[sf-lug] SF-LUG list (etc.) hosting: Re: Belated writeup of last SF-LUG meeting

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ronald Barnes (ron at ronaldbarnes.ca):

> Rick Moen wrote on 2023-09-10 23:06:
> 
> >Which leads me to another thing Michael's suggesting:  It's generally
> >speaking a good idea to put mailing lists on a subdomain, the usual
> >one being lists.$FOO , analogous to the domain's Web site being at
> >www.$FOO, and sometimes non-lists e-mail at mail.$FOO .
> 
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's so the web interface to mailman
> can be on port 80 at lists.$foo while port 80 on $foo can serve up
> other sites?

It's so that lists.$foo can point to _anywhere_, including, without
limitation, on the same host that serves Web pages from unqualified
domain $foo and/or www.$foo.  Also, even more usefully, where that
points to can then be changed by you, transparently to users.

> However, I do find it awkward to have mailing lists reside at
> @lists.bclug.ca, so I have entries in my /etc/postfix/canonical file
> to allow @bclug.ca lists messages to work too:
> 
> > discuss at bclug.ca        discuss at lists.bclug.ca
> 
> etc.

Sure, you can do that.  Don't forget to configure each Mailman list (in
the admin webUI) to recognise that as a valid alternate address,
otherwise Mailman will reject received mail as "implicitly addressed" 
(a spam-suspect trait).

> It's a daunting task, and scary having one's own email server open
> to all the malicious actors out there.

Well... default setups of MTAs are good enough to defeat various ways to
exploit the MTA as an open forwarder.  (That was pretty much a 1990s 
problem.)  What distros' default MTA setups are reportedly still _not_
good enough at, is antispam.  Configuring effective antispam thus
becomes a separate, post-installation problem.

> My domain registrar has begun charging for email hosting, so I'm
> looking at moving at least my email away from them to a VPS
> (actually cheaper, even for a single domain), perhaps all domain
> registry business as well.

Can work well.  However, beware that many VPSes' IP netblocks suffer bad
established spam reputation, i.e., their IPs are on DNSBLs, because of 
past disreputable customers who used to operate spamhauses there.

You could hang up your shingle on a shiny new virthost, only to find out
that you're suffering poor deliverability because of the bad reputation
of a customer who used the IP before you.