New Admin Interface for Mailman 3
Hello everyone.
I have been a long time supporter of Mailman 2 and now 3. Most of my experience with Mailman has been as a service provider that offers managed mailman hosting both for version 2 and 3. I do have the benefit of a decade+ of insight into the use of Mailman from a list admin, moderator, and member point of view simply via my support ticket system that my Mailman clients have access to.
I want to say that I appreciate all of the hard work that has been put into bringing Mailman 3 to life. I also appreciate the forward thinking that shows itself in the including of a REST api with Mailman 3 and the use of and support of databases such as postgreSQL and MySQL.
I have been using Mailman 3 for over a year now in a commercial/production environment and have installed it on several servers using Docker and now from source. I received quite a bit of feedback from users this past year and also lost about 20% of my Mailman 3 users to other competing list/forum applications. The feedback I received was almost entirely due to shortcomings in the user interface.
After much thought, I have decided to break away from the use of Postorius/Hyperkitty. Tomorrow a PHP developer will begin work on brand new admin interface on my behalf. Here are my goals:
Modernize the admin interface to meet modern design and interface standards.
To provide an easy installation approach to the setup and portability of the admin interface.
To reveal everything that Mailman core has via the new admin interface and perhaps to bring in additional features such as the ability to migrate a Mailman 2 list into a Mailman 3 list from a browser interface.
To bring in the use of stats that a list admin would like to see such as overall number of list members, which list is generating the most bounces, subscription/unsubscription rates, etc.
To provide a list creation wizard for list admins that will automatically create a list that has preset settings in place based upon the input during the list creation wizard.
I am sure there are many hurdles to overcome in the process. When the inevitable questions arises that pertain anything to the Mailman side of this project, I hope I can count on this list for assistance. I am also interested in seeing if I can recruit some of you to test out the new admin interface for usability testing when I reach that stage. I am interested to find out if some of you that have enough experience in PHP to help contribute to this project. Bootstrap 4 and User Interface design skills would also be appreciated.
The name of the new admin interface: Affinity
Wish me well with this new project and let me know on or off list of anything that you would like to see change, removed, implemented into a new admin interface.
Brian
brian_carpenter@emwd.com writes:
After much thought, I have decided to break away from the use of Postorius/Hyperkitty. Tomorrow a PHP developer will begin work on brand new admin interface on my behalf. Here are my goals:
I do have some comments. :-)
Before any details, I'll say the core developers applaud this effort. Though we'd like to think Postorius and HyperKitty are great as far as they go, we've always believed that there are many uses cases for Mailman they can't serve well. That includes but is not limited to close integration with integrated platforms such as cPanel and ticketing systems.
- To provide an easy installation approach to the setup and portability of the admin interface.
This is likely to limit the use cases. I encourage you to think carefully about that, and to prioritize the cases you know very well, such as the needs of hosting service administrators. I won't be surprised if you make a lot of ordinary users (subscribers) happy too, but don't get overambitious.
- To reveal everything that Mailman core has via the new admin interface
I myself am not sure why, but Barry has stated that it's hard to do this, at least in the face of current pace of development of Mailman 3 core. I love Barry and deeply respect his judgment, but I find the idea itself offensive :-), so dealing with it on the core side is on my own TODO list. Let's cooperate!
and perhaps to bring in additional features such as the ability to migrate a Mailman 2 list into a Mailman 3 list from a browser interface.
This is already possible in Postorius and HyperKitty for "well-behaved" Mailman 2 lists. Unfortunately I don't have a definition of "well-behaved" (yet, and I don't think it's easy to do). :-/ OTOH, from our point of view, this is a site administrator decision, so doing the conversion at Mailman 3 installation time and the site administrator's convenience is the logical process.
Do you have a specific use case for this? Do you have users (list administrators or virtual domain administrators) who want to try Mailman 3 lists but continue some of their lists with Mailman 2? (I still think this is unlikely to be something core development would prioritize, but I'd like to have real data about it.)
- To bring in the use of stats that a list admin would like to see such as overall number of list members, which list is generating the most bounces, subscription/unsubscription rates, etc.
These are surely going to require core-side features. Speaking for myself, they are desirable features, and I'm pretty sure the core developers will agree.
These features (and more) are already implemented in the Systers forks of Mailman. I can introduce some of their developers (if interested, let's talk off-list, I don't have names and contacts off-hand).
- To provide a list creation wizard for list admins that will automatically create a list that has preset settings in place based upon the input during the list creation wizard.
