Email notifications

◀ Prev | 2026-04-03, access: Public

meta My recent move of this site to a new hosting provider necessitated redesigning my incoming and outgoing email systems. After running Sendmail for more than 30 years, I switched to Exim as my main mailserver software, with numerous other packages and third-party services surrounding it.

Although I wasn't happy about the amount of work and expense involved, some of which were the consequences of factors outside my control, it ended up the case that I now have a much more capable and flexible email system than before, and I've implemented some new features on this site to take advantage of it.

There are some checkboxes now on your user profile page where you can subscribe to receive email notifications when people write replies to your comments in the discussion threads, or when I post new items that are viewable at your access level. These email notifications were a requested feature when I did a poll about requested features, some months back.

The "new items" notifications include the main text of the posting right in the email, possibly saving you a click. If you have a paid account, then you also get the option to receive transcripts or slides PDFs attached to each message. Actually watching the videos still requires visiting the Web site.

In order to make sure everyone gets the chance to use these options, I've set it up so that new users will be directed to their profile pages when they first verify their accounts, and existing users will also be directed to their profile pages just once when they first log on after I deploy the new code.

These email subscriptions are still new, and it's possible there may be some glitches. I did test it, but Postmark was having some technical problems of their own last night while I was trying to do the final tests, so I'm hopeful that they are telling the truth about having fixed their own problems. If all the mail starts bouncing, then I guess I'll have to deal with that.

It's designed only to send notifications for new replies and postings; any that already existed before you ticked the box to subscribe, will not result in notification messages. And in the case of new item notifications, it'll only cover those to which you have access - so free accounts will probably only get about one such message every four weeks.

I've also added a couple paragraphs to the Privacy Policy mentioning that your email address can be used this way if you choose to subscribe.

Access level to read comments: Free account (logged in)
Access level to write comments: Free account (logged in)