Hi Mark et al,

We have been very happy with EMWD as they work tirelessly to mitigate issues since CPanel's server upgrade. Hopefully a couple of remaining things will be resolved shortly. We are aware that Mailman 2's run is pretty much at the end (we are members of the Mailman 2 user's group). We are Administrators of a small neighbourhood group with more than 20 years of archives.

We love the simple functionality of Mailman 2. One post goes to the entire membership by email. Any reply arrives by email; either immediately or as part of the 9:00 am Digest. No websites or browsers or sign-ins. No threads or topics. Simply emails back and forth.

Does Mailman 3 have the ability to function this way?

Might someone invite us to temporarily join their group so we can see how Mailman 3 operates from the point of view of members?

Thanks, Cathy

PS I typed this up earlier but must have lost it. Apologies if it's a repeat.

Hi,

Although I'm replying to Thomas, I'm going to address this message to Cathy.

Thomas Ward via Mailman-users writes:

You'll have to talk to EMWD to see if your archives will be kept with the migration. They have a completely custom web interface for archival.

When I talked with Brian several years ago he emphasized that moving to Mailman 3 at EMWD would be seamless. Presumably that would include moving the archives, which is quite straightforward if you're starting from a stock Mailman 2.[1]

EMWD uses their **own custom UI** for management and archiving. This means that we can't give you any real guidance on EMWD and such for how it relates to user management, etc.

This isn't really a problem though. Either way, the new UI will be new to your administrators, and EMWD has historically had an extremely good reputation for working with administrators on such things.[2] But your *subscribers* are *not* using the web interface. Perhaps that will change, but you aren't worried about that, rather that Mailman 3 will enforce use of a web UI. It won't -- if your users don't personalize their profiles in Mailman 2, there's no need for them to start in Mailman 3.

The intermediate case is the moderators, but I bet you are doing little or no moderation, and again, EMWD is probably happy to help their clients with that level of education.

Also, you did mention the archives. If users are using the archives, the UI will change (either EMWD or HyperKitty). I would expect that could be an issue. As far as that going, EMWD probably has client- focused lists that use their web UIs that you could subscribe to, or perhaps are already subscribed to!

I haven't looked at the mockups of Affinity etc that Brian published in years, but at the time they seemed streamlined compared to Postorius and HyperKitty. Between the fact that the "email-only" day-to-day operation you have with Mailman 2 will continue without a hitch with either stock Mailman 3 web UIs or EMWD web UIs, and Brian's pride in his work, I think that you should run, not walk, to EMWD and ask them the same questions.

Of course all of my estimates of what EMWD would or would not be happy to do should be confirmed by asking them!

Moving to a different hosting service or setting up your own server would be another matter, but as long as you're continuing to work with EMWD whom you find trustworthy, the sooner you move the better.

Steve

Footnotes: [1] There were enough differences between the Mailman 2 and 3 web UIs that he wasn't going to force anyone to upgrade. Organizations that depend on using the web UIs for their daily workflow could have their efficiency degraded while people learned the new system. This is especially true for the new EMWD web UIs for configuration and archives. But he was confident that the transition would not cause long interruptions in service or changes in the way you send, receive, and work with mail.

[2] Working with even dozens of users is another matter, and I can imagine that EMWD would draw the line there.

-- GNU Mailman consultant (installation, migration, customization) Sirius Open Source https://www.siriusopensource.com/ Software systems consulting in Europe, North America, and Japan

Mark Sapiro wrote:

I'm not sure if we can help with the issues you're having, but if you tell us what they are, we can try.

Upon rereading your initial post, I now think I understand that the issues you are having are with the current cPanel fork of Mailman 2.1 called Mailman 2.2 and running under Python 3. I know there are multiple issues with this, some of which have been addressed by cPanel, but porting a program like Mailman 2.1 to Python 3 is going to be full of issues mostly due to character encoding because Python 3 strings are different from Python 2 strings. There will be encoding and decoding errors all over the place. I think cPanel is working on these but the fixes aren't necessarily simple.

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

On 6/8/25 20:18, Cathryn McGuire wrote:

Hi Mark, Stephen & Thomas,

We've successfully merged our Mailman 2 list into Mailman 3. EMWD worked over the weekend to get it done for our members. We're pretty grateful.

There are a few things we're trying to get our heads around, specifically to do with the Affinity Web UI. Most of it is pretty self explanatory, and I can see where it will be more aesthetically pleasing to manage, but a few things that aren't so intuitive.

Affinity is a proprietary product of EMWD. At one point during the development of Affinity, when Brian C was still alive, I had access to a demo version, but no more.

I don't know if there are any EMWD Mailman 3 users on this list, but I suspect your best resource for Affinity questions is EMWD.

Is anyone working with Mailman 3 and Affinity that could help us through the set up? For instance, when I log in as owner and go to change my password, it won't take a new one and asks me (with a pull down menu box) which account I want to change the password for, and it gives me a list of my emails, and also the other owner's email address. When I choose the email I'm logged in under, it says it's not the correct "credentials."

Has anyone had this issue?

Have you actually created an Affinity login? I believe initially, you have to sign up before you can sign in, even if you are the listowner.

Another thing is, and Stephen J. Turnbull prepared us for this, that the transferred membership are all "enabled" but not "registered." I understand we have to send a membership wide notification with a link to the Affinity log in page, and instructions going to the top right hand and clicking on the login icon, putting in their email address (the one in the system) and adding a password OR do they have to "create" a new sign in?

If it works like our web UI, they have to create a new sign in. You do too. The process that imports a Mailman 2.1 list to a Mailman 3 list does not create web UI logins.

Thanks for any info you can give us about Affinity. (I see Brian Carpenter was beta testing it 4 years ago.) Cheers, Cathryn

I was one of the people working with Brian back then to try out and give feedback on Affinity, but I've probably forgotten all I knew at that time. There may be current EMWD/Affinity users on this list, but as I said, your best support resource is probably EMWD.

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