Again, this is going to require cooperation from core. We have a feature called "list templates" for Mailman 3 in core, which we intend to expose fully in Postorius and populate with common templates. Ask Abhilash, who knows it best I think.
The name of the new admin interface: Affinity
"Affinity for Mailman [3]". I like it!
Steve
On Mar 2, 2020, at 00:14, Stephen J. Turnbull <turnbull.stephen.fw@u.tsukuba.ac.jp> wrote:
brian_carpenter@emwd.com writes:
- To reveal everything that Mailman core has via the new admin interface
I myself am not sure why, but Barry has stated that it's hard to do this, at least in the face of current pace of development of Mailman 3 core. I love Barry and deeply respect his judgment, but I find the idea itself offensive :-), so dealing with it on the core side is on my own TODO list. Let's cooperate!
Love you too, man! I actually don’t remember saying this, but definitely don’t take my word on that :).
If I did say it <wink>, what I probably meant is that there is some functionality which still needs to be exposed in the REST API, and other functionality that could use a more efficient surfacing through the REST API. For example, you want to reduce the roundtrips for common tasks against many objects. This is difficult to do in REST — you basically have to expose collection resources, search resources, etc. but they all feel somewhat artificial to me. GraphQL seems to handle things like this much better, but of course MM3 does not have a GraphQL API.
Cheers, -Barry
Before any details, I'll say the core developers applaud this effort. Though we'd like to think Postorius and HyperKitty are great as far as they go, we've always believed that there are many uses cases for Mailman they can't serve well. That includes but is not limited to close integration with integrated platforms such as cPanel and ticketing systems.
Thank you. I am not concern with other platforms at the moment as I am with coming up with a more modern looking interface that is more intuitive to use. cPanel will probably stay with Mailman 2 for years to come and continue to provide their own patches if need to keep it functional.
I will probably at some point make a serious attempt in coming up with a Wordpress plugin that integrates with Mailman 3.
This is likely to limit the use cases. I encourage you to think carefully about that, and to prioritize the cases you know very well, such as the needs of hosting service administrators. I won't be surprised if you make a lot of ordinary users (subscribers) happy too, but don't get overambitious.
Point taken. My main target is server and list administrators. List members will get some love as well but they are a lower priority.
I myself am not sure why, but Barry has stated that it's hard to do this, at least in the face of current pace of development of Mailman 3 core. I love Barry and deeply respect his judgment, but I find the idea itself offensive :-), so dealing with it on the core side is on my own TODO list. Let's cooperate!
Will do!
This is already possible in Postorius and HyperKitty for "well-behaved" Mailman 2 lists. Unfortunately I don't have a definition of "well-behaved" (yet, and I don't think it's easy to do). :-/ OTOH, from our point of view, this is a site administrator decision, so doing the conversion at Mailman 3 installation time and the site administrator's convenience is the logical process. Do you have a specific use case for this? Do you have users (list administrators or virtual domain administrators) who want to try Mailman 3 lists but continue some of their lists with Mailman 2? (I still think this is unlikely to be something core development would prioritize, but I'd like to have real data about it.)
I have in mind Mailman 2 list admins that are using Mailman via cPanel. cPanel dropped a bomb last September (I think) with a huge price increase for license users. The results were some large hosts made their intentions known that they were leaving cPanel for alternative or custom developed control panels. Most of these will not include Mailman or even any MLM application. So I suspect a lot of these users will need to be finding homes for their Mailman 2 lists and I think when any these come my way, and some have, it would be a good time to introduce them to Mailman 3.
Two obstacles have hinder me in converting Mailman 2 users to Mailman 3:
-- high load times for Mailman 3 processes -- less features for the mailing list side of Mailman (which Mailman 2 users held in higher priority) even though the archive side (Hyperkitty) had significant improvements to offer over pipermail.
The high load times I was seeing was a concern but the recent upgrades to Mailman 3 has resolved them and now Mailman 3 hums along very nicely. However the lack of bounce processing, at least in the past, and other features, held me back from marketing the benefits of Mailman 3 to them.
These are surely going to require core-side features. Speaking for myself, they are desirable features, and I'm pretty sure the core developers will agree.
I am hoping to generate some of these stats from the logs of the MTA. cPanel uses something called eximstats to put mail statistics from Exim's logs into a MySQL database. It polls the data on a server and account wide basis. I absolutely love it because it tells me immediately which lists are not playing nice. I want list admins to have access to something like that so they can see what is going on with their roster. Most of my cPanel list admins don't bother going into cPanel to make use of eximstats. So I want to bring something like that to them in this new admin interface.
