Chapter Email Loop

The email loop is for current Mothers & More DuPage chapter members only. This loop is a great resource for exchanging ideas, finding information, and getting support from other chapter members just like you, from around the county! You can expect to receive up to five or more emails per month for this loop depending on the current flow of conversation. This loop we call our discussion loop and chapter members have to request to be members of this loop. We use the discussion loop as a forum for those interested in talking about current chapter issues and happenings and to field general mommy-type questions. The monthly newsletter, the Local Page, will continue to be the main form of communication for the chapter; the eloop will only enhance our communication efforts.

Our information list eloop is used for chapter members with an email address to receive chapter news in a timely manner. This includes reminders of chapter meetings, open playgroup dates and places, social events and changes to the newsletter calendar. This loop is also the vehicle to get urgent news to our members from the chapter or board.

Current members have been added appropriately to these two email loops. New members need to request to be added to the owner of these groups by sending an email to one or both of the following depending on which group or groups you would like to join:

The Email Loop uses an automated list which electronically maintains the mailing list of subscribers. In order to make this a free service, there are often advertisements at the bottom of the messages. Feel free to ignore these! Once you are subscribed, you will be able to send and receive loop messages using the loop address below.

Messages sent to this address will be distributed to all subscribed members of the mailing list. If you send your email to the Email group correctly, then you should receive a copy of your own message back. Only current subscribers are able to post messages to the loop.

Subject line:
Just put whatever appropriate subject you like for your messages, and the Email loop will automatically add the group name to the subject line of all messages to identify this message as loop mail.

Loop Archive
Another nice feature of the loop is that you will be able to go back and read a private archive of old messages that occurred before you joined. Just go to http://groups.yahoo.com site, log in, select the DuPage chapter group you are interested in under My Groups and click on Messages.

Loop Email Digest:
Yet another nice feature of the loop is the option to receive your loop mail in a digest form. Instead of receiving all the messages in separate emails, you would receive one email message per day with all of the messages for that day condensed into it. Just go to http://groups.yahoo.com site, log in, select the DuPage chapter group you are interested in under My Groups and click on Edit.

It is much easier to reply to the individual emails, but you can still send messages to the loop even if you are on the digest version. You'll just need to watch your headers so that you have an appropriate subject line for the message you are replying to, so that others can follow your conversation. (i.e. don't leave the subject as saying "digest")

The very first day you receive the digest, you might notice that there are a lot of messages in it from several days back. I'm not sure why this happens, but it should only be the first one that is like that. The following daily digests should have only have one day's worth of messages in it. And if there are no messages from the loop that day, there won't be a digest message for that day either.

Another idea that you can try which will help alleviate the influx of email messages is if you use Free email services like Yahoo Email for your email address. See Free email services below for more information.

Leaving the Loop:
You may remove yourself from the Email Loop at any time. Just go to http://groups.yahoo.com site, log in, select the DuPage chapter group you are interested in under My Groups and click on Edit.

Vacation Hold:
Put your email message delivery on hold. Just go to http://groups.yahoo.com site, log in, select the DuPage chapter group you are interested in under My Groups. Once you are signed in, click on "My Groups", and you will see a menu to the side of this group's name. Change the menu to say, "No Mail/Web Only" and hit the "Save Changes" button. When you get back from vacation, change it back again. If you want to check messages that were sent while you were gone, click on the name of the group, and then click "Messages" on the left hand side.

Problems?
Please do not send any administrative requests to the Email Loop. In case of problems, contact the loop moderator at owner. Just go to http://groups.yahoo.com site, log in, select the DuPage chapter group you are interested in under My Groups. Click on Members and look for the owner, then click post.

Restrictions on loop e-mail:
Please observe these two restrictions: (1) Please, no soliciting for business purposes, and (2) Please, follow cyber etiquette. If you are new to the Net and do not know about this stuff, This Cyber-Course for Newbies is a great place to start! http://www.newbie.net/CyberCourse/index.html

List Sponsors:
The email Mothers & More DuPage Chapter Email Loop sponsors frequently insert advertising at the very bottom of the posted email messages. We receive their services *free* in exchange for adding these ads to our emails. Please note that Mothers & More does not endorse any of the products that may be advertised. They are always at the bottom and easy to just ignore. We are glad :o) to have the option of having this service free!

Multiple Recipients:
Please do not include our Loop mailing list address in a long list of recipients. This might really confuse some people up who want to reply to the message thinking it is loop mail only. If you send things to our loop, please do so in a separate email from other recipients. This is good policy for any mailing list you belong to.

