Conversant conversations have always had an email interface. It allows you to send email to your conversation, which is automatically added to the database of "message content" and then re-mailed to all subscribers.

Our intent was for this to be as easy to use as a traditional mailing list. Unfortunately, the only way to sign up for a Conversant site's mailing list has been via the well hidden member-preference in the web site. That's kept use of the mailing list services down to a minimum.

In keeping with our primary goal this month, which is to make Conversant easier to use, it is now very, very easy to sign up for a Conversant site's mailing list.

Every Conversant site has a unique email address associated with it, used for sending messages to the site. Now, it has two more address, very similar to the first, used for subscribing to - and unsubscribing from - the mailing list.

If your site's regular email address is support-site@free-conversant.com, then the new addresses are support-subscribe@free-conversant.com and support-unsubscribe@free-conversant.com.

By default, anyone can send a message to your conversation's -subscribe address. He (or she) will be added to the conversation (similar to signing up with the /signup page in the web site) if he wasn't already a member, subscribed to the conversation's mailing list, and sent a welcome message with information about posting to the list, unsubscribing, and reading the web-based version of the conversation.

This is really a very simple feature, and works exactly as you'd probably expect it to.

When a -subscribe or -unsubscribe command is sent to the conversation, the subject and body of the message is ignored.

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Security

It is possible to turn this feature off, via the admin interface. Turning it off prevents guests from using this method to become members or subscribing to your mailing list.

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Any questions, let us know!

Seth