Copy the files that you just unpacked from the distribution into the location where you want your MailMan installation to live, "public_html/mailman/", for example. We don't really have a specific location that we recommend, it's all a matter of personal preference. The most common URL location seems to be "http://www.yourecompany.com/mailman/mailman.cgi", but that's probably because most people are lazy.

If you are using a recent Apache server distribution as your web server, then your web-accessible tree is most likely in a location like "/usr/local/apache/htdocs", "/var/www/html", or something like that. If you don't even know where your web-accessible tree is then now would be an excellent time to put the MailMan installation on hold while you go and consult with the nerd that set up your web server for you. Better yet, mail that nerd a link to this document and tell them that they are welcome to contact us if they need any help doing your install for you.

You can copy the files all at once by using "cd" to navigate to the subdirectory that contains the MailMan files that you unpacked from the distribution and then using "cp -p * /path/to/where/you/want/mailman/". The "-p" option to "cp" tells it to preserve file attributes. We configure the permissions on the files in advance when we pack the distribution, so if you do that then you might be able to save a step later. Before you do that copy, make sure that the target directory exists. The "mkdir" command is used to create directories, for instance, "mkdir /var/www/html/mailman/". We're not calling you dumb, it's just that we get lots of the same sorts of questions over and over so we try to provide help right up front.

Once you have copied the files into the directory that you want, just do us a favor and go and try to access the "mailman.cgi" file. Half of the time it will already work at this point without any further hassle. If it doesn't and you get a cryptic error message, don't freak out yet, it's not a big deal at all.