Virus Warnings and Other hoaxes:
Please do not forward "virus warning" or other mail irrelevant to our list's topic. Please know that these are almost always hoaxes. You cannot get a virus from an email message unless you execute an attached file. So simply do not open attached files from sources that you are unsure of. Please check this page sponsored by the US Dept. of Energy for the latest Internet Virus Hoaxes, and pass it along to anyone who sends you these warnings -- http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html

Attached files:
Please DO NOT send attached files to the loop. Not all members' email systems can properly display all files. Download times for attached files are longer than regular email messages. So, with longer downloads and files which may not be able to be accessed locally, it all adds up to wasted time. If you have files others may be interested in, then send them directly to the interested parties. If they are just text files, then try cutting and pasting them into a regular message as opposed to attaching the file. Or, you might consider submitting them to the Leaders' Yahoo groups Document Vault for people to download as needed.

Document Vault:
The document vault is a cornucopia of information. Many of our members have provided copies of their documents currently in use by our chapter. We invite you to add yours ;-). Find out more about flyers, policies, links, new member packets, open houses, publicity, etc. Just go to http://groups.yahoo.com site, log in, select the DuPage chapter group you are interested in under My Groups. Click on Files.

General-Interest vs. Private comments:
Please make sure responses which you send to the entire loop are of general interest to all members. With so many members participating, a mailbox full of replies that only say "me too!" is time consuming and not useful to women who are busy raising their families. If your comment is between you and one other person, please take it to private email in order to cut down on irrelevant mail being sent to the entire loop.

Quote previous message text:
In order to help readers follow your train of thought, it is helpful (but not required) in a busy loop like this to quote some of the text from the previous message to which you are replying, if you are able to. However, it is a waste of time to have to download and sift through messages where the ENTIRE previous message has been quoted, when only one or two sentences would have sufficed. Please cut mercilessly when you quote a message, but leave just enough to give the reader a reference where you can.

Simply send an Email to localpageeditor@yahoo.com requesting to join the DuPage chapter Email Loop. Please include the following information:

Once the Loop Moderator has received the above info, then your subscription can be activated. You should then receive a confirmation message from the Email Loop that you are on the loop and you can begin sending and receiving loop messages immediately.

We would like to welcome you to the group and we appreciate your participation in using this resource!

Go to http://groups.yahoo.com site and create a Yahoo! ID so that it will recognize you. Click on new users and type in a name such as your email address or as an example, "dupagemember" along with a password. When registering for the Yahoo! ID, it does require entering gender, a birth date (it will not let you leave the year field blank), a zip code and your email address. For all the other questions, you are able to leave the answers blank or answer "other".

Next, click on "link your accounts here" for eGroups users. If you also click on the "Remember Me" button, you will not have to do this again; your computer will remember who you are. Use your Yahoo! ID to log into your groups.

For help from Yahoo, Yahoo is committed to providing fast, efficient support for their customers. Please contact us using our online Customer Support forms which are found at:

By using these forms, Yahoo can gather the relevant information needed to better assist you with any questions you may have about our service. You can also find many answers in our online help pages at:

or by simply clicking on the "Help" link near the top-left corner of any Yahoo Groups page at:

Free Email Services

I recommend having your own email address instead of sharing one with your husband. "His and Hers" email addresses are wonderful, and there is no reason not to have them when there are so many free email services available!

Here are some great free E-mail services:

WEB BASED MAIL --
Here are a few of the popular ones. There are many!
http://mail.yahoo.com
http://www.netaddress.com
http://www.hotmail.com

While you are logged on to your current Internet provider, you can read and send your mail right from their website, or for many of these, you can set up a mail reader to download it which is a nice feature.

Mail programs like Eudora Lite (a free shareware program) or Netscape Mail are both wonderful for this! You set your "incoming mail server to say "pop.netaddress.com" and your outgoing mail server to whatever your current Internet provider is.

Netscape is especially nice to use to read and send this mail since you can hyperlink to websites that are referenced in your messages. (In other words, someone sends you a message saying, "check out this cool web site....", you can just click right on it from the message and go there.)

Yahoo has the ability for you to specify input email folders for your incoming email. For example any mail containing

"DuPage-Chapter @yahoogroups.com"

in the "From" description is sent to your folder (which you initially create on your Yahoo email account). All non filtered mail goes to the inbox. This way you will know exactly how many messages you have received in each folder before you look at the folder.

Just go to any of the websites, Yahoo, NetAddress and Hotmail, and sign up for an account and you can get started right away! Then if you want to set up a mail reader to use with the account, you can do that anytime.

NON-WEB BASED MAIL -- "Juno"
www.juno.com You do not even need an Internet provider to use this one. The software is free from their website, and it dials up a local number in your area to get and send your messages. Juno is so easy to use, that it is my technology-challenged mother's email of choice!

Just go to their website and download the software you need and install it. There is no charge for this service.

DuPage Chapter

Email Loops