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Hi Kim, We have been discussing doing something similar with Tapegerm.com. Currently our e-groups list is an internal one for discussion amongst the 25 loopers that make up Tapegerm, and we haven't seen any need to change this, but we are running our site on some donated server space and have been loking for some ways to find a situation where we can share server space and have it pay for itself. Mostly what we need our internal ftp access for sharing loops, and website as well on which we are planning to offering more things down the road. My question to you is how have you been able to get it to pay for itself? Thanks for any insight you might be able to provide. Scott Carr http://www.tapegerm.com Kim Flint wrote: > > > At 2:55 PM -0800 1/4/01, Todd Quincy wrote: > >This is primarily for Kim but I thought others may benefit. > > > >Kim, I would like to know how I would be create a email-chatroom like >the > >this one for my site. Is this a program I can buy, how much space will >it > >eat up. > > The Looper's Delight mailing list runs on Smartlist, a free and > open-sourced mailing list application that has been around for many >years. > Smartlist runs on unix and linux servers, and if you are reasonably > comfortable with that it is not hard to set up. I run it on an x86 based > linux server. I like Smartlist because it is very fast and very easy to > customize any way you like. It readily offers most options you might want > for a list, but then there is a user community that has created many > additional add-ons over the years. And if you get more adventurous you >can > code your own. Smartlist is based on procmail, a free and open-sourced > mail scripting language that is widely used on unix and linux servers for > mail processing. You can find info on both at http://www.procmail.org. > > eGroups is probably easier to set up, but then as listowner you are >giving > up control over your's and the list's destiny. You will be at the mercy >of > their policies and the future viability of their shakey dotcom business > plan. Personally, I'm not willing to do that. > > Indeed, I even took Looper's Delight out of the world of retail >web-hosting > for similar reasons. Everywhere I tried I found the services to be far >too > unreliable and the quality of support to be incompetent on a good day. >You > never know when a host company is going to blink out of business without > warning, or sell your accounts to some other company that has no idea >what > they are doing. (that happened to me twice.) Some of you probably >remember > a couple years ago when the site was completely offline for significant > chunks of time due to lame web hosting companies. I couldn't tolerate >that > any longer. Also, with a site as large as Looper's Delight, the >incremental > charges I was forced to pay as things grew became exhorbitant. Especially > considering how lousy the service was and that you usually share the >server > with hundreds of other sites doing who knows what. > > So instead I got my own server at a co-location facility, and partnered > with a couple of other mid-sized sites to share the cost. I've not had >any > problems since. We have a whole server to ourselves, we have total >control > over it and can do anything we want, and we have plenty of breathing room > to grow, and it is cheaper for sites this large than any retail web-host. > (in fact, we can fit another partner, if anybody with a large site is > interested.) > > Another benefit to running your own list: If you are a business, or you > want a more professional feel to your site, or you want a more integrated > user community, keeping it all together on one site is definitely the way > to go. The list will bring people to the rest of your site and >vice-versa. > Likewise, archives of the list will bring in new users from search >engines, > who will then likely explore the rest of your site. This will increase > traffic and participation at your site exponentially, while giving users >a > more complete experience. (Looper's Delight now gets about 400,000 hits a > month from about 60,000 different visitors, mainly due to the archive - >and > it keeps growing like a weed....) You won't get that effect with an > outside service like eGroups. But if you just want to throw together some > temporary discussion list and you don't care about such things, eGroups >is > probably easier to deal with. > > Some other technical details for you geeks out there: the Looper's >Delight > mailing list archive is automatically put together using Mhonarc, a > wonderful mail-to-html convertor. (http://www.mhonarc.org) The search > engine is an older version of glimpse, which is nice and fast, although a > bit buggy. (we built in some work-arounds for the bugs....) At the top >is > a program tying glimpse and mhonarc together called "wilma". Wilma is > functional but cosmetically ugly. I've been meaning to get in and give >it a > face-lift but haven't gotten around to it. Such changes are easy though, > because again: wilma is open-sourced and free! You can find all three of > those through the mhonarc site. > > hope this was interesting, > kim > > ______________________________________________________________________ > Kim Flint | Looper's Delight > kflint@loopers-delight.com | http://www.loopers-delight.com -- ~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~% Visit the the home of Hebephrenic, The Hot Buttered Elves, & Sunshine http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/tape_hiss and our sites on the worlds largest online cut-out bin http://www.mp3.com/hotbutteredelves http://www.mp3.com/hebephrenica ~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%