E-mails Intro

HOW DO I SEND AND CHECK MY EMAIL?

After you have created your new email accounts, there are 2 ways to manage your email. I will start with:

1- Web Interface (Web-Based Email):

You can do you mailing (sending, checking, manage address book ....) directly with your web browser. You fire up your favorite web browser, say Internet Explorer and log on with your username and password and you can start mailing. Yahoo Mail and Hotmail are good examples of web-based email. You can check your email everywhere in the world as long as you are connected to the internet.

The web interface is provided by your web host and they indeed look a lot different than Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. There are a few common interfaces. Lunar Pages is using Horde and Squirrel Mail, while icons is using @Mail. Using web interface is slow because you need to continuously making connections with the mail server. Web interface also have limited features. The better way to manage your email is by using an ...

2- Email Client (Email Software):

The most popular email clients are Outlook Express and Eudora. Outlook Express is free and come with Microsoft Windows so you probably already have this in your computer. Eudora have both free and paid version. Free versions are supported by advertisement. I am a big fan of Eudora and have been using it for more than 10 years.

To do you’re mailing with your email client. You simply configure it by adding:

After that, you can start you mailing immediately! The POP server and SMTP server information are provided by your web host and is always included in your welcome email. That's why your should always keep your welcome email safe and NEVER delete it!

Cut it short, your POP server (Post Office Protocol) play the role in receiving and storing your emails while SMTP server (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) in charge of sending out emails for you.

When someone sends you an email, it is stored in the POP server until you retrieve it. Once you retrieve it to your email client, it will be deleted from the server. Your mail is now available in your computer. You can read it, reply to it, forward to someone else or delete it. You can also choose to keep the email on the server by configuring your email client but usually you don't need to unless you want to retrieve your emails to multiple computer (office and home; PC and laptop).

You might wonder why the word "Client" is used. If you are dining in a restaurant, you are the "client" and the waitress is your "server". The same thing happens in the internet where servers do the serving while clients are served. In the context we are discussing so far, you email client is served by the email servers, which are the POP server and SMTP server. Other examples of server client relationship are website where we have a web server and a web client, which is your web browser. If you use chatting software like ICQ , AOL, Microsoft messenger or Yahoo messenger, they are the clients and are served by their respective chat servers.

INTERCHANGE BETWEEN CLIENT AND WEB INTERFACE

You can still check your email through the web interface even most of the time you are using your email client. When you are traveling, you can easily check for new emails as long as you are provided with internet access. You can also send email through the web interface. Of course, you can only check for new emails as an old email which has been retrieved to your email client will no longer be available. Remember that emails stay in the server until you retrieve them to your email client. Through the web interface, you can only read the emails that are still in the server.

Introducing IMAP

If you only use the web interface without the email client, then you can have access to your email wherever you have internet access. But if you use your email client, you might encounter a problem if you want to access your email from multiple computers! Even though you can retrieve the same emails to different computer, but each computer will have their own mailbox. If you delete an email in mailbox A, the same email will still be in mailbox B! If you save a reply draft in mailbox B, you won't have the draft in mailbox A! You will not have this problem if you are using the web interface all the time because it will be the very same mailbox no matter which computer you use. I have mentioned that emails stay in the server until you retrieve them to your email client. If you do not retrieve, they are always in the server.

There are 2 protocols for email that define how email should work on the internet. The one we have been discussing so far is called POP (Post Office Protocol), which utilize the POP server and SMTP server and has the "multiple mailboxes" problem. Later, a new mail protocol is defined and it is called IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). IMAP solved the "multiple mailboxes" problem by keeping the mailbox in the server.

This way, you will still be accessing the same mailbox no matter which computer you are using. You can also enjoy the features of email client on all the computers instead of using the limited web interface.

Although IMAP has been around for some time, it is still uncommon. The reason is accessing speed. Accessing a remote mailbox is significant slower then accessing a mailbox locally. Just like using a web interface, the email client will need to make a lot of connections to the remote server. If you want to learn more about IMAP, you can visit their website.

EMAIL FORWARDER (EMAIL ALIAS)

Instead of creating email accounts, you can also create email forwarders with your hosting account. As the name suggest, any email received by an email forwarder will be forwarded to another email address that your have configured. So a forwarder is not really an email account because it will not store your emails and it cannot be used to send email. It just redirect any email received to another email address. It is an alias to the destination email address.

