Part 3 - E-Mail & Web Control Panel

The following topics are discussed further below:

• Accessing Your E-Mail / E-Mail Setup
• Eudora E-Mail Client (Highly Recommended)
• Microsoft Internet Mail / Outlook
• Netscape Mail / Firefox Mail / Other E-Mail Clients
• Creating Additional Users (POP, FTP, SSH) on your Domain
• Power PlusMail™ System
• Web Control Panel
• E-Mail Redirects (E-Mail Forwarding)
• Autoresponders (Infobots)
• Simple Maillist
• Subscribable Maillists
• Majordomo Listserver (add-on feature)
• SquirrelMail / Web-Based Email / Webmail
• Spam Assassin Spam Filter

NOTE: More information on e-mail is available in our E-Mail FAQ.

Accessing Your E-Mail / E-Mail Setup

By default, your account has the following e-mail address, automatically created when your account has completed setup:

• Default E-Mail Address: YourDomainName@YourDomainName.com
• Username/Login ID/User ID: YourDomainName
• Password: xxxxxxxx     (This is the same password as included in your "Welcome" e-mail.)
• SMTP Mail Server Name: YourDomainName.com
• POP Mail Server Name: YourDomainName.com

You may access your e-mail via various methods:

• Using Squirrelmail (also known as webmail): http://YourDomainName.com/webmail
• Using an e-mail client of your choice, such as Eudora (Highly Recommended), Netscape Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Firefox Mail and many others.
• Logging into your account via SSH and using "pine" or "mail"

Note 1: We have implemented a mail feature to stop unauthorized users from using our SMTP servers. Before you can send out any e-mails using your e-mail client, you must first login and check for mail. Typically, you only need to check the POP server once per day. For most users, this is transparent, as generally, when you activate most e-mail programs, they immediately login and check for e-mail.

Note 2: In some cases, your local ISP blocks the use of other companies' SMTP services. They do this in order to minimize the spam going thru their systems. In such cases, instead of using the SMTP setting for your web hosting account, you will need to use the SMTP setting provided by your local ISP. All of the other settings above remain the same.

Various e-mail programs/clients are discussed below.

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Eudora E-Mail Client (Highly Recommended)

We strongly recommend using Eudora as your e-mail client. Eudora is available for free from http://www.eudora.com.

Eudora runs under both Micorosoft Windows and Macintosh operating systems. The Eudora program will guide you thru the setup process. If you wish to configure Eudora to use your default e-mail address, then you supply Eudora with the following information:

• Default E-Mail Address: YourDomainName@YourDomainName.com
• Username/Login ID/User ID: YourDomainName
• Password: xxxxxxxx     (This is the same password as included in your "Welcome" e-mail.)
• SMTP Mail Server Name: YourDomainName.com
• POP Mail Server Name: YourDomainName.com

You may also configure Eudora to access any POP email accounts that you may have created via your Web Control Panel. In such cases, Eudora will need to be supplied with the following information:

• POP E-Mail Address: YourPOPName@YourDomainName.com
• Username/Login ID/User ID: YourPOPName
• Password: xxxxxxxx     (This is the password you assigned via the "User Manager -> Add User" page of your Web Control Panel.)
• SMTP Mail Server Name: YourDomainName.com
• POP Mail Server Name: YourDomainName.com

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Microsoft Internet Mail / Outlook

Note: Many of our clients in China report significant problems in using Microsoft Outlook to access their e-mail. We recommend that you use Eudora instead.

Please consult the help and configuration files that are included in your Microsoft Mail program. If you wish to configure Microsoft Mail to use your default e-mail address, then you supply Microsoft Mail the following information:

• Default E-Mail Address: YourDomainName@YourDomainName.com
• Username/Login ID/User ID: YourDomainName
• Password: xxxxxxxx     (This is the same password as included in your "Welcome" e-mail.)
• SMTP Mail Server Name: YourDomainName.com
• POP Mail Server Name: YourDomainName.com

You may also configure Microsoft Mail to access any POP email accounts that you may have created via your Web Control Panel. In such cases, Microsoft Mail will need to be supplied with the following information:

• POP E-Mail Address: YourPOPName@YourDomainName.com
• Username/Login ID/User ID: YourPOPName
• Password: xxxxxxxx     (This is the password you assigned via the "User Manager -> Add User" page of your Web Control Panel.)
• SMTP Server Name: YourDomainName.com
• POP Server Name: YourDomainName.com

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Netscape Mail / Firefox Mail / Other E-Mail Clients

With any e-mail client that you choose to use, the setup information that you provide is basically the same as above. If you wish to use your default e-mail address, then configure your e-mail client with the following:

