Perl Mongers

18 international Perl User Groups.

Big Questions

* What Services are Offered?

Why don't you offer service X?

Probably for security or cost reasons.

Didn't you previously offer basic web hosting?

Yes, we did. We stopped offering it to new groups in 2014. It was a lot of upkeep for a relatively low benefit. While it made sense for us to offer this service in 1999, fifteen years later there are lots of good, free hosting options. Many groups use GitHub Pages or Google Sites. Others host sites on the Google or Amazon clouds.

As interest in Perl and Perl Mongers has declined, and the cost of supporting services has increased, we've scaled back what we provide.

Who do I contact for help?

Open an Issue. Or send an email to support(at)pm(dot)org

* .pm.org DNS

We no longer provide A or CNAME records. We will happily provide you with a HTTP 301 redirect to your website.

Will you delegate NS for my group?

No, sorry. Recent security exploits have convinced us not to delegate DNS offsite.

Will you point MX records to my SMTP server?

Nope.

* Group Mailing Lists (Mailman)

If you like, we'll host a Mailman mailing list for your group. You'll administer your list via the web interface (http://www.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/groupname) and/or by emailing commands to the Mailman server.

Also, as a group leader, you'll be added to a mailing list of your fellow administrators from around the world. It's a low-volume announcement-centric list.

* Email Forwarding

Can you forward email sent to groupname@pm.org (e.g.: omaha@pm.org)?

No. We do not provide email forwarding services.

Can you forward email sent to username@pm.org (e.g.: jay_hannah@pm.org)?

No, we don't do this. It's proven to be too much maintenance. Sorry.

* How do I request a new group or to reactivate a group that has been inactive?

99% of the time your group name will be the name of the city in which your meetings will typically be held. So, since I live in Omaha my group name is Omaha.pm.

We will not create new groups with short names, please do not ask. Some groups (i.e. New York as ny.pm) are grandfathered in. Names should be descriptive and mean something to non-residents. For example: MinneapolisStPaul.pm is best. TwinCities.pm would be ok too (as that's a common and well known nickname for the area.) If the nickname is not well known, expect pushback. MSP.pm would be rejected.

Instructions

Fork our github repository XML file, and add your group's information. There are lots of examples in there for you to follow. Submit a github pull request with those changes and the answers to the these two questions:

(1) Where are you going to host your site's website?

Please provide the following:

  • URL to redirect yourgroup.pm.org to.

(2) Do you want us to host a Mailman mailing list for you?

Indicate yes or no.

* github.com? What's that? And/or "github.com? boo!"

If you're not up to speed on github, or hate it, feel free to email all the information we'll need to support(at)pm(dot)org, and we'll do the github bits for you. Please be patient -- this option is more work for our volunteer admins, so it will likely take longer for them to respond to your request.

* How do I add social networking buttons to my group listing on pm.org?

Fork our github repository XML file, and add your group's information. See Israel.pm for examples. Send us a pull request.

* How do I remove post(s) from my MailMan archive?

Please see perl.org Public Forum Archive Policy.

* Who pays for Perl Mongers services?

Our sponsors do!

Can I help?

Sure!

Send us hard drives and stuff on our wishlist.

Buy things from our sponsors!

And put the following ad rotation HTML on your group website: 

  <script language="JavaScript" src="http://www.perl.org/misc/site-sponsor-js.html"></script>

The output width is fixed at 180, but the height is variable. If you want to personalize the text message, you can add '?notext=1' to the src string. You can see the ad rotation in action at the bottom right corner of this page.