SMF Mailing List request

[Ralphy]

Hello guys,

I would like to know if there are developers here who may support non-free customizations. I'm trying to deploy SMF for the first time and therefore I have no experience with it whatsoever.

My only real problem with the entire deployment so far is the fact that we need Mailing list capabilities to post and reply by email. Unfortunately, the SFM plugin available does not seem to work in version 2.0.8. I've tried to run it in compatibility mode and that doesn't help either. I decided to post in this section since the support thread for that mod hasn't been active for more than 120 days.

SMF is impressive! I love its simplicity.

Cheers!

[Kindred]

There are MAJOR security issues with this sort of thing....

[Ralphy]

Is it there any alternative that you may be aware of offering Mailing capabilities? It is rather a necessity for me to have mailing list capabilities in my board.

[Kindred]

Thing is... Mailing lists are the exact opposite of forums...

A mailing list defeats the purpose of a forum, which is public community.

[Arantor]

Not to mention that emails are quite possibly one of the worst formats for discussion of anything more than two post/response exchanges.

[Ralphy]

Guys, I truly appreciate the time you've taken to respond. I'll assume that the answer to my question is simply "No, there aren't alternatives at the moment".

In my personal opinion, mailing lists are very handy. We run our board on Nabble and we (2 guys) support few thousand users in our project. The community benefits from posts regardless.

[Arantor]

No, that wasn't what we said, actually.

There are alternatives. They're all terrible for discussion purposes and have significant side effects. For one way traffic, it can work. For many short discussions, Q&A type stuff, it can work. But for a normal forum environment, even ten posts in a single topic is an unpleasant mash when primarily by email. Been there, done that.

Reply by email is a slightly different side issue, and still opens you up to all kinds of spam issues, not to mention an inherent unreliability.

[Kindred]

I used to run a mailing list...   several, as a matter of fact.
I converted them all over to forums - with great applause from the users, I might add.

I still subscribe to a single mailing list...   90% of which hits the spam folder or trash bin immediately.   Forums are much more convenient...  I read what I want, when I want to and don't have it forced in my face in my inbox... (with the number of mobile devices in use these days, stuffing people's inboxes with mailing list posts is obnoxious, I am sorry to say....)