• Default E-Mail Address: YourDomainName@YourDomainName.com
• Username/Login ID/User ID: YourDomainName
• Password: xxxxxxxx     (This is the same password as included in your "Welcome" e-mail.)
• SMTP Mail Server Name: YourDomainName.com
• POP Mail Server Name: YourDomainName.com

You may also configure your e-mail client to access any POP email accounts that you may have created via your Web Control Panel. In such cases, you need to supply your e-mail client with the following information:

• POP E-Mail Address: YourPOPName@YourDomainName.com
• Username/Login ID/User ID: YourPOPName
• Password: xxxxxxxx     (This is the password you assigned via the "User Manager -> Add User" page of your Web Control Panel.)
• SMTP Mail Server Name: YourDomainName.com
• POP Mail Server Name: YourDomainName.com

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Creating Additional Users (POP, FTP, SSH) on your Domain

To create additional POP, FTP and SSH accounts, login to your Web Control Panel (http://YourDomainName.com/cgi-bin/plusmail), then click on "User Manager" and then on "Add User" and follow the directions provided on that page. Make sure to supply a new password for the new account. It takes 15 minutes for the new account to become active.

With respect to new FTP and SSH accounts, you may restrict such accounts to their own directory (for example, http://www.YourDomainName.com/yourclient, where "yourclient" is the name of the directory you have assigned to the particular account.). These accounts will have their own /home and /www directories, and they will not have access to the rest of your domain.

The following parameters are particular to the new POP, FTP and SSH accounts that you create.

• Hostname: YourDomainName.com
• Username/Login ID/User ID: UniqueUsername
• Password: UniquePassword
• POP Account / E-Mail Address: UniqueUsername@YourDomainName.com
• POP Mail Server Name: YourDomainName.com
• SMTP Mail Server Name: YourDomainName.com

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Power PlusMail™ System

PlusMail is a sophisticated e-mail and account management system that is included with all of our iStarter, E-Commerce and Corporate web hosting accounts. This is known as your Web Control Panel, and is described in more detail below.

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Web Control Panel

The Web Control Panel enables you to control all aspects of your web presence from any web browser that you choose to use.

To access your Web Control Panel, point your browser to the following URL:

http://YourDomainName.com/cgi-bin/plusmail

With your Web Control Panel, you may:

• view total traffic usage
• download raw data access log files
• setup all POP, FTP and SSH accounts
• change passwords for POP, FTP and SSH accounts
• setup parked domains
• setup chat rooms
• setup MySQL databases
• setup and manage e-mail redirects
• setup and manage autoresponders
• setup and manage mail lists
• setup and manage subscribable mail lists

In addition, the Web Control Panel allows you to:

• password-protect directories
• use basic Unix commands from your web browser
• change file and directory permissions
• upload your files
• rename files
• edit your web site

NOTE 1: Do NOT submit the same username more than once.

When setting up your POP, FTP and SSH accounts, do NOT submit the same username more than once. This will corrupt the file; not allowing you to use the account even though it will appear on your User Manager screen. Submit the account once; wait 15 minutes and then check the User Manager screen. If it is not there, press your web browser's "Refresh" or "Reload" button.

NOTE 2: The username that you create MUST be unique to the server.

The username that you create MUST be unique to the server. If you get the following error message:

"The userid you requested is already in use by someone on this server. Please select another. Use the back button on your browser to correct the error"

then you MUST create a different username. The reason for this error message is because the mail servers are operated in a shared environment. Another domain has already created that particular POP name. It is easy to work around this problem by using the "E-Mail Forwarding" feature of your Web Control Panel.

If, for example, the POP name (username) "sales" is already taken, and you definitely want to have "sales", then just click on the 'E-Mail Forwarding" page of your Web Control Panel and input the name "sales" in the left column of a row and enter the full email address that you will forward such email to in the right column of the same row.

NOTE 3: Your web browser MUST be set to allow cookies.

Due to the unique security requirement of the Web Control Panel, you MUST have your browser set to allow cookies. This, in conjunction with a number of hidden verification systems, ensures that you are the only user allowed to access these features on your domain. It is also recommended that you do not operate any other web-based applications when accessing your Web Control Panel.

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E-Mail Redirects (E-Mail Forwarding)

The fastest and simplest way to setup your e-mail redirects is to use your Web Control Panel's "Email Forwarding" page. Login to http://YourDomainName.com/cgi-bin/plusmail, click on "Email Forwarding," and then follow the instructions provided on that page.