For example, you might already have a personal email account where you are using all the time. After you register a new domain, you can create a forwarder yournewemail@yournewdomain.com and configure it to forward to your original email account. This way you don't need to check your email from 2 different accounts but still be able to enjoy a new email address!

You can configure an email address to be both an email account and a forwarder. In this case, you can send mail and receive mail with this email address, while at the same time all emails received will also be forwarded to another email address.

To have more fun, you can set an email forwarder to forward to more than 1 email address! For example, if you have a forwarder sales@yourcompany.com, you can set it to forward to you, your sales manager, your sales team, and anyone who wants a copy!

DEFAULT FORWARD ADDRESS

What will happen if someone send an email to spiderman@yourdomain.com which you have never created? You can choose to receive it by setting a default forward address. All emails that are sent to any non existing email address under your domain name will be forwarded to this address. It is also called the catch-all address.

AUTO-RESPONDER

An auto-responder automatically replies a preset message to the sender. This is fun and I bet you have seen this happens multiple times. Have you ever sent an email to request customer support for a product or service and immediately received a reply which inform you that they have received your email and will reply to your promptly? That's an auto-responder!

Another example would be if you are away for vacation and will not be able to read your email for 1 week, you can setup an auto-responder that will automatically reply an email to anyone who send you an email while you are away, telling them you will not be able to reply to their emails from when to when. After you come back from your vacation, you can simply remove the auto-responder.

EMAIL EXPIRATIONS

1- SMTP / POP3:

SMTP (pronounced as separate letters) Short for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, a protocol for sending e-mail messages between servers. Most e-mail systems that send mail over the Internet use SMTP to send messages from one server to another; the messages can then be retrieved with an e-mail client using either POP or IMAP. In addition, SMTP is generally used to send messages from a mail client to a mail server. This is why you need to specify both the POP or IMAP server and the SMTP server when you configure your e-mail application.

2- Web Mail:

The ultimate in accessibility, whether at home, office or on the road, Register Fly Web-Mail is the easiest way to send, receive and manage your e-mail. Our solution is 100% web-based which means you only need a web browser to access it. In addition to an easy to use interface we also give you a great address book, specify filters, create rules and much more.

3- Spam Filter:

A devise for blocking unsolicited junk email, known as spam. Spam filters can be set up at the network level, so that junk email is blocked from entering a local network, or else at the individual computer level, so that junk emails are sorted out into a separate junk email folder. Spam filters involve a security level trade-off; the goal is to block all unsolicited email without accidentally filtering out email from legitimate senders. Internet service providers and spam filter software vendors have devised clever algorithms to do this sorting for you, or else allow you to tweak and customize the filters to your individual preferences.

4- E-Mail Redirection:

Email redirection allows you to forward email that is addressed to your domain to another email address. This allows you to have an email address at your domain without needing to change the way your PC reads mail.

5- Auto Responder:

This is a program or script on a mail server that automatically replies to e-mails received for a certain account. Though it is run from the mail server, an auto-responder can usually be set up by the user through a Web-based interface. For example, a company might set up an auto-responder for their support e-mail address. The reply might read something like, "We have received your support request. One of our technicians will contact you shortly. “Individuals can also use auto-responders to let people know when they are away from their computer and won't be able to respond to any e-mails for awhile. For example, you might set up an auto-responder for your personal e-mail address to say, "Sorry, I am on vacation and will be returning on June 15th."

TYPES OF EMAIL REDIRECTION WE SUPPORT THREE TYPES OF REDIRECTION

Postmaster (catchall) redirection to an address all mail to anyone at your domain will be forwarded on to another email address. i.e.:

• james@yourdomain.com -> james@youremailaddress.com
• henry@yourdomain.com -> henry@youremailaddress.com
• ANYEMAILADDRESS@yourdomain.com -> joe@youremailaddress.com

The mail arriving at joe@youremailaddress.com will still have the same To address, so you will be able to see who the message was originally intended for and filter it on your machine accordingly.

Redirection of a single recipient to an address with this option all mail to one person at your domain can be forwarded to another address:

• joseph@yourdomain.com -> joe@youremailaddress.com

Only mail to joseph@yourdomain.com would be forwarded to joe@youremailaddress.com. Mail to anyone else at your domain your go via the postmaster forwarding address as above.