Several Questions From A Newbie Webmistress

[newbiewebmistress]

salutations and hallucinations,

i am currently hosting our non profit website on a friend's server. he is also hosting our 5 email lists - but we have outgrown his server.. here are my questions:

(i apologize in advance because i am sure that this stuff is covered - but i am not

very technical, and often, i am not sure if i am interpreting things correctly. when i took on the task as "web master" - i had never created a webpage.. i said, sure,

i'll figure out how to do that cuz we need a webpage.. thanks for your patience).

 

our current stats:

 

our website www.tmott.org has several email lists (via mailman, i think)

allmoms@tmott.org closed announcement list, limited to 5 posters, others as

approved. 600 members.. 15 approx emails/month

 

allmomsdiscuss@tmott.org closed discussion list, 150+ members, posting limited

to approved subscribers.

 

2 other small (30 members) announcement lists - 1 - 5 posts/month..

1 other small discussion list (30 mem) - 10 - 20 posts / month

 

needs:

1. be able to have the lists named the same as above for continuity

2. prefer email posts as opposed to message boards.

3. timely posts (i found one place that offered free email lists, but you had

use their server name, be subjected to gobs and gobs of advertisements, and

wait FOUR to FIVE hours for the post to show up in your mailbox. the moms on

our discussion list would have my head on a platter if they had to wait that long..

 

questions:

1. can we retain our existing list names and continue functioning as an email list (as opposed to a message board)?

2. if some members want to be "subscribed" and participate in a message board format, is that also possible? i presume that one can also keep a message board's membership closed and by approval only?

3. how long does it take from pressing send til the time the email ends up in your inbox? (btw - i'd like to limit our notes to text only. its faster, doesnt fill up small email boxes. i presume there is a way to limit the size of the post)

4. do y'all accept pmt in check? our non-profit organization does not have a cc. we could probably pay 1 yr at a time.

 

misc info:

when it comes time for me to move forward with this, i will have my husband (aka super nerd) to assist.. so i do have some "tech support" on this side...

 

btw - i posted a note on my local motorcycle group looking for suggestions, and one of the members recommended totalchoicehosting.com. he said he was very pleased with the service... if this service looks as good as it sounds, im very excited..

 

thanks in advance,

newbiewebmistress

[bellringr]

Hi I'm not a TCH staff person, but yes, you can have e-mail only mail lists named whatever you would like @yourdomain.org. I will leave the technical aspects of transferring domains, etc to the staff.

 

I have two mail lists, one has around 10 members, the other is probably close to 30 or 40 and growing, and I've not noticed any delay issues so far. I can choose to either have them go out as digests or as single e-mails.

 

As for message boards, there are a couple you can install through TCH. I'm a noob too and haven't taken the plunge to install one, but everyone here is very willing to help out with any questions/problems you might encounter.

 

TCH is a great place to have a site! I don't think you'd be disappointed.