ezmlm offers virtually infinite possibilities for customization. The more common types of lists can be created and configured with a single ezmlm-make(1) command. For more complicated lists and a discussion of how ezmlm works, see More Information.
Normal mailing lists are public, i.e. anyone can subscribe/unsubscribe, and access the list archive. Occasionally, you may want to set up a non-public list, where (un)subscribe actions are possible only from the command line or remotely by the administrator(s). This is controlled by the ezmlm-make(1) ‘-P’ switch and the DIR/public control file.
The digest is a collection of messages, produced about every two days. If more than 30 messages or 64 kbytes of “message body” have arrived since the latest digest, the digest is sent earlier. All these criteria can be changed with the ‘-4’ option in versions 6 and earlier, or with the DIR/digcount, DIR/digsize, and DIR/digtime files in version 7. Also, lists can be set up to produce digests at a specific time each day, every other day, etc (see More Information).
Some users do not get involved in discussions on the list but rather want to read messages on a specific topic. For these users, a digest with sorted messages is much preferable to receiving the messages one at a time. These users would subscribe to the digest list, rather than to the list itself.
To set up a digest list with the list, all you need to do is to use the ezmlm-make ‘-d’ switch or create the DIR/digested control file. The digest of the list ‘list@host’ is always called ‘list-digest@host’. Thus for the list ‘mailinglist@example.org’, the digest list would be ‘mailinglist-digest@example.org’.
The digest can be sent in several formats. The default, MIME with removal of “non-essential” headers is virtually always the best. A “format-specifier” can be used with the ezmlm-get(1) ‘-f’ switch or DIR/digformat control file to override this. ‘v’ returns MIME with all headers, and ‘r’ a rfc1153-like non-MIME format (see More Information). You can use DIR/digheaders to specify the message headers included for archive excerpts when using the ‘m’ (default) format.