Soap Naturally Web & mailing list
Technical information and links
(Nerds only - ???)

In their early days, the Soap Naturally Web and mailing lists were hosted on a small local network in Mayfield (Newcastle, NSW Australia), connected to a Nelson Bay ISP, Nelson Bay Online. The Web site was served by an Apache server on a FreeBSD system, and the mailing list was run by Listserv Free Edition.

With list members increasing exponentially day after day, and an ever growing number of visitors to the Website, bandwidth soon became a consideration. To accommodate the needs of a larger community, and to guarantee faster and easier access from anywhere in the world, more powerful resources were needed.

Currently, the Soap Naturally Web is hosted on pair.com, which also uses Apache Web servers on a FreeBSD system, and delivers increased performance and better stability. The mailing list is run through a separate pair.com service, pairlist.net, using Mailman, the GNU mailing list manager. Steps have been taken to make available a search interface to the archives. Development is under way on a Linux server, using MySql.

To enhance the idea of "global community" shared by the list, the whole site has been designed with performance and user availability in mind. Our Web designers work on reliable Apple Macintosh computers and utilise a feature-rich plain text editor, BBEdit, to manually write the code for Web pages that are standard-compliant and work on any browser.

Behind the scenes, the Soap Naturally Web and mailing lists are managed and affectionately maintained by a tiny team of passionate soapers and Web developers, who believe in the power of networking and interaction - and who of course wouldn't (and couldn't) do anything at all without the enthusiastic support and unlimited contributions from other, similarly minded list members.

Suggested software
Links to our favourite software tools

Email clients

Pegasus Mail is a DOS/Windows email client, written and made available for free by David Harris, a Kiwi programmer. Light, simple and yet powerful, it allows to download messages from the server while filtering out the attachments. This feature is, of course, extremely helpful during Windows/PC virus outbursts. Pegasus Mail is completely free; there is a token charge if you wish to receive the documentation (user manual) and obtain technical support.

Apple Mail is a fantastic email client, which also takes advantage of the leading-edge security features of Mac OSX, the Macintosh operating system. It is powerful, feature-rich and reliable, and doesn't distribute viruses or worms. And the best part of it is, it's available for free as part of the Macintosh operating system.

Other free email agents are available through the Mozilla project and other "free software" organisations.

Web browsers

For Macintosh users: iCab is a small, compact, extra fast Web browser with a friendly and easy to use interface, which "smiles" when Web pages conform to the HTML specification. Every page on Soap Naturally makes iCab smile!

Opera is one of the best browsers around (BeOS, Linux/Solaris, Windows, Linux). Compact, reliable and free for all platforms, Opera also includes an email program.

Amaya is the World Wide Web Consortium's HTML editor/Web browser. A versatile and extensible tool, available for free on both Unix and Windows '95/NT platforms.

Suggested reading
This is extremely OFF TOPIC.... but if you've been reading so far, you must enjoy reading as much as we do - and we hope you'll appreciate this little selection of unusual titles!

• Success... and how to avoid it is a book for writers and would be writers, written by Mat Coward, who has "been making what passes for a living as a freelance writer since 1986". Read more about Mat and his works straight from his homepage.