These features (and more) are already implemented in the Systers forks of Mailman. I can introduce some of their developers (if interested, let's talk off-list, I don't have names and contacts off-hand).
Is this a fork off of Mailman 3? Feel free to contact me anytime because I am interested to see what is out there.
Again, this is going to require cooperation from core. We have a feature called "list templates" for Mailman 3 in core, which we intend to expose fully in Postorius and populate with common templates. Ask Abhilash, who knows it best I think.
I forgot about those templates and came across them today. They would work but I want something a little more powerful and elegant for list admins to use. I am trying to hit a home run with this. I may end up doing a bunt instead and getting thrown out at 1st.
The name of the new admin interface: Affinity "Affinity for Mailman [3]". I like it! Steve
Thank you!
Brian
On Mon, Mar 2, 2020, at 12:14 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
brian_carpenter@emwd.com writes:
After much thought, I have decided to break away from the use of Postorius/Hyperkitty. Tomorrow a PHP developer will begin work on brand new admin interface on my behalf. Here are my goals:
I do have some comments. :-)
Before any details, I'll say the core developers applaud this effort. Though we'd like to think Postorius and HyperKitty are great as far as they go, we've always believed that there are many uses cases for Mailman they can't serve well. That includes but is not limited to close integration with integrated platforms such as cPanel and ticketing systems.
- To provide an easy installation approach to the setup and portability of the admin interface.
This is likely to limit the use cases. I encourage you to think carefully about that, and to prioritize the cases you know very well, such as the needs of hosting service administrators. I won't be surprised if you make a lot of ordinary users (subscribers) happy too, but don't get overambitious.
- To reveal everything that Mailman core has via the new admin interface
I myself am not sure why, but Barry has stated that it's hard to do this, at least in the face of current pace of development of Mailman 3 core. I love Barry and deeply respect his judgment, but I find the idea itself offensive :-), so dealing with it on the core side is on my own TODO list. Let's cooperate!
and perhaps to bring in additional features such as the ability to migrate a Mailman 2 list into a Mailman 3 list from a browser interface.
This is already possible in Postorius and HyperKitty for "well-behaved" Mailman 2 lists. Unfortunately I don't have a definition of "well-behaved" (yet, and I don't think it's easy to do). :-/ OTOH, from our point of view, this is a site administrator decision, so doing the conversion at Mailman 3 installation time and the site administrator's convenience is the logical process.
Do you have a specific use case for this? Do you have users (list administrators or virtual domain administrators) who want to try Mailman 3 lists but continue some of their lists with Mailman 2? (I still think this is unlikely to be something core development would prioritize, but I'd like to have real data about it.)
- To bring in the use of stats that a list admin would like to see such as overall number of list members, which list is generating the most bounces, subscription/unsubscription rates, etc.
These are surely going to require core-side features. Speaking for myself, they are desirable features, and I'm pretty sure the core developers will agree.
These features (and more) are already implemented in the Systers forks of Mailman. I can introduce some of their developers (if interested, let's talk off-list, I don't have names and contacts off-hand).
- To provide a list creation wizard for list admins that will automatically create a list that has preset settings in place based upon the input during the list creation wizard.
Again, this is going to require cooperation from core. We have a feature called "list templates" for Mailman 3 in core, which we intend to expose fully in Postorius and populate with common templates. Ask Abhilash, who knows it best I think.
IIUC, what Brian needs is basically an ability to create "List Styles" in the web ui instead of having to make a code change for that purpose.
Templates are mostly meant for emails sent out via Mailman in response to various events.
The name of the new admin interface: Affinity
"Affinity for Mailman [3]". I like it!
Steve
Mailman-Developers mailing list -- mailman-developers@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to mailman-developers-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/mailman-developers.python.org/ Mailman FAQ: https://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3
Security Policy: https://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9
-- thanks, Abhilash Raj (maxking)
Abhilash Raj wrote:
IIUC, what Brian needs is basically an ability to create "List Styles" in the web ui instead of having to make a code change for that purpose. Templates are mostly meant for emails sent out via Mailman in response to various events.
Exactly. It would be great for the overall server admin or superuser to have this ability to create pre-made/configured list types for list administrators who have a particular need to add/remove lists on the fly or find themselves suddenly to have to add a large number of lists that are a mixed of discussion and one-way only lists.
