Introduction to Thunderbird
Thunderbird is Mozilla's free (as in beer) and open source e-mail client. As of January 2011, this is the preferred client for handling the daily dump of Free Geek e-mail staff are required to sift through. This tutorial will cover installing, configuring, and tweaking a Thunderbird installation inside of Ubuntu 10.04.
Installation
Ubuntu 10.04 does not come with Thunderbird out of the box, so the first thing you will need to do is install it. To do so:
- Go to Applications >> Ubuntu Software Center
- Search for thunderbird and select Mozilla Thunderbird Mail/News
- Click Install
Alternatively,
- Go to Applications >> Accessories >> Terminal
- Type
sudo apt-get install thunderbird
Configuration
The first time you run Thunderbird (under Applications >> Internet >> Mozilla Thunderbird Mail/News), you should be greeted with a wizard to assist you in setting up your initial account. Follow these steps:
- Under Your name:, enter your full name,
- Under Email address:, enter your Free Geek e-mail address (e.g., bhope@freegeek.org),
- Under Password:, enter your Free Geek password,
- Click Continue,
- Thunderbird will begin talking to Free Geek's mailserver to determine what encryption methods and settings to use. It won't always choose the correct ones, so be sure that your setting look like the following (after selecting Manual Setup):
- Username: Your Free Geek username
- Incoming: mail.freegeek.org IMAP 993 SSL/TLS
- Outgoing: mail.freeegeek.org SMTP 25 STARTLS
- Now click Create Account. If, for whatever reason, there's an error at this step, get in touch with a Collective member or a Technocrat to help you troubleshoot.
Filters
Thunderbird allows you to create relatively flexible mail filters to help sort the perpetual onslaught of Free Geek communications. First, we need to create a folder for your filtered messages to live in. Do the following:
- Select File >> New >> Folder
- Give a sensible name for your folder (e.g., Production)
- Make sure your new folder is listed as a subfolder of INBOX
- Click Create Folder
Now that we have a place for your filtered message, we need to create some filters. In order to do this, do the following:
- Select Tools >> Message Filters... from Thunderbird's menu bar
- Select New...
- Fill out an appropiate name for the filter (e.g., PaidWorkers for the paidworkers list)
- Make sure the Apply filter when field is set for Checking Mail or Manually Run
- Select the Match any of the following radio button
- In the first menu bar, choose Customize...
- Under New message header, enter the following:
List-Id - Select Add and OK.
- For the filter criteria, make sure it looks something like this:
- List-Id is $LISTNAME.lists.freegeek.org (where $LISTNAME is the mailing list you're applying this filter to)
- Under Perform these actions:, make sure it looks something like this:
- Move Messages to $FOLDERNAME (where $FOLDERNAME is whatever you named the folder where this particular filter will be pointed towards)
- Click OK
Unfortunately, you'll have to do the above for every mailing list you wish to filter. However, it's highly recommended that you take the time to look through your mailing list subscriptions and devise filters for each of them as best suits you. Most Free Geek communiques occur over list, and it's imperative that staff is able to efficiently read and search through their e-mail in order to remain up to speed.
Eventually, there'll be a master filter schema that can be implemented to prevent this headache from having to be experienced by incoming staff. Poke Sean about it periodically in the hope that he accumulates enough guilt to make it happen.
Miscellaneous
NOTE: The filter rules that you set up will only live on the machine on which you implement them. If, for instance, you check your Free Geek e-mail through the web client, the filters won't be applied and, distressingly, everything will stay inside of your INBOX, rather than being sorted into that lovely folder you made earlier. If you find yourself in such a situation, you can manually tell Thunderbird to run its filters against your INBOX by doing the following:
- Make sure you have your INBOX (or which ever folder you wish to run your filters on) selected
- Select Tools >> Run Filters on Messages
As an aside, there exist a couple of a Thunderbird extensions to provide you a decadent GUI button to perform the same task. Try Googling for it, if you're so desperate for needless clickums.
ADDENDUM TO NOTE: Your local host's filter rules are actually stored in a plaintext file located here:
~/.thunderbird/$PROFILEHASH.default/ImapMail/mail.freegeek.org/msgFilterRules.dat
If that looks like nonsense to you, consult a Technocrat (preferably with a cup of coffee and a cheery disposition). If you bring some sort of pastry in addition to the coffee, bring up Maildrop Rules with the aforementioned Technocrat to completely circumvent this Thunderbird filter nonsense.
ADDENDUM TO THE ADDENDUM TO THE NOTE: Pastry or no, it will probably take a while before anything actually happens. We have a lot on our plates!
Keyboard Shortcuts
To be written...