Q. Why do I need a mailing list?
A. Because as a chapter owner, you will need a way to make announcements to your chapter members/ provide them a way to interact. You will also need to coordinate between many people to get stuff working. It is definately easier to send a single mail to mychapter@itbhu.org as opposed to 10 people whose e-mail id's you may forget. Further, this provides a way of having a dynamic list of people, with the new people coming in and the old/inactive ones going off.

Q. So, how do I create one?
A. You don't!! e-mail the ITBHU.org List Administrator telling your name, e-mail address, preferred name for your mailing list (make sure it is not the same as your ssh login on itbhu.org) and a brief description of the mailing list. It will be created for you. You will receive a confirmation e-mail which will tell you that a new mailing list has been created. It will also have instructions on how to invite people. Send the instructions to the people you want in the mailing list. You will have to approve each request.
IMPORTANT: Your first task should be to subscribe yourself to the mailing list. The owner is not added automatically as the first member of the group.

Q. Who will manage my mailing list?
A. You(the owner of the chapter mailing list) will. Please try to resolve your doubts/queries using this FAQ. If nothing works, visit the "Whom to contact" FAQ page and contact the appropriate person.

Q. What are the tasks involved in maintaining a mailing list?
A. Mainly the following:

1. Adding/Removing members
2. Approving subscription/unsubscription requests

Note: In the examples that follow, the name of the mailing list is mychapter
Also, read this excellent tutorial in your free time.

Q. How do I issue commands to majordomo?
A. The way to issue commands to majordomo is to send an e-mail to majordomo@itbhu.org with the command as the first line in the message-body. Remember, THE COMMAND IS THE FIRST LINE OF THE BODY OF THE MESSAGE (not the subject). Do not start your mail with "Dear list admin.".

Q. How do I add members to my mailing list?
A. You send an e-mail to the person whom you want to add and ask him to issue the command

subscribe mychapter

Alternatively, you can issue the command

subscribe mychapter newmember@hisdomain.com

Remember, you can issue multiple commands in one e-mail. Use this feature to add multiple members at a time, but remember to save this mail, as this comes in very handy when approving those memberships (read 'approving' below). Always end your commands by the command

end

or leave the rest of the body COMPLETELY BLANK, not even signatures.

Q. How do I remove members from my mailing list?
A. Issue the command

unsubscribe mychapter someone@somewhere.com

Members can remove themselves by issuing

unsubscribe mychapter

but you will have to approve each such request.

Q. How do I change the list password (used for approvals etc.)?
A. Issue the command

passwd mychapter old-password new-password

Note that this password is stored in plaintext form on itbhu.org. Do not use your login password for this!

Q. How does one post messages to the mailing list?
A. Send the message in an e-mail to

mychapter@itbhu.org

Q. I got an e-mail asking me to approve a request for membership. What do I do?
A. Do what the mail tells you to do. In particular, if you have issued a list of subscribe commands in a previous mail to majordomo, each approval request will be in a separate mail. Remember to save the first mail, do a bit of editing on this to issue multiple commands of the form

approve PASSWD subscribe mychapter newmember@somewhere.com

Q. Anything else?
A. Not that I know of presently, but be sure to mail the ITBHU.org List Administrator with any ideas/suggestions/queries you have. If you are comfortable with technical jargon, visit the official majordomo FAQ. A nice (simpler) link for newbies is the IEEE Majordomo Tutorial for ListOwners
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As a chapter coordinator or an author of one of the ITBHU.org sites, you may be puzzled by the term blog.

Here is some background. The ITBHU.org site actually consists of several, semi-independent sites. These sites share similar content layout, color scheme and are hosted on the same server under the ITBHU.org address but the information content of each site is independently managed by a small group of alumni with exclusive posting privileges for that site. This way, a focused alumni group interested in running a local ITBHU.org chapter or a specific project such as Library improvement or the IITization effort manages their site without interfering with or dependence on other sites. This orchestrated delegation and autonomy empowers volunteers to do their bit freely.

At the outset, we wanted these focused groups to be able to launch their sites quickly without getting bogged down with the details of setting up their own server, their own domain name, their own content management system, hiring a designer that does the graphics and the HTML, etc. etc. In fact, when ITBHU.org started a year ago, we found that by the time charged up alumni solved half these problems, they lost momentum. Or conversely, if they ignored these problems, the word about their amazing work never got out and never gathered momentum and wide recognition. We had to solve this problem first in order to be the global umbrella organization for all ITBHU alumni.

The first goal of ITBHU.org was to empower alumni groups to focus on what they do best: authoring content for their site from time to time and leaving all the above details to be solved by a core set of ITBHU.org volunteers once for all.

Then we stumbled upon the newly emerging weblog (shortened to blog) technology. In simple terms, a Blog is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically—like a what's new page or a journal. Many blogs are personal musings, while others are collaborative efforts based on an area of mutual interest. It was the collaborative aspect of the blog technology and its continued momentum as an evolving technology with open source foundation that convinced us to zero in on the Movable Type system. (In our humble opinion, today the blog technology is to the future of structured, secure and updatable web what the hyperlink technology was to the world wide web ten years ago.)

We are using it as a collaborative, web content authoring and management tool. The best thing about the tool is that it allows for the separation of responsibilities among three types of experts that pretty much operate independently without stepping on each other's toes:

1. the authors of content post articles as and when they please marking them for a specific site and category;
2. the template experts define the layout of how the authored information modules are presented -- for example, displaying five latest postings in the center column, ten latest comments on the right column, links to all the chapters in the left column, and so forth; and
3. the site designer define the stylesheets that govern the fonts, colors, borders, spacing, titles, dates, etc. for each of the information modules.

So the core group of ITBHU.org volunteers focuses on the second and third bullet creating a shared infrastructure for the management of all the ITBHU.org sites. While the alumni authors get a running start on their project or chapter by focusing on only the first bullet.

As we raise more money, we would definitely love to outsource the third bullet to a professional stylesheet designer for a better look and feel. We can also outsource part of the second bullet so they can finesse the templates for say making all the sites look more corporateish and less bloggish, or any other flavor, with one click of a mouse.

Lastly, we are actually seeing interest from other voluntary organizations to use some of our technology to streamline their collaborative work. As a non-profit organization, we intend to share this freely with others.

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This example is for posting the minutes of a chapter meeting on the chapter's site. Note that our content management system may use the term blog at many places. For our purpose it is synonymous to one of the ITBHU.org websites such as this Chapters FAQ site, the From the Institute site, the site for your chapter, etc.

These instructions can be used for posting an article to any other ITBHU.org site under one of the categories defined for that chapter.

1. Login to the content management system at http://www.itbhu.org/cgi-bin/mt.cgi with the username and password you were assigned as an author.
2. If you have author privileges to multiple ITBHU.org sites, the first screen lists all of them. Click on the link for your chapter, something like ITBHU.ORG: Your Chapter Name.
3. Click on "New Entry" in top left menu.
4. For Title, type the title of the article such as Nov 11, 2003 Chapter Meeting Minutes.
5. For the Primary Category, pull down to a category name such as Announcements.
6. In Entry Body, type in the text of the minutes of your meeting. For a new paragraph, simply enter an empty line. You don't have to type any HTML. You may freely do so if you wish to further embellish the presentation. Licensed versions of the software, when we get it after raising enough funds, would allow for entering WYSIWYG content like most other HTML editors.
7. Scroll down on the form and click SAVE.

That is it! Your entry is visible on the site at its proper place immediately. You may have to reload the site to make sure your browser refreshes if the site is cached.

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