Chuck:

I do want to thank you for your suggestion to edit/customize LISTSERV 
templates.  I went to follow your steps but "Customization" is not available in 
our version of LISTSERV 15.0 Lite.  The Lite version is free, but non-
customizable, and not supported by the vendor.  Unless we get a user 
community willing to pay for the customizable version of LISTSERV 15.0, it 
doesn't look like I will be able to apply the customizations you have so kindly 
suggested.

Maybe there is another way with LISTSERV 15.0 Lite to modify these specific 
templates?  Doing so manually, of course, opens the door to accidental code 
additions/deletions that (in my opinion) are much more difficult to test and 
debug than altering templates (and code) through the application interface.  

Having arrived at what appears to be an impasse with the limitations of 
LISTSERV 15.0 Lite, I have communicated to one of our LISTSERV admins the 
following:

___________________________________
We cannot click on 'Customization' as this option is only available in the full 
LISTSERV version (you get what you pay for) and we've got a version we can 
use, it's Lite, it's free, but we don't have access to the full functionality of the 
software and NO SUPPORT from the vendor.  The only support we have 
received thus far is from a LISTSERV forum and we have come up with a web 
page that allows Cardinal users to signup for LISTSERV lists. After they verify 
they really want to join this list (by clicking on an email link), the signup tosses 
them back to a page to sign in to LISTSERV 15.0 Lite (which is very confusing 
and impossible to prevent the user from seeing).

The good thing is this: they are signed up (and can remove themselves from 
these lists using the web interface also).  The bad thing is this: the user gets 
thrown back to a page that wants them to sign in to LISTSERV 15.0 Lite and 
there is no need for them to do this.

So, we’ve got to revisit what we’ve come up with, establish some guidelines 
that will be workable, and then see if this is acceptable to the user 
community.  Bear in mind that should this approach be implemented, users will 
want ‘changes’ to the process etc.  And ‘changes’ are going to be near-to-
impossible because we don’t have access in the software to customize this 
stuff.  In fact, the solution we have at our disposal is ONLY a result of a 
bastardization “(reducing) from a higher to a lower state or condition” of 
templates manually (not a good idea, but it works – barely).  This fussing 
around with templates manually has the software sending out notifications and 
specific wording over which you and I have NO control.  We can’t CUSTOMIZE 
this stuff.  What you see is what you get and don’t ask for any changes – 
because it ain’t going to happen!

Having said all the above, we DO have a workable automated list signup (and 
list removal) procedure.  Let’s revisit what we’ve got and see if this is what we 
want.
___________________________________

Chuck (or anyone else on this list), if I'm way off base on my reply to the 
LISTSERV admin, please let me know.  I may be looking at this all wrong.

Kind regards,

Dan