thus the distribution of your message might be a bit delayed.
• If the list is a moderated list, your message might have been rejected by a moderator. In case you received no notice, you can possibly send a message to nameofthelist-request@npogroups.org to ask for an explanation.
• The message you are trying to send does not fulfill the conditions to be distributed on the list: it may be too large, contain a forbidden type of attachment or even contain any type of attachment (in case attachments are forbidden on the list).
• The problem may also come from your email account:
  • The mail server is temporarily unavailable.
  • Your inbox is full and it prevents you from sending new messages.
  • Your inbox is subject to some restrictions: it does not allow you to send messages with attachments, bans some types of attachments or limits the maximum size of outgoing messages.
• Last, you might have made a mistake in the list address when sending your message!

You can not unsubscribe from a list

This problem can have multiple reasons:

• You are using another address than the one with which you are subscribed to the list.
• You are subscribed through a dynamic data source (examples: databases, LDAP directories, etc.) which does not allow you to unsubscribe. Contact the list owners to know more about this.
• The list owners forgot to process your unsubscription request: to err is human, and your request might have been lost among many other messages! Resubmit your request before contacting list owners directly.

You want to contact list owners

The list owners and moderators' names are mentioned in the left menu. However, you should never write directly to a list owner or moderator: first, the person to whom you are writing might be absent, and furthermore, it is better to inform all owners and moderators of your request. When you have a question or remark, the address you should write to is: nameofthelist-request@npogroups.org (replace 'nameofthelist' by the name of the list).

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The Fundamentals

Administration:
If you have an Electric Embers billing account (not just a Groups login) and need help managing groups, please see the Groups Administrator's Guide

Logins:
To create your own groups or access private groups to which you belong, you must first create an account and login, either at npogroups.org, or at lists.yourdomain.org if you have a Custom Groups domain. We require nothing other than your email address, and if you guard that carefully you might be interested in our Privacy Policy. If you have already subscribed to a group, then you already have an account and a password, which you should have been sent when you joined; if you have no idea what it is, just click the Request password box on the login page and it will be sent to you.

Note on address changes: To change the email address that is subscribed to group, go to your Preferences page. This will change your subscribed address on all groups on this server.

Group Creation:
Those who have signed up for a Groups account from Electric Embers will see the Create Group button in the top menu after signing in. If you want to create groups, you need to Sign Up for an account. If you haven't done that, you won't be able to create groups. If you're just looking to test out the system, then you will still need to fill out the Sign Up form, and we will give you an account in the testing domain, where you can create your test groups.

Once you have an account, login and click the Create Group button. That takes you to the group creation page, where you can choose the basic initial settings for the group; everything except the group name (and owner) can be changed later from the Group Settings area. After you submit the form, you will be able to fully configure and customize the group immediately, but the list will not be active until the creation request is approved by us. We generally do this quickly, and you will receive notification.

Notifications for Owners and Moderators:
Sympa can keep you informed about all kinds of activity on the group, depending on the settings you choose. It can inform you of subscribe/unsubscribe requests (with or without requiring approval), list messages requiring moderation, or too many messages bouncing from subscriber addresses. Notifications of subscription requests or list messages that require approval will include embedded links to special email addresses for approving or rejecting the request by email; you can also choose to perform these approval functions through the Web site. A group can be assigned any number of different owners (those who have the ability to change group settings) and different moderators (those who have the ability to approve or reject moderated postings), and they will all receive the proper notifications.

Email Commands:
Most list functions (for users and admins) are available by email as well as through the Web, and a few things are best done or only done via email commands. Please see the Sympa Email Command Guide.

Customization:
Almost everything about a group, including its Web page and automatically generated administrative messages, can be customized through the owner's administration page. On an entirely different level, almost everything about the entire site, from the colors to the layout to the contents of the main page, can be customized if you have us create a custom domain within your organization's domain, like lists.yourdomain.org instead of groups.electricembers.net. Please ask if you want details about running your groups in a custom domain.

Subscriber, moderator and owner documentation

For almost all Groups-related questions, Electric Embers provides:

• Groups Administrators Guide
• Groups Subscribers Guide

And for detailed technical info not found there, the Sympa software developers provide:

• a general introduction to mailing lists;
• a user guide about the use of Sympa;
• an administrator guide about the use of Sympa.

You can also write us for help.