[Mailman-Users] What is the difference between welcome.msg and subscribeack.txt

Mark Sapiro mark at msapiro.net
Fri May 13 12:03:25 EDT 2016


On 5/9/16 5:55 AM, Henrik Rasmussen wrote:
> 
> Both can be edited by the list admin from the admin webinterface in General Options -> welcome_msg and "HTML Page Editing" -> "Welcome email text file", respectively.
> 
> What is the difference between the welcome_msg text box and the subscribeack.txt and why would you, as list admin, edit one over the other?


Historically, the ability to edit the subscribeack.txt template via the
admin UI was added in Mailman 2.1.6. Prior to that there was only the
welcome_msg to customize the welcome message.

The difference is welcome_msg is a list attribute, whereas a custom
subscribeack.txt template is a list and language specific template.

welcome_msg is simpler to edit and is part of the list's configuration,
but is only in the list's preferred language.

subscribeack.txt is more complex to edit, but allows editing of more
that just the 'welcome' paragraph. Also, by changing the list's
preferred_language via the web UI (or directly editing the templates/
directory, see <https://wiki.list.org/x/4030605>), it is possible to
have list specific versions of this template in different languages for
multi-language lists. but these templates are part of the Mailman
instalation itself rather than list attributes.

The bottom line is it probably doesn't matter which you use if the
welcome_msg is sufficient and if you don't need multiple languages, but
if a list is 'moved' to a different installation, the welcome_msg will
go with it ans the subscribeack.txt template(s) won't.

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


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