The newsletter server allows you to have topic specific newsletters that others can ‘subscribe’ and ‘unsubscribe’ to.  In your advertising, you should say something like “send an email message with ‘subscribe <newsletter>’ in the subject and you will be automatically sent our current and future newsletters”.

The newsletter server can be run by anyone with an assigned password – either locally or from a remote location.  The appointed author communicates and controls the newsletter server by sending specifically formatted and password protected email messages that trigger different processes on the server.  The system administrator controls the degree of access given to newsletter authors.

To create or update the actual newsletter, the author should send an email message to the newsletter server with a subject of ‘<password> -u <newsletter>.txt’, (-u stands for upload), with the message body containing the new or updated newsletter.  Names of newsletters cannot exceed nine characters.

When users/subscribers send messages to the newsletter server with a subject of ‘help <newsletter>’, the basic information file will be sent to the user.  The author can update the newsletter information file by sending an email message to the newsletter server with a subject of ‘<password> -u <newsletter>.inf’, with the message body containing the new or updated newsletter information file.

To initiate newsletter mailings, the author sends an email message to the newsletter server with a subject of ‘<password> -m <newsletter>’, (-m stands for mail), with anything in the message body.

To create new newsletters, the author should send an email message to the newsletter server with a subject of ‘<password> -c new_<newsletter>’, (-c stands for create), with the message body containing the new newsletter file.

To manually edit or change the newsletter mailing list, the author can upload/download the mailing list by sending an email message to the newsletter server with a subject of ‘<password> -u or –d new_<newsletter>’, (-u and –d stand for upload and download), with the message of the body containing the new newsletter mailing list.

Newsletters are sent as soon as the incoming mailbox processor receives a valid newsletter request.  When the newsletter server receives requests that it cannot process, it sends a status message back to the user describing why the request failed.

To test the newsletter server, create a test newsletter, then send messages to the newsletter server and observe how they are processed.

For an author to learn how to communicate with the newsletter server, all the author needs to do is send a message with just ‘help’ in the subject.  The newsletter server will then email the master help file to the author which provides specific information about the newsletter server and how the author can communicate with it.