The Hangman Hills email lists
The HHRA website maintains two mailing lists. One is an internal, closed announcement list for official communications from the board of directors to all (website-registered) HHRA members, and the other—communitylife— is an open external list for casual communications among the HHRA community members and their friends.
What is an email list?
An email list is just that—a list that contains nothing but email addresses. They have become a popular mode of communication among groups having similar interests. Email lists are, in fact ubiquitous. In one sense, an email list is similar to a forum or bulletin board, except that the mode of communication is email. Do you subscribe to any newgroups or other feeds? If so, you are probably already on someone’s email list.
Behind the scenes, email lists are actually quite complex. Their outward functionality can range from extreme simplicity as in the case of one-way feeds, to very robust as in the case of unmoderated chat groups. The Hangman Hills email lists are kind of in between, as you will see.
How do I use an email list?
It’s actually quite simple. Assuming you have already subscribed to the list, all you do is compose an email as you normally would, and then send it to the list’s email address. That’s it. For example, if you send a regular email addressed to communitylife@hangmanhills.org, everyone who has subscribed to that list will receive your email.
When you send an email to the communitylife email list, the email address you use for subscribing to the list MUST be the email address shown in the “From” part of the email header—this is how the list “knows” you. If you don’t observe this requirement, your email will not be delivered.
Yep, you guessed it—an email list is a poor man’s bulk (e)mail delivery service. That’s why they are so popular. But, they can also be subject to abuse, so sometimes it is necessary to apply restrictions. One of our restrictions is that we monitor and vet all subscription requests to help ensure only Hangman Hills property owners, renters and sponsored friends can utilize the communitylife email list—if anyone who is not a list subscriber attempts to send an email to the list, that email submission is automatically tagged and quarantined, and not sent on to the list.
Description of the HHRA email lists
Each of the two lists has its own intended use and functionality, as described below:
• HHRA Board announcements
This list is accessible only by the HHRA board, for their sole use. It provides an easy and consistent way for them to disseminate important information to all HHRA members who are also registered website users. It is a ONE WAY method of communication: the HHRA board TO registered members.
When you register with the site, you are required to list a valid email address. The information you provide on the HHRA official registration form is used to facilitate the vetting process and automatically create your initial WordPress user profile for the HHRA website. Your email address, along with all the other registrants’ email addresses are what comprise the HHRA board announcements “list”. Being part of the “list”, your email address is then accessed whenever the HHRA Board needs to communicate with the HHRA members.
It is important that you understand this: mail communication via the HHRA board announcements list is the only method the board uses for official communications!
Because the “list” is the HHRA board’s sole official communication mode, it is imperative that all Hangman Hills residents and owners register on the HHRA website—otherwise, they will not receive any official HHRA Board communications. Period.
If you know of anyone who has not yet registered on the site, please share with them the importance of doing so
Make sure you’re all set to receive the HHRA board announcements!
It’s extremely important that you can actually receive official communications from the HHRA board. All board announcements will be from either one of the executive board members (president; vicepresident; secretary; treasurer) or the HHRA webmaster, with their email domains being hangmanhills.org. For example, if the webmaster were to send out a notice, the “from” on the email would indicate webmaster@hangmanhills.org, “hangmanhills.org” being the domain portion of the email address.
Your own, personal email account may or may not recognize the “from” addresses for the HHRA board members. If it doesn’t, it might divert any such emails to either your spam folder or your junk emails folder. If that happens, you won’t “receive” the HHRA board communications—that is, they won’t show up in your inbox. In order to ensure you receive the board communications, you should “white list” the following domain: hangmanhills.org. White listing a domain tells your email account to treat all emails from that domain as “friendly”, so that they’ll go into your inbox. Better safe than sorry.
Ensuring your ability to receive communications from the HHRA board is your responsibility; failure to do so means you might not receive official board communications.
As part of the announcement process, we may also choose to add a “heads up” popup message to the website’s home page for a short period of time.
• communitylife@hangmanhills.orgSubscribe | Unsubscribe
The communitylife list is for use by all Hangman Hills residents/owners and sponsored friends. It is an entirely separate entity from the HHRA website, proper, and to be part of the list you must subscribe to it. This list provides an easy way for folks to communicate among themselves. Lost a cat? Post it to the communitylife email list. Got something you want to sell? Post it to the communitylife email list. You get the picture.
List moderation
Because we don’t really want “outsiders” and “spammers” to partake of our communitylife email list, we have configured it to require subscription from this web page (see links, below). This list is truly open (to qualified subscribers) and is not currently moderated for content. However, because open lists can sometimes become contentious and unmanageable, we consistently read the communitylife postings and evaluate the moderation policy.
Subscribing to Communitylife—important stuff you need to know
Subscribing to the Communitylife email list is actually quite easy. However, the process includes a built-in safeguard that under some circuststances might short circuit the subscription process, making you think that you’ve subscribed, when in fact your subscription request has ended up in “subscription purgatory”. In order to prevent that, it’s important that you understand just how the process works, and if your subscription goes sideways, how to resolve the situation.
So, here’s how the Communitylife subscription process works, and what you should expect:
- Use any one of the subscribe|unsubscribe links to access the Communitylife list subscription page and initiate the subscription process.
- Once you have submitted your subscription request, the Communitylife administrative bot will automatically respond by sending a confirmation email to you at the address you specified in your subscription request. The sender will be shown as communitylife-hangmanhills.org-confirm+[a number]. This email is a safeguard to prevent people from being subscribed to a list without their knowledge. The email allows you to verify that you do, indeed wish to subscribe to the Communitylife email list.
