Search across Mailtalk public archives - 01/9/2010

We’d like to tell you about an enhancement we’re making to Mailtalk’s current search tools on the 14th of September. We are opening up our public archives to search engines. All public information will be made available to search via search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. Previously searching across many public groups was difficult but this will now be possible. We hope that although your group names are searchable via search engines, the additional archive search will improve visibility of your public groups and attract more members to make valuable contributions to your discussions. The search can be accessed via any group homepage (https://www.Mailtalk.ac.uk/yourgroupname) or simply search via your favourite search engine such as Google.

Although this is not a groundbreaking development, it is the first time Mailtalk’s public archives have been open to search. Our developers have working hard to ensure that private content is not compromised ensuring our trust with our group owners and subscribers remains in tact. In the past performance issues have stopped us taking this step but with our brand new servers and using Google sitemap, we have ensured this won’t be a problem. There is no need to worry about spamming issues as anyone searching public archives will be unable to view email addresses unless they are logged into the Mailtalk website. It is easy to change your group between public and private as you see fit.

We are asking all group owners to check their list configuration so that if they want their group archives to become searchable or if they do not wish the group archives to be searchable, changes will need to be made to the List Configuration.

To change your List Configuration:

• Go to your group homepage (https://www.Mailtalk.ac.uk/yourgroupname).
• Click on the ‘List Management’ menu, ‘List Configuration’ and ‘List Configuration Wizard’.
• Click on the ‘List Maintenance’ Tab.
• In the ‘Notebook=’ section, change the ‘Access Level’ to either Public or Private.
• Click the ‘Save’ button.

Publishing Mailtalk group archives to services such as Twitter or Facebook is already possible via our RSS feeds. To learn how to do this visit JISCMail's newsletter article for Twitter or Facebook

Points to note:

• Search engines choose what to search and when so we cannot guarantee when the public archives will be available.
• Postings will not be available to search in real time outside of Mailtalk. We will update our sitemap but the search engines will choose when to include this information.
• If your group goes from public to private following the release of search, any messages previously crawled maybe available cached for a period of time on search engines.
• If you are setting your group to become public from private, any previous private messages maybe crawled and become searchable. Please review the content of your groups before making the change and removing content that is not suitable for public consumption. You may want to inform your group subscribers of the change in settings.

Bank Holiday August 2010 - 26/8/2010

The Mailtalk Helpline will be unmanned from Saturday 27th August to Tuesday 31st August inclusive. There will be a short down-time for maintenance during the morning of Monday 30th August from 08:30, but other than this, the Mailtalk service will continue to operate as normal during the bank holiday period. If you have any problems, please email the Helpline and your enquiries will be dealt with upon our return.