Navigate the TU Email List Service and Edit List Membership

The TU Email List Service allows you to participate in electronic discussion groups on many different topics. Faculty, staff and student organizations may request the creation of new lists.

These lists differ from simple distribution lists in the following ways:

  • These lists can be set up to allow members to subscribe or unsubscribe on their own.
  • Owners of these lists have complete and easy control over the list of subscribers.
  • These lists can allow people that are not a part of the TU community to participate in discussion groups.
  • These lists can allow a moderator to choose which messages are approved to be sent to the rest of the members of the list.

To learn how to request your own email list and access TU’s Email List Service through your web browser, open http://lists.towson.edu and select the Home and Help links at the top of the Email List Service website. For guidance on navigating your Email List Service and managing membership, read on.

Navigate the web interface

  1. Open http://lists.towson.edu in your browser and select the Login button in the top corner.
  2. Enter your TU email address and password in the appropriate fields and select the Go button.
  3. Select My Lists to display any lists to which you are subscribed, an owner or a moderator. An admin button beside a list name indicates that you have either owner or moderator privileges.
  4. Select the admin button to display the list's information and management page.

The Information and Management page includes the following sections:

Section Casual Administration
Edit List Config Adjusts configurable settings for the list, such as the list subject, who can send to the list, and the owners and moderators of the list. Links will appear under the Edit List Config link after clicking it; each of these links contains some of the List Config options.
Customizing Customizes messages and text sent to your subscribers, such as welcome messages for new subscribers, and the content on your list’s information page.
Manage Subscribers Shows the current list of subscribers. Also used to manually subscribe and unsubscribe individuals from the list. Use the Multiple add button to perform mass subscriptions.
Blacklist Allows you to maintain an email blacklist. Messages from blacklisted addresses will be ignored; they will not be processed nor distributed to lists. Can use an asterisk as a wildcard to match addresses (e.g.,*@spamdomain.com would block any email addresses from spamdomain.com).
Manage Archives Allows you to download or delete monthly list archives
Bounces A bounce occurs when a remote mail system is unable to deliver mail to a particular email address and a message is sent back to the TU Email List Service, indicating a problem with delivery. Rather than list owners receiving these bounce backs directly, they can be seen from the Bounce screen. Causes for bouncebacks include incorrect or out-of-date email addresses and email “over quota” issues. This screen allows you to identify and remove problematic email addresses from your list of subscribers.
Logs Allows an owner to view and search for recent events occurring on the list. Some of the logged events include administrative actions such as modifying the list configuration, adding or removing subscribers, and email posts to the list.

Subscribe and unsubscribe list members

One of your most common tasks as a list owner will be to manage your subscribers. Upon list creation, list owners are not automatically set to be list subscribers; owner(s) must specifically subscribe themselves to the list in order to receive email from the list. There are two common methods for adding or removing subscribers.

List members subscribe and unsubscribe themselves

List members can subscribe themselves to a list (using the Subscribe and Unsubscribe buttons on the mailing list information page) only if the list is configured to allow self-subscription:

  • The list info page must be set to be viewable by non-subscribers – the Who can view list information setting must be set to open. This is the default setting.
  • The Who can subscribe to the list and who can unsubscribe settings must be set to allow users to subscribe and unsubscribe themselves. It is also possible to require a list owner to approve the subscription request. This is the default setting.

List owners manage member subscriptions

A list owner can directly modify the list membership at any time.

  1. Select the Manage Subscribers link.
  2. You will see the names of all subscribers in your list, including the user’s email address and when they were subscribed. If messages to a particular user are bouncing, the word Bouncing will appear, indicating that the user is not receiving messages.

Add an individual subscriber

Fill in the appropriate email address in the Add a user box at the top of the screen and select Add. If the quiet checkbox is selected, no notification will be sent to the particular user. Otherwise, the user will receive an email indicating the performed action.

Add a group of subscribers at once

  1. Select the Multiple add button.
  2. Type or paste in the list of email addresses and names you wish to subscribe to (one per line)
  3. When the list is complete, select the Add subscribers button. If desired, check quiet at the bottom to prevent all of these addresses from receiving a welcome message.
  4. You will receive a confirmation message on the screen

Remove one or more subscribers

  1. Find the particular user in the list of subscribers and place a check in the checkbox for that row.
  2. When you’ve selected all the users you wish to unsubscribe, select the Delete selected email addresses button. If the quiet checkbox is selected, no notification will be sent to the removed subscribers. Otherwise, they will receive an email indicating their removal from the list.

Remove all subscribers

Before removing all subscribers, it is recommended that you consider using the Dump button near the top of this page to get a list of all subscriber addresses currently in the list; this can be saved to your computer so that you have a backup prior to clearing the list membership.

  1. Select the Clear List Membership button at the bottom of the page.
  2. A confirmation box will appear. Select the OK button to proceed.
     
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