Browsing the archives for the Tech Tips category

Hack to fix Django staticfiles on same host

I recently thought my hosting provider “must have done something” because my Django site suddenly lost all style sheets and other static assets. The pages rendered but they looked bare-bones, and trying to load my site’s main CSS file (/static/css/site.css) produced a page not found error. After some research I noticed on https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/howto/static-files/#configuring-static-files “During development, if […]

How to Clean Malware and Viruses Off a Windows PC with Free Software

Background I recently needed to move from an old PC that had developed the click of death to a newer PC someone gave me for free—except that it was riddled with viruses and malware (spyware, adware, trojans, etc.). I’d have liked to wipe the new PC and put a fresh Windows XP copy on it, but […]

Listserv to Mailman Part 3.3: Tips, Tricks, and Notes

An appendix listing some commands I found useful, some notes I made along the way that are worth reading through, and some other pages I found helpful and which hadn’t been mentioned already.

Listserv to Mailman Part 3.1: Converting Listserv Archives to Mailman

Converting Listserv’s proprietary notebook files to Mailman’s mbox format, generating web-viewable archive pages from the mbox files, and an important note about disk space.

Listserv to Mailman Part 2.3: Migrating Subscribers And Keeping Them In Sync

Determining which Listserv subscribers have various options set, which Mailman options correspond with those Listserv subscriber options, exporting subscribers from old Listserv lists for importing to new Mailman lists, copying over subscription options, keeping subscriber options in sync between Listserv and Mailman, updating subscriber files for web server objects/scripts, and a note about having a Mailman user password strategy.

Listserv to Mailman Part 2.2: Creating Mailman Lists Based On Listserv Lists

Analyzing and grouping your Listserv lists based on current settings, which Mailman list settings are equivalent to which Listserv settings, setting up Mailman list setting templates for each configuration group, and creating Mailman lists in bulk instead of one-by-one.

Listserv to Mailman Part 2.1: Installing an Administrative Command Handler

Installing a program to handle administrative commands sent by email (e.g., from a CGI script), including a few helper files needed by the handler, testing to check that the files were installed correctly, and some problems we encountered and solved.

Listserv to Mailman Part 1.2: Installing Swish for Archive Searching

Choosing an archive search package for Mailman, about the Swish-E package for archive indexing/searching, and Swish-E filter/helper add-ons for indexing attachment files like PDFs and Word docs.