Open a web browser such as Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer and log in at http://lists.groundwire.org/ The first time you log in you’ll have to request that Sympa send you a password. You can request a password by filling in your email address and clicking on the request password button on the page. If you’ve forgotten your password, you can also use this page to request your password—just fill in your email address and click the proper button.

After you login, click on the Create List link at the top of the page. When naming your list try to make it relatively short, memorable and specific to your organization. Remember, we host over 1000 lists so we’ve seen, and rejected, the list name “newsletter” several times.  And while “legcommittee” or “legislativecommittee” might seem appropriate to you, we’d suggest appending something specific to your organization on the list name.  For example, if your organization is called “Friends of Tiny Creek” you can name your list fotc-board or fotc-legcommittee. Also, Sympa doesn't accept list names with spaces in them, so use a hyphen, underscore or no spaces at all in your list name.

Next decide if your list will be a broadcast newsletter or private discussion list. In a broadcast list, one person (usually the list owner) will send out emails to multiple recipients. In a private discussion, all subscribers send email around to each other freely. Next, choose a subject for your list.

 There is some understandable confusion about the request for you to classify your list by “Alphabetical Topic Category.” This simply means that you should choose the letters that correspond to the first letter in your list name. You're not really categorizing here.

Lastly, we recommend that you have more than one owner for your list.  When setting up the list, you’ll be able to name only one list owner, but after the list is up and running, you can follow the directions to add additional owners.

Once you submit the list creation request, Groundwire will receive an email saying that you’ve requested a new list. Groundwire must activate your list before it can be used. Once we activate the list, we will notify the list owner via email.  Please note that the list creation process is not instantaneous—once you submit a request it can take up to 48 hours for the list to be created. It usually takes much less time than that for us to install the list, but because the lists have to be activated by us, your request is subject to our staff availability.

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