xPL Project Migrating away from Yahoo Groups.

["Ian Lowe" <ianlowe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks.

I trust everyone is having a good festive season - we have been busily
testing a new forum system for xPL support, discussion etc. We are now
happy
that the system is working fine and ready for use, so we are going to be
migrating away from Yahoo groups over the next couple of months.

We know that some people prefer web forums, whilst others prefer email
mailing lists - what we have is the best of both worlds - people can use
the
forums or mailing lists, and the conversations will be passed from one to
the other seamlessly.

*So, What Do we Have?

On www.xpl-home.org we have a PHPBB forum system which contains a variety
of
forums - "Using xPL", "Developing in xPL" etc.

This also runs a system called M2F - Mail to Forum, which is hosting
mailing
lists for these forums -

xpl-user@xxxxxxx
xpl-dev@xxxxxxx

If a user is a member of the Forum, they can post using the web interface,
however, they also have the option of subscribing to the mailing list for
the forum (it uses the email address you sign up to the forums with).

*How does it Work?

Basically, it works as transparently as you could wish for - any new thread
posted in the forum is sent out to the mailing list as a new subject, all
replies to this thread on the forums are sent out with a suitable
"re:"
subject so that threaded mail readers will work fine. A reply from an email
user sent to the maillist is properly attached as a reply to the forum
post,
and a fresh mail from the mailing list starts a new thread.

It's pretty impressive, and lets people use their preferred method of
working (Web Forum vs Mailing List) and have the two work seamlessly
together.

The only thing folks have to remember to do is... Trim your posts!

*What do I do?

Firstly, sign up for the forums -

http://www.xpl-home.org/forums/profile.php?mode=register

Use the email address that you will want to use for mailing list purposes
(unless, of course, you would prefer to just use the web forums direct
rather than using the mailing list interface!).

In the forums you wish to "subscribe" to, click "forum
subscriptions" at the
top of the page

Select the lists(s) you wish to subscribe to and hit "subscribe"
- that's
it. You will then be able to use either the forums or the mailing list (or
both) easily.

The Yahoo group will be closing down no later than 1st March, so we'd
encourage everyone to move across to using the forums by then.