[support] mailing list manager questions

[eduard aylon]

Hi there,

I'm just starting with drupal and this is my first post to the list,  
so bare with me.

I am trying to find a module that will allow me to have subscribers to  
a newsletter, however subscribers will not be (drupal) registered users.
I believe the solution to this problem is either use mailman or  
phplist, however I don't have root access to the server which disables  
the option to install mailman. So I decided to try out phplist. After  
installing phplist, and pointing my browser to /lists/admin I had a  
message saying:

  	"Error: Database has not been initialised ,go to initialise  
database to continue"

I'm a bit a concerned about initialising the database, as I don't want  
to lose any of the data contained in it. This is, because phplist and  
drupal share the same database (don't have rights on the server to  
create a new database, that's why). In the config.php from phplist I  
set a different table prefix, so maybe initialising the database will  
just create a new table for phplist, but I am unsure. Could anyone  
tell me whether is safe to initialise the database or not?

I also have another installation on my home computer where I have  
drupal-6.9 (previous one is drupal-6.12). I use this installation for  
testing things out. So I installed phplist in this one, and configure  
it. Set permissions in drupal so I can access and administer phplist  
module. However when I go to drupal>site_configuration>phplist I get  
sent back to the site_configuration page whithout being able to  
configure the module at all. So can't tell phplist module what table  
prefix or database should be pointing to.

Any help is much appreciated,

eduard