Mike Bean wrote:

I want to install a mail server on my photographic club's web site to allow all members to send questions announcements etc. to all other members using HTML, Rich Text and Plain text format e-mails and allow embedded and attached files and images (although I accept there may be issues with Outlook user). I will want to manage the registration of all users none of whom will be allowed to self-administer their accounts.

Is this practical with Mailman and are there downsides.

Mailman's content filtering (removal of undesired MIME types/attachments) is tunable and optional, so if you want to accept and deliver mail as posted, it's not a problem. Mailman can add a header and/or footer to delivered posts. If the original message is multipart or not plain text, these are added as separate MIME parts which can confuse some MUAs, but they too are optional.

You can set a list for "subscription requires owner approval". Then if you subscribe members through the admin mass subscribe interface and either don't send a list welcome message or modify the welcome template to not include the user's password or option setting link, which can be done through the list admin interface, and turn off monthly password reminders for the list, you can have almost complete control. You can also turn off the RFC 2369 List-* headers if you think they reveal too much. A user who is knowledgeable about Mailman will still be able to go to the user options page (unless you disable it, but you may want to be able to use it as the list admin) and request a password reminder and use it to set her own list options, but this is unlikely to happen in practice.

-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan