Manage Your Mailing Lists with MHonArc

Have you been trying to figure out a good way to archive your mailing list messages so others can easily access them? MHonArc could be the perfect answer for you. MHonArc is a Perl program that converts files containing email messages into HTML pages. It is particularly useful for converting mailing list messages into HTML-based archives.

MHonArc is currently installed on DARKWING and GLADSTONE, so if you have an account on one of these machines, the setup is fairly straightforward (but it can be a little bit tricky!) To use MHonArc, you can start by setting up a mailbox in Pine in which to store your messages. When you're ready to create or add to your archive, just type the MHonArc command with the appropriate command line switches.

It would look something like this:

% mhonarc -umask 022 -outdir $HOME/public_html/mhonarchive/$HOME/mail/mhonarc_mail 

In the above command, $HOME/public_html/mhonarchive/ is the path to the web-based archive and $HOME/mail/mhonarc_mail is the path to the source email file.

If you will be archiving messages on a regular basis, you'll want to employ a few other UNIX standbys to assist you:

• You can use procmail to set up automated filters for your incoming email.
• You can create a shell script that includes your MHonArc command and all applicable command line switches.
• You can also set up your MHonArc shell script to run as a "cron" job--meaning it will run at regularly specified time intervals.

If you want to have added control over the look, organization, and content of your mail archives, you can set up your own configuration (or rc) files. rc files are handy for generating multiple indexes, such as a date index and an author index. You can also use rc files to add a little visual pizazz to your archive pages by adding links to graphics or stylizing the HTML.

If you'd like to learn more about using MHonArc, check out MHonArc's site at http://www.mhonarc.org/ or contact Lucy Lynch or listmaster@lists.uoregon.edu for assistance.