This is probably the most important section in this documentation, so we have tried to make everything here as clear as possible. If you have any questions about anything here, then please contact us directly and just ask. We're very friendly and happy to help. If you decide at any point that you would rather just have somebody else do the installation for you then let us know, we also perform MailMan installations for a small fee. Your message will not fall through the cracks and our support staff will not be rude or dismissive. There really is no such thing as a dumb question.

If you're in a hurry, then you might want to skip directly to the installation section for Unix servers or or Windows servers. If you're interested in an overview of how everything is organized before you start, then keep reading.

MailMan Distributions

When we say "distribution", we are referring to the archive files that you can download from our web site. That's the "mailman_xxxxxx.zip" and "mailman_xxxxxx.tar.gz" files.

There are two different distributions of each edition of MailMan, a Unix distribution and a Windows distribution. In reality either distribution should work on any server, but we have found it to be more convenient for our users to package the application in a way that is more targeted to the final platform. The primary difference between the two distributions is that the files in the NT distribution have been processed so that the lines in the mail MailMan source file end with a CR-LF, while the lines in the same file in the Unix distribution are terminated with a simple LF. If you don't know what that means, don't worry about it, it's really not that important usually. Another difference is that the main MailMan script file in the Unix distribution is called "mailman.cgi", while the same file in the Windows distribution is called "mailman.pl". We have found that this arrangement reduces confusion in most cases. If you disagree about our file naming conventions you are perfectly welcome to rename the files to whatever you want, MailMan doesn't care at all what it's called. It's very common for people to rename the script file to "mail.cgi" or even "index.cgi".

Files in the Distribution

A MailMan distribution contains four major parts: the templates, the script, the graphics, and documentation. There will be some minor differences between the editions of MailMan (Standard Edition or Professional Edition), but those differences primarily relate to exactly which files are included, there are more templates included in the Professional Edition installation because it provides more functionality.

Once you have downloaded the distribution file, just un-zip or un-tar the file. If you need help with that part then we describe distribution-specific methods in the Unix and Windows installation sections. The files included in the distributions are:

Templates: All templates are named "t_*.htm". Those are files that MailMan needs to be able to access locally, not necessarily through a web server. If you want to put the templates in a location where they are not visible by your web server then that's fine, as long as they are in a place where MailMan can load them and as long as MailMan has permission to load them. You can explicitly specify the location of the templates with a simple configuration option at the top of the MailMan script. MailMan assumes that the templates are in the same directory that it lives in by default, so in most cases you don't have to configure that.

Scripts: There will be two scripts in your distribution, "mailman.cgi" (or "mailman.pl" if you are looking at the Windows distribution) and "simple.cgi" (or "simple.pl" in the Windows distribution).

Images: All graphics are named "i_*.gif". The image files need to be accessible by your users' web browsers through your web server. As with the template files above, you can put these files anywhere as long as you tell MailMan about it. MailMan assumes by default that the image files will be accessible from the same directory where the script lives, but that's easy to change. Many web servers do not allow static files (like images) to be served from a directory that has CGI enabled, so if you are installing MailMan and everything seems to work except for the images then don't freak out about it, it's easy to fix. Just drop us a message if you need help, the solution will most likely involve moving your image files to a different directory and then configuring MailMan to load them from there.

The file "s_style.css" is also considered an image file because it is referenced by your HTML output and pulled from your server by your users' browsers in pretty much the same way that your images are. Don't forget to include this style sheet file in whatever directory your images end up. If you have to move your images to a different location, then move this file there also.

Documentation: If you're reading this, then you managed to find the documentation. The docs are available under the "doc" subdirectory in your MailMan distribution or on the Endymion web site.

Installation Procedure

Once you have oriented yourself and verified that you have the files that you are supposed to have, you can start the actual installation process. Installing MailMan is ridiculously simple, and in many cases it's just a matter of copying the "mailman" directory from your distribution into a directory that your web server can see. If you're feeling lucky, just do that right now and then try accessing the "mailman.cgi" script through your web server. Do not try to directly access template files through your web server, they won't make much sense to your web browser until they are processed by MailMan. Just access the script file directly.

Just hoping for luck and trying it works frequently enough to give it a shot, really, go give it a try. If you get a "500 Internal Server Error" or some other error then don't freak out about it, just continue on to the specific installation section for the distribution that you're installing, either the Unix section or the Windows section. Most of the errors produced by web servers look cryptic and ominous but they are actually not all that bad and they are usually very easy to work around. Web servers are actually a lot dumber than they look, and the reason why the error message is so scary-looking is because the server likely has absolutely no clue how to handle what you are asking it to do. Don't be intimidated, web servers are easy to configure once you know what you're doing, and we definitely know what we're doing.

If you feel like you need assistance at any point then please just contact us, we're more than happy to help you. If you give up at any point then you always have the option of just paying us a small fee to do your installation.

Specific Distribution Installation Instructions

If you weren't one of the lucky ones who managed to get MailMan working by simply copying it into a directory on the server and trying it, then don't worry. The road ahead is still pretty short and simple.

If you are using a Unix server, as most people will be, then you should take a look at our Unix installation instructions. If you are using an Apple OSX machine as a server then you're a Unix user too whether you know it or not, use that installation manual.

If you are a Windows user then you will be interested in our Windows installation instructions. Serving web sites from Windows is such a chaotic, unreliable, insecure, moving target sort of proposition that we really just don't even recommend it, but you're welcome to it if you're into that. At the very least we recommend using Apache instead of IIS on Windows machines, but MailMan will work just fine with IIS if you're determined to do that for some reason.