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E-Mail
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PlusMail
The sophisticated mailing system called PlusMail(tm) is
included as part of your service. In addition to being able to have nearly
unlimited infobots by simply adding text files to a directory, you can
also redirect mail for everyone in your domain by simply modifying a text
file.
Email Redirects
There is a file in your home (root) directory called .redirect.
This file can be edited and reuploaded. Just make sure that each of your
redirects is on its own line, with a space between the name and where
you want it directed to. Don't add empty lines between entries, and make
sure the file is saved in text (ASCII) format, and uploaded in text (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
This line must be left as is, otherwise your POP email accounts
could get messed up. But suppose you want all email for your domain to
go to your already existing POP account somewhere else. You would then
change your .redirect file to look like this:
default yourdomain@yourdomain.com
yourdomain existingaddress@somewhereelse.com
If you want to redirect other names in your domain to other
people, you could make the file look like this, as an example:
default yourdomain@yourdomain.com
fred 73452.452@compuserve.com
info goddess@afterlife.com
This would redirect mail for fred@yourdomain.com to 73452.452@compuserve.com,
info@yourdomain.com to goddess@afterlife.com, and all other email in your
domain would go to yourdomain@yourdomain.com.
The benefit of PlusMail redirects is that you don't need
a separate POP account for each email address you want to use in your
domain. You can put in your webpages, "Send email to help@yourdomain.com"
without the need to create a separate entry in the .redirect file because
ALL email goes by default to yourdomain@yourdomain.com, unless "help"
is specified to go somewhere else!
Multiple redirection is possible. For instance if you want
email to go to two addresses at the same time, enter the different emails
with no space and a comma to separate them. You can have upto 4 email
address to cc:...they must be listed on the same line though. For example:
help beavis@aol.com,butthead@prodigy.net
Email redirects can be used in conjunction with autoresponders
to return an error message to people sending emails to invalid email addresses
on your domain. This autoresponder could send back an error message like
"Oops, you reached an invalid address, please try again." See "Simple
Autoresponders" for how to implement this.
Simple Autoresponders
An autoresponder is a simple way of setting up an email
address which will return a message automatically when someone sends email
to it. Here are the instructions for setting this up.
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 plain info with no file extension. The text
for the welcome message could say:
"Thank you for requesting more information about our webpage
design package. We have several design packages to choose from. Here are
our prices..."
Now, whenever someone sends email to: info@yourdomain.com
they will automatically receive that text email message to whatever email
address they specified as their return-to address. It's as simple as that.
Don't set up a redirect in your .redirect file for this.
You can have as many autoresponders as you want. Just save
them all in the infobots directory and give them each a unique name of
anything with between 3-16 characters long.
Listservers / Mail Lists
PlusMail can also be used to create simple listservers.
There is a limit of 5,000 subscribers per listserver. Here are the instructions
for setting up a listserver:
1) Set up a welcome message in the infobot directory --
you can name it anything you like, but for our example we'll call it welcome.
The text file could say:
"Welcome to our listserver. You are now subscribed and any
email you wish to publish for all other subscribers to see can be sent
to listserver@yourdomain.com."
This message will be automatically returned to the sender
each time someone subscribes.
2) Now you need to set up 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 can have as many lists
as you want. But in keeping with the listserver example above, we will
call it listserver.
Here's what the file should look like:
welcome listserver
The first line should have a space between the two names
and be uploaded in text format, not binary.
You can have multiple listservers, such as listserver1,
listserver2, 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, with
no blank lines in-between:
welcome listserver
welcome2 listserver2
welcome3 listserver3
2A) Now when someone wants to subscribe to your list in
the above example, they would email welcome@yourdomain.com. This would
return the infobot created called "welcome" and put their email address
into the mailing list file in the maillists directory on your server.
You can go in and download the maillist 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 email to "welcome@yourdomain.com"
to test it. Put yourself on the mailing list to try this. People don't
need to subscribe themselves -- you can add their names for them, or remove
them at any time by modifying and uploading the file in the "maillists"
directory. People cannot automatically unsubscribe themselves. You must
go in and manually remove their email address from the list.
3) Now when you or anyone who has subscribed to the list
wants to send mail to all subscribers, you or they can send email to listserver@yourdomain.com
and the PlusMail system will send it to the entire list.
4) To password protect the file, add a password to the first
line of your maillists file. In order to mail to the list, this password
must be in the first line in the body of the message. Anybody that sends
to the list without the password will have their message sent to the default
address in the .redirect file. You can then decide if you want them to
mail to the list and give them the password if you desire.
5) If you want to see who is subscribing to your listserver
without having to go and check the maillists file periodically via FTP,
you can put a line in your .redirect file. NOTE: it is important that
you have the infobot installed before entering the address line in the
.redirect. For the listserver 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 email message.
Note: When sending email to your listserver for the first
time, you will get the autoresponder email back right away, but you may
not see the corresponding maillist file right away, as our system takes
time to build it. Wait 15 or 30 minutes or so 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.)
SitePop - Adding and
Removing Your POP3 Accounts
To run sitepop, point your browser to yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/sitepop.
If you get a screen that says "Set Login Info", your password has not
been set and you must enter a username and password. This login will be
saved and you will need to use it to run sitepop again in the future.
If the screen just says "Login", your username & password has already
been defined. By default it is the same username and password given for
your domain's main login.
Once logged in, you'll have the option to either add or remove pop accounts.
To add, enter the name and password you want, and click submit. To remove,
select "remove", choose the pop account you want to remove from the drop-down
list. It will take a few minutes for changes to take effect, so if you
want to remove one right after adding it, you'll have to wait 15 minutes
or so before you will be able to.
Change POP3 Passwords
To change a POP3 password, select the pop account from the
menu and select "change password". Then type in the new password and retype
it to confirm, then click submit.
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