Manual Setup

You may also set these up manually. There is a file in your home (root) directory called ".redirect". This file can be edited and re-uploaded. Just make sure that each of your redirects is on its own line, with a space between the name and where you want it redirected. Don't add empty lines between entries, and make sure the file is saved in ASCII (text) format and uploaded in ASCII (not binary) format. When you download it to your hard drive, you will see that it already has a one-line entry that looks like this:

default yourdomain@yourdomain.com

By leaving this line in, any e-mail ending with @yourdomain.com will be sent to yourdomain@yourdomain.com.

Note 1: You may remove the default line in the .redirect file and bounce all e-mail that is not separately listed. This will allow you to eliminate many of the spam messages that come in under odd aliases.

The following is an example of a ".redirect" file:

default yourdomain@yourdomain.com
homer H.Simpson@nuclear.com
bart MaskedAvenger@notatschool.org

In this example, all e-mail sent to homer@yourdomain.com would be redirected to H.Simpson@nuclear.com. All e-mail sent to bart@yourdomain.com would be redirected to MaskedAvenger@notatschool.org. Any other e-mail addressed to your domain would go to yourdomain@yourdomain.com email account

The benefit of PlusMail redirects is that you don't need a separate POP account for each e-mail address you want to use in your domain. You can place in your web pages, "Send e-mail to help@yourdomain.com" without the need to create a separate entry in the .redirect file because ALL e-mail goes by default to yourdomain@yourdomain.com, unless "help" is specified to go somewhere else.

Multiple redirection is possible. For instance, if you want e-mail to go to two addresses at the same time, enter the different e-mails with a comma to separate them (no spaces). For example:

help jane@hotmail.com,mike@yahoo.com,chan@china.com

Note 2: You may only forward up to a maximum of four e-mail addresses in the .redirect file and they must be listed on a single line. If more than four forwarding addresses are needed, use the mail lists directory feature.

E-mail redirects can be used in conjunction with autoresponders to return an error message to people sending e-mails to invalid e-mail addresses on your domain. This autoresponder could send back an error message like, "Oops, you reached an invalid address, please try again." Refer to the Autoresponders section below for instruction on how to implement this.

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Autoresponders (Infobots)

An autoresponder is a simple way of setting up an e-mail address that will return a message automatically when someone sends e-mail to it.

NOTE 1: Do NOT name your autoresponder the same as a POP e-mail account. Neither will work properly if they have the same name.

The fastest and simplest way to setup your autoresponders is to first login to your Web Control Panel, click on "Autoresponders", and then follow the directions provided on that page.

Manual Setup

You may also set them up as follows:

1. In your root (home) directory, there is a directory called "infobots". Set up a welcome message in this directory. You can name it anything you like, but for our example, we'll call it "info". Don't call it "info.txt" - just name it "info" without any extension. The text for the welcome message could say:

   "Thank you for requesting more information about our web page design package. We have several design packages to choose from. Here are our prices ..."

   Now, whenever someone sends e-mail to info@yourdomain.com, they will automatically receive that text e-mail message at whatever e-mail address they specified as their return-to address.

2. To see who is using the infobot, assuming your infobot address is info@example.com, just put the following line in your .redirect file: info example@example.com.

The original e-mail message will be sent to example@example.com, and the original sender will get the infobot text.

NOTE 2: Be sure to put the text file in the infobot directory before modifying your .redirect file, or the infobot will not work.

You may have as many autoresponders as you want. Just save them all in the infobots directory, and give them each a unique name between 3-16 characters long.

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Simple Mail list

The fastest and simplest way to setup a mail list is to login to your Web Control Panel, click on "Mail Lists," and then follow the directions provided on that page.

Manual Setup

You may also create a mail list manually as follows:

1. To make a mail list, create a simple text file, one address per line. For example:

   add1@email1.com
   add2@email2.com
   add3@email3.com

   You can put up to 1000 names in the list.

2. Once you are done creating the list, go to your home directory and put the list in the subdirectory called maillists. The list may be named anything you like. Name your file without an extension (clients is correct; clients.txt is incorrect).

To send mail to the list, just type the list-filename@yourdomain.com. For example, if your domain name is "mystore.com" and your mail list filename is "clients", you would e-mail "clients@mystore.com".

NOTE 1: Your mail list, autoresponder, and .redirect files can not have the same filename.

To password-protect your mail lists, add the desired password to the first line of the mail list and whenever you send mail to the list, put this password as the first line of the text message.

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Subscribable Mail lists

With a subscribable mail list, you may offer your clients a monthly newsletter, sales updates or just a friendly hello. Your clients may easily subscribe to your list via e-mail. The PlusMail System is capable of multiple lists, so you may easily organize various information for your customers. There is a limit of 1,000 subscribers per list, and you may e-mail a message up to 75k.

