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How to Use the E-mail System
This is a comprehensive Howto on using HSR's e-mail system, a powerful, full-featured solution that allows you to manage all aspects of your e-mail configuration through your browser.
Index
- Administering Your email
- Managing email Accounts
- Creating a New email Account
- Changing the Password on an Existing email Account
- Setting a Vacation Message
- Deleting an email Account
- Setting your Catchall Preference
- Setting a Local Account as the Catchall
- Setting a Remote Address as the Catchall
- Setting Your Catchall to Bounce
- Managing Forwards
- Managing Autoresponders (Mail Robots)
- Managing Mailing Lists
- Using your email Client
- Using Webmail
- IMAP vs. POP
- Why offer SMTP?
1. Administering Your email
Firt off, you'll need to point your browser to the address of the email administration website. which is at yourdomain/qmailadmin or mail.highspeedrails.com.
You'll want to login with the username postmaster, your domain (in the form of domain.com, leave off the www) and the postmaster password you received when you opened your account.
If you login successfully, you'll see the Main Menu. (If not, please try again and if you still can't get in, file a support ticket.)
1.A. Managing email Accounts
1.A.1 Creating a New email Account
To create a new email account, click on New Email Accounts under Quick Links (on the Main Menu). On the next screen, fill in the username that you want this account to have and type the password you want to use. Then type the password again to verify it. Make sure you choose a password that does not contain the username, domain or any dictionary words and that includes a mix of numbers and both capital and small letters for maximum security. Filling in the actual name of the person to use the account in the Real name field is optional but is a good idea as it will help you and other administrators keep track of your email usage.
If you have a mailing lists with this domain, you can automatically subscribe this new email account to the list by checking the box corresponding to the mailing list.
Finally, click Add and your account has been created. Remember that the username for the purpose of sending and receiving email is the full email address, username@domain.com.
1.A.2 Changing the Password on an Existing email Account
Want to change the password on an existing email account? Its a good security practice to change passwords regularly. From the Main Menu, click on email Accounts. On the next screen, click on the button in the Modify User column that corresponds to the email account you want to change the password for. On the next screen, type the new password twice and click Modify User. The password is now changed.
If you want the user of an email account to be able to login and change his/her password, then instead of logging in with username postmaster, have the person login with their username (the part before the @ symbol), the same domain and the password for their email account.
1.A.3 Setting a Vacation Message
Going to be away for awhile and want people who email you to know when you'll be back? You can set a Vacation Message. From the Main Menu, click on email Accounts. On the next screen, click on the button in the Modify User column that corresponds to the email account you want to set a Vacation Message for. Click the radio button where it says Enable Vacation, fill in the subject you would like your Vacation Message email to have where it says Vacation Subject and the body of the email where it says Vacation Message. Click Modify User and now any email sent to your account will be responded to with an email that has the subject and message you specified.
Be careful with this tool if you are subscribed to any mailing lists. You should first set yourself to receive no messages from the mailing lists you are on, as this could result in your vacation message being sent to the mailing list every time someone posts! This would not be good for your image on this mailing list!
1.A.4 Deleting an email Account
From the Main Menu, click on email Accounts. On the next screen, click on the button in the Delete Account column that corresponds to the email account you want to delete. On the next screen you will be asked to confirm deletion. You will also be offered the chance to forward any email sent to this account in the future to another email address. If you want to do this, check the box and fill in the email address where you want the future email to go to.
This will create a forward which in the future will forward any email sent to the original, deleted email account address to the email address you specified for forwarding.
Be careful, however, as this will not forward any email currently in the account. You should make sure and download any email currently in the account before deleting it, unless you don't mind losing it.
1.B. Setting your Catchall Preference
You would like to use only a limited number of email accounts and yet be able to accept email for any arbitrary email address @yourdmain.com. You could set lots of forwards and aliases, but a more efficient approach is to set an account to catch all of your email.
You have three options:
- Set one of your local email accounts as the catchall.
- Set a remote email address (something@anotherdomain.com) as the catchall.
- Set catchall to bounce.
1.B.1 Setting a Local Account as the Catchall
To set your example email account "info" as the catchall, do the following. From the Main Menu, click on email Accounts. On the next screen, click on the button in the CatchAll Account column that corresponds to the email account you want to set as the catchall. On the next screen, this button should have changed to the word Default. In the top left-hand corner of the screen it should say CatchAll: info. You have now set the email account "info" as your catchall.
1.B.2 Setting a Remote Address as the Catchall
To set a remote email address as the catchall, do the following. From the Main Menu, click on email Accounts. On the next screen, click on the link at the bottom right called Set remote catch all account. On the next screen fill in the email address you would like to catch all the email for this account (e.g., user@otherdomain.com) and click Add. On the next screen, at the top right, you should see CatchAll: user@otherdomain.com. You have now set the email address user@otherdomain.com as your catchall.
1.B.3 Setting Your Catchall to Bounce
Maybe you only want to get email for your designated accounts, forwards, aliases, autoresponders and mailing lists and you want all email sent to any other email address @yourdomain.com to bounce, or be returned to sender. In this case you can set your catchall to bounced. From the Main Menu, click on email Accounts. On the next screen, click on the link at the bottom right called Set catchall bounced. On the next screen, at the top right, you should see CatchAll: Bounced. You have now set your catchall to bounced.
1.C. Managing Forwards
1.C.1 What's a Forward?
