How it works!

	STEP ONE: Sally signs into her account at beating-myeloma and is browsing the Forum. She sees that there is a post that she wants to reply to and she writes her response and submits it. She can see what she wrote on the Forum. What Sally doesn't know is that our servers have made a note that she posted a reply and late that night we email her reply, along with other replies posted by other users, in a Daily Digest to all the subscribed ListServ members.
	STEP TWO: John wakes up the next morning and goes to check his email first thing. He finds that he has received the beating-myeloma Daily Digest in his inbox. He's reading all the wonderful posts that others have made on the forum. He comes across Sally's post and decides he likes it and wants to reply to her with his thoughts. He clicks on the link in the email next to Sally's comment and he's taken to her post on our Forum available at our website.
	STEP THREE: Once John arrives at her post on our Forum, he's then able to click on the reply link underneath Sally's post. John writes his response to Sally and clicks submit. What John doesn't realize is that our servers have made a note that he posted a reply and late that night we email his reply, along with other replies posted by other users, in a Daily Digest to all the subscribed ListServ members.
	STEP FOUR: Sally wakes up the next morning and eagerly rushes to check her email to read the latest Daily Digest from beating-myeloma. She then finds Johns reply along with all the other posts on the Forum from the day before.

Forum

Internet forums are also commonly referred to as web forums, message boards, discussion boards, (electronic) discussion groups, discussion forums, bulletin boards. An Internet forum is a facility on the World Wide Web for holding discussions and posting user generated content, or the web application software used to provide the facility. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

ListServ

An electronic mailing list, a type of Internet forum, is a special usage of e-mail that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. It is similar to a traditional mailing list — a list of names and addresses — as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to its members or customers, but typically refers to four things: a list of e-mail addresses, the people ("subscribers") receiving mail at those addresses, the publications (e-mail messages) sent to those addresses, and a reflector, which is a single e-mail address that, when designated as the recipient of a message, will send a copy of that message to all of the subscribers. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Our Spin

Our Forum / ListServ is just that — it merges the two concepts. To post on our Forum and to receive ListServ emails, you must be a registered user or if you already are a registered user, you can already post to the Forum and you can subscribe to the ListServ by accessing your profile. Normally a ListServ allows recipients to reply to the Digest email and have their reply mailed directly to all subscribed users. We have elected to turn off this feature, not allowing users to reply to ListServ emails.

• Why can't I reply to the ListServ email address?

Replies to the ListServ email address will not be received or answered by anyone. With most ListServ emails you can reply and your message will be sent to all ListServ subscribers. We have disabled this feature to help protect recipients of the Digest email from spam — generally, email addresses that redirect incoming mail to a large group of recipients is a bad idea. We believe that legitimate users who are intrigued by content that they receive in their Digest will be motivated enough to participate by coming back to the Forum itself and posting their comments. Additionally, we will not receive any replies to this address; our proper email address is info@beating-myeloma.org and you can feel free to contact us there.

• Why are Digest emails sent int text-only format and not html? They're not pretty!

Digest emails are sent in text-only format — As a matter of fact, all of our emails will be sent in text-only format. It may not look as pretty as some other website's emails you might receive, but we believe in making our product as useful and accessible as possible for the masses. We cannot ensure that html (pretty) emails will be correctly readable by all email clients.

• Why do I have to be a registered user to receive ListServ emails and participate on the Forum?

In short: 1) we're protecting our site users, and 2) we're protecting ourselves. It is our belief that site visitors who are genuinely interested in our content will take the few moments to register so that they can participate. If we left our Forum open to anyone to post, we'd soon be flooded with useless spam that would make it harder for everyone to enjoy the legitimate content. The registration process isn't very difficult, doesn't take long, and we don't even require much info from you (you're only required to submit a few pieces of info, the rest is optional).