Hi,

Can you tell me if you guys at gt are going to, or have any plans on releasing a mailing list plugin for gossamer mail?

What I'd personally be interested in is something which allows you to do the following...

- Have an unlimited number of mailing lists
- Company X can apply to start a mailing list (which they administer themselves)
- Admin can accept/reject etc Company X's application (similar to the way links works I guess)
- Admin can set user limits on mailing list numbers, possibly a time frame after which the mailing list will expire, or the maximun number of posts allowed for that mailing list by the admin.
- All users get to choose from the selection of mailing lists when they sign up for a new account
- Existing users can access the mailing lists and signup at any stage
- Everyone can opt out of the mailing list at any time

What I was thinking of was having Company X pay to have a mailing list in my webmail system. The admin of the mail service would set it up for them, and include some sort of expiry system so they are prompted to pay again when their time or whatever runs out.

Also (possibly something for later down the track) there could be 2 types of mailing lists - free and paid - the paid being where the user is asked to pay a fee to be included.

Did you happen to have anything like that planned? If not, do you want to buy the idea off me?? ;)

Cheers
Regan.

Hi,

Is this really a plugin or a separate program? I do see the value of this, but I'm not seeing how it would tie into Gossamer Mail. It is a great idea for a separate application, something we might do now that we have a great set of mail modules.

Cheers,

Alex

--
Gossamer Threads Inc.

Hi Alex,

It could easily be its own application, but it would need to be able to hook into the gossamer mail sigup process etc and make use of the each users session information once they were actually validated - hence the suggestion of it as a plugin so it could be fully integrated.

The tie in to gossamer mail is that it becomes an extension to the webmail service which the admins can ultimately make money out of. Traditionally everyone looks to banner ads, or text ads, or pop up/back windows - but with webmail the obvious one to integrate is mailing lists. If a user likes gardening, or recipies, or hotrod cars - the admin can sign up someone who specialises in that to offer a gardening or recipe or hotrod lovers mailing list through your webmail service.

Their shop gets advertising, you get advertising dollars, and users get a value added benefit for signing up through your service over your competitors - they'll also come back more often.

I haven't seen any other webmail packages offering ways for the admins to make from their software as something that's built in - your plugin system seems the perfect way to do it.

Cheers
R.

Go for it and I'll pay to have it.