A forward is when you set an email address on your domain to forward to an email address either on the same or a different domain. For example, maybe you have a supplier that you would like to be able to receive email at your domain, for example, at jane@yourdomain.com. But your supplier does not want another email account, she wants to use her current one (jane@supplier.com). You can use a forward to automatically and transparently resend any email that is sent to jane@yourdomain.com to jane@supplier.com.
1.C.2 Creating a Forward
To create a new forward, do the following. From the Main Menu, follow the link called New Forwards under Quick Links. On the next screen, where it says Name, fill in the username of the email address at your domain (jane), and where it says Destination, fill in the remote email address or local account name where you would like email to be resent to (jane@supplier.com or jane). Click Add and on the next screen you should see a list of all your forwards as well as a message confirming your success in adding the new forward.
1.C.3 Modifying Forwards
To change a forward or alias, follow the Forwards link on the Main Menu to the list of Forwards and click on the button in the Modify column that corresponds to the email forward you want to change. Make your desired changes and click Add. On the next screen confirm your changes in the list of Forwards.
1.C.4 Deleting Forwards
To Delete a Forward, follow the Forwards link on the Main Menu to the list of Forwards and click on the button in the Delete column that corresponds to the email forward you want to delete. On the next screen you will have to confirm your decision to delete this forward. Click on the Confirm delete button if you are sure you want to remove this forward and on the next screen you will receive a confirmation message and can confirm deletion by seeing if the forward is in the list of current forwards.
1.D. Managing Autoresponders (Mail Robots)
An Autoresponder (also known as a Mail Robot) allows you to automatically reply to email messages sent to a given email address at your domain with a standard message and at the same time forward the received message to other email addresses. The difference between Mail Robots and Forwards is (1) that Mail Robots can send a standard message upon receipt of an email and (2) the forwarding is optional.
1.D.1 Creating a Mail Robot
To create a new Mail Robot, do the following. From the Main Menu, follow the link called New Mail Robot under Quick Links. On the next screen, where it says Mail Robot Name, type the username of the email address that you would like to be your Mail Robot (this is the address to which people will send email). If you would like a copy of the original email to be resent to another email addres, fill in that email address where it says Send copy to. Finally, fill in the Subject and Body of the email to be sent out in reply. Click Add and your Mail Robot has been created.
Now send a message to your new Mail Robot and it will reply to you with the message you set and will forward the email you sent to the email address you put in the Send copy to field.
1.D.2 Modifying a Mail Robot
To change a Mail Robot, follow the Mail Robots link on the Main Menu to the list of Mail Robots and click on the button in the Modify column that corresponds to the Mail Robot you want to change. Make your desired changes and click Add. Your changes have now been made.
1.D.3 Deleting a Mail Robot
To Delete a Mail Robot, follow the Mail Robots link on the Main Menu to the list of Mail Robots and click on the button in the Delete column that corresponds to the Mail Robot you want to delete. On the next screen you will have to confirm your decision to delete this Mail Robot. Click on the Confirm delete button if you are sure you want to remove this Mail Robot and on the next screen you will receive a confirmation message and can confirm deletion by seeing if the Mail Robot is in the list of current Mail Robots.
1.E. Managing Mailing Lists
High Speed Rails offers EZMLM-idx mailing lists, the Mailman mailing list manager and Zope-based MailBoxer mailing lists. Other MLMs such as PHPList, DadaMail, etc. can be easily installed. Please check out our EZMLM Howto for more information on the excellent EZMLM. For information on MailBoxer, please consult our MailBoxer Howto. We also have a Mailman Howto.
Any of the above should meet most anyone's needs, but EZMLM is better for large mailing lists.
2. Using your email Client
An email client is a program you use to download, read and write your email, which usually runs on your home or work computer. Some examples of email clients include: Outlook, Entourage, Mailsmith, Eudora and Thunderbird.
To send and receive email from your email client the servername is mail.highspeedrails.com for all protocols (SMTP, IMAP & POP). To send and receive you will need to authenticate using your username (the same as the email address for the account, in the form of user@domain.com) and your password.
You can also use your own domain to send and receive email, for example instead of sending with mail.highspeedrails.com, you can send by connecting to mail.mydomain.com. We automatically map the mail. subdomain to the same IP for each and every domain whose DNS we host.
3. Using Webmail
Webmail is an email client that runs on our mail server and can be accessed from anywhere using a browser (and an internet connection). This is very convenient for accessing your email when you are travelling or from a computer that you share with other users.
To login to webmail, your username is the same as your email address (user@domain.com) and your password is the same as well.
We offer two webmail apps, SquirrelMail and SqWebMail. Webmail is available at mail.highspeedrails.com.
4. IMAP vs. POP
IMAP and POP are two alternative ways to do the same thing: download your email. High Speed Rails supports both protocols.
POP is acceptable if you plan to always download your email to one computer. POP transfers email from our servers to your computer and then deletes the messages from our servers.
IMAP, on the other hand, is very useful if you access your email from multiple machines. Maybe you sometimes check email from your home computer, sometimes from your work computer, sometimes from your laptop and sometimes via Webmail. You want your email to be synchronized across all these clients so that if you download your email at home, you can also read it at work, or if you delete an email in webmail, it doesn't show up again on your laptop. IMAP makes this possible.
5. Why offer SMTP?
Unlike many other solution providers, we offer you SMTP service. This allows you to send email using your own domain, which makes you look more professional than your competitor who may be sending email to his potential clients from his hotmail or earthlink account. ;)
Questions?
Please contact us with your questions and we will get back to you right away.