Hello Brian,
Bravo. I applaud this initiative.
Not that you may be concerned, perhaps, but Affinity is the name of a very popular and excellent Photoshop alternative. They obviously don't own the name, but you are always going to sort well below them in terms of SEO and so on.
All the best for this great idea.
Andrew
On Mon, 2 Mar 2020 at 12:14, <brian_carpenter@emwd.com> wrote:
The name of the new admin interface: Affinity
Andrew Bernard wrote:
Hello Brian, Bravo. I applaud this initiative. Not that you may be concerned, perhaps, but Affinity is the name of a very popular and excellent Photoshop alternative. They obviously don't own the name, but you are always going to sort well below them in terms of SEO and so on. All the best for this great idea. Andrew
You haven't seen my SEO skills have you. ;^).
Linking Affinity with Mailman should produce the results I need. Thanks for the heads up though!
Brian
On Sun, Mar 1, 2020, at 4:37 PM, brian_carpenter@emwd.com wrote:
Hello everyone.
I have been a long time supporter of Mailman 2 and now 3. Most of my experience with Mailman has been as a service provider that offers managed mailman hosting both for version 2 and 3. I do have the benefit of a decade+ of insight into the use of Mailman from a list admin, moderator, and member point of view simply via my support ticket system that my Mailman clients have access to.
I want to say that I appreciate all of the hard work that has been put into bringing Mailman 3 to life. I also appreciate the forward thinking that shows itself in the including of a REST api with Mailman 3 and the use of and support of databases such as postgreSQL and MySQL.
I have been using Mailman 3 for over a year now in a commercial/production environment and have installed it on several servers using Docker and now from source. I received quite a bit of feedback from users this past year and also lost about 20% of my Mailman 3 users to other competing list/forum applications. The feedback I received was almost entirely due to shortcomings in the user interface.
After much thought, I have decided to break away from the use of Postorius/Hyperkitty. Tomorrow a PHP developer will begin work on brand new admin interface on my behalf. Here are my goals:
Modernize the admin interface to meet modern design and interface standards.
To provide an easy installation approach to the setup and portability of the admin interface.
To reveal everything that Mailman core has via the new admin interface and perhaps to bring in additional features such as the ability to migrate a Mailman 2 list into a Mailman 3 list from a browser interface.
To bring in the use of stats that a list admin would like to see such as overall number of list members, which list is generating the most bounces, subscription/unsubscription rates, etc.
To provide a list creation wizard for list admins that will automatically create a list that has preset settings in place based upon the input during the list creation wizard.
I am sure there are many hurdles to overcome in the process. When the inevitable questions arises that pertain anything to the Mailman side of this project, I hope I can count on this list for assistance. I am also interested in seeing if I can recruit some of you to test out the new admin interface for usability testing when I reach that stage. I am interested to find out if some of you that have enough experience in PHP to help contribute to this project. Bootstrap 4 and User Interface design skills would also be appreciated.
The name of the new admin interface: Affinity
Wish me well with this new project and let me know on or off list of anything that you would like to see change, removed, implemented into a new admin interface.
All the best! I really like the idea of having more than one option for users to choose from in terms of UI. It would truly make the Mailman Core's API efforts justified :)
I've been quite out-of-sync with opensource work in past few months and my responses are often delayed. Do add me to To:, Cc: if it is something urgent that you'd like me response on though.
Finally, I do want to mention that the REST API is extensible. So, if you need changes/additional details from the Core, we should be able to flush out the design and work on that.
Brian
Mailman-Developers mailing list -- mailman-developers@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to mailman-developers-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/mailman-developers.python.org/ Mailman FAQ: https://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3
Security Policy: https://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9
-- thanks, Abhilash Raj (maxking)
Thanks Abhilash. Will do. Hopefully I can share a screen shot sometime next week of the progress being made.
Brian
Abhilash Raj writes:
I've been quite out-of-sync with opensource work in past few months and my responses are often delayed. Do add me to To:, Cc: if it is something urgent that you'd like me response on though.
I'll be watching, and I'll be sure to pass on all the hard parts^W^W stuff you need to be aware of until Brian and his developer(s) know who's best for what in the source.
Thanks for the correction "list templates" -> "list styles". Of course that's what I meant.
Steve
participants (5)
-
Abhilash Raj -
Andrew Bernard -
Barry Warsaw -
brian_carpenter＠emwd.com -
Stephen J. Turnbull