The fastest and simplest way to setup a subscribable mail list is to login to your Web Control Panel, click on "Mail Lists," and then click on "Subscribable Mail Lists" and follow the directions provided on that page.

Manual Setup

You may also create your subscribable mail list manually as follows:

1. Setup a welcome message in the infobot directory. You may name it anything you like, but for our example, we'll call it welcome.

   The text file could say:

   Welcome to our Maillist. You are now subscribed to our list.

   This message will be automatically returned to the sender each time someone subscribes.

2. Now you need to setup a configuration file to tell the mail system to build a mailing list. In your infobot directory, create a file called "infolist". This is used to tell the system what to do with addresses received from each infobot response. You may have as many lists as you want. But in keeping with the list example above, we will call it mlist.

   Here's what the file should look like:

   welcome mlist

   The first line should have a space between the two names and be uploaded in ASCII format, not binary.

   You can have multiple lists, such as mlist1, mlist2, etc., but you should only have one configuration file. It must be called "infolist". To handle all three examples, you'd make the infolist file look like this, with each listserver on its own line and no blank lines in between:

   welcome mlist
   welcome2 mlist2
   welcome3 mlist3

   Now when someone wants to subscribe to your list in the above example, they will e-mail welcome@yourdomain.com. This will return the infobot called "welcome" and put their e-mail address into the mailing list file in the mail lists directory on your server. You may download the mail list file after it has been created and people have subscribed. The mailing list file will be created AFTER the first person subscribes, or if you yourself send e-mail to "welcome@yourdomain.com" to test it. Put yourself on the mailing list to try this. People don't need to subscribe themselves - you may add their names for them, or remove them at any time by modifying and uploading the file in the mail lists directory. People can not automatically unsubscribe themselves. You must manually remove their e-mail address from the list.

3. When you want to send mail to all subscribers, you can send e-mail to mlist@yourdomain.com and the PlusMail system will send it to the entire list.

4. If you want to see who is subscribing to your mail list without having to check the mail lists file periodically via FTP, you may put a line in your .redirect file. Note 1: It is important that you have the infobot installed before entering the address line in the .redirect. For the mlist example we used above, the line you would add would look like this:

   welcome yourdomain@yourdomain.com

   The welcome document you created will be sent to the subscriber, AND you will receive their e-mail message.

Note 2: When sending e-mail to your list for the first time, you will get the autoresponder reply immediately, but you may not see the corresponding mail list file right away, as our system takes time to build it. Wait 15 to 30 minutes and it will show up. (Depending on the time of day and current traffic conditions, our servers may be allocating it to a lower priority.)

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Majordomo Listserver (add-on feature)

Majordomo Listserver is an add-on feature that requires an additional monthly fee. If you wish to have a Majordomo Listserver activated, please contact us, and provide a Majordomo List Name. Make sure it has a different name than the name of your domain. For instance, if your domain were "mystore.com", you could request "mystoredomo".

Once we have setup your Majordomo listserver, you may get help by sending an email to majordomo@yourdomain.com. On the first line of your email, just type the word "HELP". You will be sent a general help file. If you want more detailed instructions on using Majordomo, email the autoresponder at domo@safe-order.net.

Another great resource for Majordomo information is http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/majordomo.manual.txt

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SquirrelMail / Web-Based Email / Webmail

The webmail program we provide is called "SquirrelMail," and is accessible here:

http://YourDomainName.com/webmail

Typically, SquirrelMail is activated by default for new accounts. If it is not activated for your domain, then you just need to activate PHP. Login to your Web Control Panel (http://YourDomainName.com/cgi-bin/plusmail), click on "Free Scripts," and then select PHP. It will take 15 minutes to be ready, and then you may access your webmail login page.

SquirrelMail is a standards-based webmail package written in PHP4. It includes built-in pure PHP support for the IMAP and SMTP protocols, and all pages render in pure HTML 4.0 (with no Javascript) for maximum compatibility across browsers. SquirrelMail has all the functionality you would want from an email client, including strong MIME support, address books, folder manipulation and spam filtering. Numerous languages are supported. Check out the SquirrelMail site for more info: SquirrelMail

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Spam Assassin Spam Filter

Spam Assassin is a mail filter that identifies spam and junk mail using text analysis. Using its rule base, it uses a wide range of heuristic tests on mail headers and body text to identify spam or unsolicited commercial email.

On the 'Plusmail' accounts (iStarters, E-Commerce and Corporate), you may configure its settings via the "Options" page of your webmail program: http://YourDomainName.com/webmail

On the Ensim accounts, login to your "user" web control panel (http://Your DomainName.com/user), and select "Spam Filtering."

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