Python.org Maintenance and Administration

This document is incomplete; we're updating it as questions come up. If you have questions, try the webmaster alias first, then pydotorg-www if you don't get a response.

Getting Started

To learn how to maintain the Python.org website, please read the Python.org Website Maintenance document and explore the Admin wiki page.

If you would like to volunteer to help maintain the Python.org website, please send a note to the pydotorg-www mailinglist.

Mailing Lists

There are four mailing lists for python.org maintainers; many maintainers are on all the lists.

pydotorg-www

This is a public discussion list for anyone interested in the development of the python.org website.

webmaster (Autoreply text)

Mail that's sent to the webmaster goes to this list. There is an auto-responder that returns a general reply, answering a number of the most common questions and providing information about other sources of help. If you think the auto-response mail includes the answer to a question sent to webmaster, the question does not need to be answered by a human.

If a response is appropriate, please Cc: the webmaster address so others can see that the question has been answered. Note that taking action (such as updating the web site) always makes a response appropriate; people deserve to know that their e-mail was welcome and helpful.

If you're responding to webmaster mail, you may want to set either From: or Reply-To: to webmaster@python.org; that will keep replies from cluttering your personal box.

If you want to volunteer to help out responding to webmaster email, send a note to webmaster@python.org asking to be added.

pydotorg

This is a private internal discussion list used for discussion among the python.org server maintainers. If you have SSH login access on the python.org servers, you should probably be on this list.

pydotorg-checkins

This internal list receives reports of all changes to the SVN repositories.

The following additional addresses are used in collecting information in the process of maintaining python.org; these also are hosted in the python.org domain.

jobs (Autoreply text)

Notices of job openings, posted on the Python Job Board page, are sent to this address. When updating the job board, send a response to the submitter acknowledging that the event is listed, and Cc: the events address so other maintainers will know that it has been handled already.

docs (Autoreply text)

Comments, questions, and complaints about any and all Python documentation (and lots of other stuff!) end up at this address eventually. This is for both the standard documentation bundled with Python and the Python Documentation section on python.org. Mail sent to this address is forwarded directly to Fred Drake.

spam

Use this address for reporting spam that makes it through the spam filters on python.org. It's best if you attach the faulty message rather than forwarding it.

virus

Use this address for reporting viruses that make it through the spam filters on python.org. It's best if you attach the faulty message rather than forwarding it.

IRC

Occasionally volunteers will use IRC to communicate: the server used is irc.freenode.net, on the #pydotorg channel.

Machines

There are several machines which support the operation of python.org, all of which are currently hosted by XS4ALL. The primary machine is www.python.org (also known as "dinsdale.python.org"). This machine hosts the static content of the site and some light CGI scripts (the FAQ Wizard, in particular).

The following people are available for emergency root access to machines. Contact should be attempted through the pydotorg list first.

Mail processing occurs on mail.python.org. Barry Warsaw maintains the Mailman installation on that machine.

Adding Subversion Commit Access

Here are the instructions for adding Subversion commit access for new developers, or updating the public keys for existing developers. Because this list archive is private, you will need to be a member of the mailing list to read this article.