Have you ever wanted to run your own newsgroup-style discussion group? Have you thought about hosting a mailing list but are intimidated by the management responsibilities? Or do you just want an intimate place on the Web where you and a few friends can meet? A growing number of Web sites let you host your own discussion groups ù for free. And they let you set them up in many different ways. Your discussion group can be public or private, moderated or unmoderated. You can configure it so messages are displayed bulletin board-style on the Web, or you can set it up so messages are e-mailed to participants in vintage mailing-list style, as well as displayed through a Web page. Caveat emptor: the services listed below were somewhat buggy as we went to press, but they've attained popularity with users nonetheless.

EGroups: you can set up free public or private mailing list-style discussion groups on EGroups (www.egroups.com). Participants can read the messages on the Web as they would a bulletin board, as well as receive them in their e-mail boxes. The site lets you create an event calendar; folders containing text items such as FAQs; Web page links; and even surveys for your group. EGroups also archives messages.

Unfortunately, the service is slow to respond to commands and is sometimes also slow to post messages. You can set up your discussion group to be moderated, but it's awkward for the moderator to review and post messages.

Caption: Set up free public or private mailing list-style discussion
groups with Deja News Communities and EGroups

OneList: you can set up free mailing lists on OneList (www.onelist.com), either public or by invitation only. Like traditional mailing lists, OneList e-mails subscribersÆ messages that are posted to the list. You can moderate your list by weeding out unwelcome spams. Subscribers can read archives of past messages and you can host lists in any language.

OneList provides HTML code that you can add to your own site as a link to your discussion list. I experienced some technical problems setting up lists. Sometimes when I tapped into my own list I got error messages reporting that the system hadn't confirmed my e-mail address; my subscribers received similar messages. I also had difficulty finding the list I created; OneList's searcher erroneously kept reporting that it didn't exist.

Deja News Communities: want to run your own newsgroup? Try the free Deja News Communities area, www.dejanews.com/communities. Unlike full-fledged Usenet newsgroups, your newsgroups are visible only on Deja News. You can create a forum for any topic and make it public or private. However, you can't screen messages before they're posted.

-Judy Heim