Automate the creation of 900 Mailman lists.

[GrantHorizons]

Hi,

Just discovered Macro Express, and wondering if it is possible to, as the subject says, Automate the creation of 900 Mailman lists.

My former webhost went bust, so I was forced to move to a new host and server. The old setup used EZMLM, a good solid but ancient mailing list system. The new host uses cPanel and Mailman 2.x as the "latest and greatest" - well that's all relative since it dates back to around 2001...

But here we are, that's the platform.

After much research, there seems to be no way using the supplied tools to create 900 lists easily.

The process is one list  at a time in the web interface, set various parameters on several pages, and upload the email addresses to the lists from text files with the name of each text file being the name of the list, then move on to the next. That's at least 3 minutes each x 900 = I don't want to know...

CAN Macro Express do this?? Within of course a reasonable learning time...

Of course I'm open to any suggestions too! :)

Thanks, Grant

[Cory]

MEP is cumbersome automating large batches of anything on a webpage. There's no controls or such so one's best best is to develop a process using tabs and other keyboard commands. Timing is usually a PitA but if you're only doing it once, you could slow it down to a snails pace. But you need some checks in there so that it doesn't go off the rails. 

 

Something that works in a web browser would probably be better like iMacros. But it's not as easy to learn as MEP. 

 

Have you considered using the limited but free mailing services from providers like MailChimp or Constant Contact?

[GrantHorizons]

Yes, unfortunately there all sorts of restrictions when you hit large numbers, it becomes expen$ive.

I need something that works in the browser but can also go outside and read a batch of text files, or a csv.

Thanks for the info, much appreciated!

[rberq]

     The process is one list  at a time in the web interface, set various parameters on several pages

 

Feasibility would depend on whether the lists all have roughly the same parameters.  You could perhaps develop one macro per web page, to tab from one field to the next and "type" the data in each field.  Then you would manually switch to the next web page, trigger the next macro to fill out that page, and so on.  Macro Express is good at typing into standard forms.  It's a lot harder if you have to worry about timing, waiting for the web site to respond, switching web pages, and so on -- so those things can be done manually.  It sounds like this is a one-time project, so if you have macros to do, say, 80% that would be a big step.  

 

     read a batch of text files, or a csv

 

Macro Express can do both pretty easily.

I think your biggest problem would be the learning curve for Macro Express.  At 3 minutes per list, 900 lists is 45 hours of drudgery.  If you look at this as a one-shot deal, it's maybe simpler to suffer the drudgery.  But if you learn Macro Express, you will doubtless find more uses for it in the future.

[Cory]

1 hour ago, rberq said:

But if you learn Macro Express, you will doubtless find more uses for it in the future

Hear, hear. 

[GrantHorizons]

Yes it's one shot. And there are only two different types of lists - 75 of one, which COULD be done manually - and 825 all identical except for name and email addresses.

However, it does sound like the learning curve is steep, and thus questionable whether it's worth it.

I thought about the virtues generally for my work, but there isn't much routine about it. I use Quicktext in Thunderbird for entering boilerplate into email, and Beeftext for boilerplate text elsewhere, but they're very simple to use and work fine.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, it's greatly appreciated.

 

[Cory]

In cases like this you could do a semi-auto approach. It's easy to create a simple set of keystrokes from the CSV. Timing from page to page is often the place where it gets tricky. But if you're willing to do some keyboard time, it could make manual entry faster. I am imagining going to an input form and clicking in the first field. Now fire the macro and it types in all the fields. Maybe even click the OK button. Then pauses. Then when the server digests the new input you move to that first field and continue.

So you do this 900 times. That sucks but you avoid the more complicated parts and it would be much faster than manual. 

 

Or... Maybe not repeat. Maybe each time it fires it saves a file with the index of the line you just did. Then instead of looping the macro, it just goes to that point again. That way if something goes wrong, you're not stuck in a loop and having to restart the macro. I'd be happy to set up the framework for this for you.  You would just put your text typing in. Or send me the tabs and input fields and I'll do it for you. Make me a dummy CSV file too. 

[GrantHorizons]

That's very generous of you Cory.

It's not so simple though - it's multiple web pages per list name.

So:

read name of txt file A stored either on the web or locally in a folder,

go to webpage,

enter name, add list admin email address and a couple of other radio buttons,

submit,

go to a webpage with that list name and other parts to make a full url,

tick radio buttons, maybe enter field or two,

and new page similar criteria, tick radio buttons, maybe enter field or two,

and new page similar criteria, tick radio buttons, maybe enter field or two,

and new page similar criteria, tick radio buttons, maybe enter field or two,

and new page similar criteria,

get email addresses from original text file,

enter into page, submit, done.

loop to txt file B and on...

 

 

[Cory]

Gotcha. You would need to spend a little time learning the commands and concepts you would need to do that. 
There's no mass input capability? That's hard to believe. 

[GrantHorizons]

After MUCH research and asking the Mailman wiki guys for both v2 and 3, and the webhost, and cPanel - nope, there's nothing. I think no one can conceive of that many lists!