- IMPORTANT! Depending on your email settings, the bot-produced confirmation email may end up in your junk mail—”subscription purgatory“. If you don’t receive the confirmation email very soon after you have subscribed (depending, of course on your email provider), check your junk mail.
- Once you respond to the confirmation email (we suggest you just click on the link to the web page and then click on the appropriate button) the list moderator will immediately be sent an automated email requesting authorization to approve (or deny) your subscription request.
- Once the moderator approves your subscription request, you will be sent another automated email, this time welcoming you to the mailing list.
Not receiving the Communitylife emails?
Some folks are incredulous to discover they have not been receiving the Communitylife emails. Just because you registered on the HHRA website, do not assume you are automatically included in the Communitylife email list—you are NOT. YOU must take the initiative to subscribe to the Communitylife list.
If you are subscribed, but are still not receiving the Communitylife announcements, you should make sure that the emails are not ending up in your junk email folder—you may have to “white list” the emails’ sender, or “from” address.
Or, perhaps you recently changed your email address, and forgot to do something. Remember that your contact information for your communitylife email list subscription is NOT linked to your HHRA website profile. If you remembered to update your HHRA website profile, great! However, that’s only part of the equation—you still must separately update your communitylife email list profile (subscription) information. It’s easy to do. Just go to and read the General subscription management section below, and follow the instructions.
Sponsor a friend
Even though no non-HHRA members are allowed to join the communitylife email list on their own, if you know of a friend or someone else who desires to be part of the Hangman Hills communitylife email list, you may sponsor them. In this case, have your friend send you an email requesting to be included on the communitylife email list, and then forward their request, along with your personal endorsement to info @ hangmanhills.org. The webmaster will then add their email address to the communitylife list.
A note about attachments
For the present, attachments are allowed. However, we have restricted the file types to doc, docx, txt, xls, xlsx, odt, ods, jpg, jpeg, pdf, png and gif. Any attachments with file name extensions other than those shown will automatically be stripped by the email list processor. This restriction will be evaluated from time to time.
Your password
The email list program is a totally separate entity from the website, proper. Consequently, when you subscribe, the email list program automatically generates and assigns you a password, which it’ll include in your welcome email. REMEMBER IT. You’ll need your password in order to manage your user profile—you know, change your password; change your email address; etc. However, if you forget your password, not to worry—there’s a way to retrieve it. When you go to the member options page, all you have to do is enter your email address* and then click the remind button, and it’ll be sent to the email address you entered.
*Caveat—when you enter your email address, be sure to use the one you used when you subscribed to the list. This is how the list “knows” you. If you don’t, the email list program will unceremoniously discard your request.
Monthly reminders
If you’re like the webmaster, you might forget your password. As a service to the communitylife email list subscribers, we automatically email you a monthly reminder of your password. So that you can know the email is not spam, verify that the From: line reads communitylife-owner@hangmanhills.org, and the Subj: line reads hangmanhills.org mailing list memberships reminder. Just to be sure you receive these important emails, you might want to make sure your email provider is not sending these messages to your spam folder.
Although this service might at first seem a little redundant, some find it to be pretty handy. Nonetheless, if you don’t want to be bothered, you can opt out by editing your communitylife email list profile. OPTING OUT IS NOT RECOMMENDED, AND HIGHLY DISCOURAGED—doing so may preclude a user’s future ability to unsubscribe from the list.
Based on the history of this list, it is highly recommended that you keep a copy of one of these monthly reminders, for reference. You might be surprised at just how many people use an email and/or password different than they used for their HHRA website registration. Importantly, you need to use your (list) email address and password of record in order to update any of your list profile information—including your email address and/or password—or for that matter, to even be able to unsubscribe from the list.
“Bounced” posts
Can’t get your post to the communitylife email list to go through? That’s probably because it’s either been automatically rejected due to non-adherence to communitylife list rules, or has been otherwise bounced to the moderator for some reason. The most common reasons for a bounced post are: (1) you simply haven’t subscribed to the Communitylife email list yet, or (2) the communitylife list does not recognize the poster—you.
As prior mentioned, the communitylife email list only “knows” you by the email address you used when you subscribed to the list. For that reason, whenever you send an email to the list for distribution, the “from” line in your email header MUST be the email address you used when you subscribed to the list. If it is not, communitylife will not “know” the sender (you), and will thus think you are not subscribed—it will think you are an outsider, and because outsiders are not allowed to send emails to the list, your email will be bounced.
This functionality may present a problem for people with multiple email addresses. For example, assume you have multiple email or text messaging addresses: (1) me@adomain.com for your computer and (2) YourTenDigitPhoneNumber@pm.sprint.com for your text messaging on your smart phone. Further, assume you specified me@adomain.com as your email address when you subscribed to the communitylife email list. Now, if you send an email to the communitylife list from your smart phone, (or for whatever reason the “from” line in your email says something other than me@adomain.com), your email submission will be bounced, and thus will NOT be forwarded to everyone on the list. This feature is common among many (most?) email list solutions, because it provides a method for managing usage of the list, as a security measure. If need be, you can obviate this situation by performing a separate CommunityLife subscription for all the devices you wish to use for communicating with Communitylife, using the appropriate email or mobile text messaging address OR simply by manually selecting or entering the proper email address in the Communitylife email’s “from” field.
General subscription management
Once you have been subscribed, there are a number of ways for you to manage your subscription options every time you receive your automated monthly password reminder email from the list admin. To unsubscribe, in the message footer section at the bottom of the email, in the note starting with “To UNSUBSCRIBE…” just click on the link. Or, to fully manage your subscription options, in the same message footer section, in the note starting with “To manage or change your subscription…”, simply click the link and follow those instructions.
To learn more about unsubscribing, be sure to check out the unsubscribe from Communitylife page.