Hosting TutorialPlease use this tutorial to resolve any myths or questions you may have regarding hosting before continuing your search for a hosting provider.Chapter One - Overview Chapter Two - Relative Pricing Chapter Three - Space Requirements Chapter Four - Bandwidth Requirements Chapter Five - Email Information Chapter Six - Counters and Statistics Chapter Seven - Real CGI-Bin Chapter Eight -Control Panel Chapter Nine - Mailing Lists/News Letter Chapter Ten - E-Commerce Chapter Eleven - FTP Chapter Twelve - Connection and Reliability Chapter Thirteen - Support E-Mail InformationOverviewPOP3 protocol E mail aliases Forwarding Auto-responders AR Ethics Avoiding Spam Overview The email accounts that come with web hosting are for the most part incoming accounts only. Rich privileges and controls are afforded all of our hosting clients, such as aliases, forwarding, and auto responders. Multiple POP3 accounts allow you to download your mail with programs (like Outlook Express.) Forwarding options make downloading unnecessary, you can just forward mail arriving at your new accounts to your existing email accounts (like AOL.) Outgoing email is restricted heavily by agreements with ORBS, or the Open Relay Behaviour-modification System. Spam-mongers attack mail relays left unsecured and other ISP's blocking actions could get our entire system excluded from certain networks, so we cooperate thoroughly. The sendmail function is only available from scripts run on your web space, so if you choose to run these types of scripts, run them responsibly and use proper security. The best advice would be to only allow form mail addressed to you. Your account could be frozen or deleted and an anti-spam message put in it's place should it be determined, by the proper authority, that offending mail was from you or in anyway benefits you. Back to the top POP3 Protocol POP3 is version 3 of the Post Office Protocol. POP3 allows a client computer to retrieve electronic mail from a POP3 server via a (temporary) TCP/IP or other[?] connection. It does not provide for sending mail, which is assumed to be done via SMTP or some other method. POP is useful for computers, e.g. mobile or home computers, without a permanent network connection which therefore require a "post office" (the POP server) to hold their mail until they can retrieve it. If you already have permanent E-mail then there is no need to store your mail in valuable server space, forwarding to your permanent address will work just fine. If you want to give your family or friends an address at yourdomain.com, you will have to set them up in the Mail Manager within the Server Control Panel. Back to the top E mail aliases An Alias is just another name for another name. You should never be restricted to the number of aliases you can have, in fact on our machines there is no reason to even list them all. Through a "catch all" account that comes pre-installed with your hosting service one mailbox can catch, reject, respond to, and/or forward every piece of mail that comes to your domain name. Aliases can be individually listed in your Mail Manager within your Server Control Panel, to give them features different from your other accounts, like forwarding, or responders. Back to the top Forwarding Forwarding refers to the act of not keeping a copy of mail on the server, but instead just re-sending it un retouched to another address. Your Mail Manager function within your Server Control Panel allows you to forward to other mailboxes on the system (any, all, or none) and any number of addresses outside of our system. Back to the top Auto-responders Just like they sound, Auto-responders, sometimes called robots, even info-bots, automatically send a reply email to all emails that they receive. Our system allows you to write a reply, or informative article and save it to your storage space, the reply is then sent in response to any letter received at that address. For different articles, each would need a different address. This can be a very professional tool to let your customers know that their letter has been received, or to distribute information only to those willing to give you their good email address. It can also get out of control, destructive, and at the very least, extremely annoying. Back to the top AR Ethics An Auto-responder is a tool not available, on free places. When available at all they come tagged with annoying signatures, and advertisements. As such, when used properly, these professional AR's, can improve your stature among your peers. When used incorrectly this power can multiply bad taste and even result in destructive loops. Don't attach an AR to your regular email address, friends and associates get very tired of deleting the same message over and over. Don't attach an AR to any address that you write email from, or that you use as a reply address. If you were to write to an address that had an auto- responder, that response would trigger your responder and a never-ending circle is started. To be polite, always print right on your web page or email, right next to the AR's address, that writing to this address will get an automatic response, this lets people that disobey the above rule know that such a circle would be created. Back to the top Avoiding Spam Spam is any unwanted commercial or bulk email. It is like calling someone collect, while it may not increase the cost of regular internet access to get tons of spam -- it has increased the cost of all Internet business. We, at Rosserver.com, pay for every gig of transfer to and from our machines, and this includes the mail. I have been asked why I didn't answer a support request, only to find it it the recycle bin. I had deleted it thinking it was spam. The cost of spam is real, and it is possible for you to avoid most of it. 1) Don't use your real email address in chat, profiles, usenet, or guest books. 2) Never give your email address on forms for free stuff. 3) Don't publish your email address on a web site -- anywhere. 4) Use a disposable email address, webmail, or one of the extra addresses that come with your regular ISP. 5) Protect email addresses on web pages by using java and/or alternate characters. 6) Protect web pages with addresses from spiders with a robots.txt file. 7) Detect the user agent and re-diect unknown spiders to a trap. 8) Never Un-Subscribe from spam and Never subscribe to Unsubscribe lists. 9) Using a .org or .gov extension for your domain may help. 10) Keep an active up-to-date spam filter functioning on your accounts. 11) Bouncing back or autoresponding to email may indicate to spammers that your address is working. 12) Never send a "read receipt". 13) Sending misdirected mail (default) to a user named /dev/null will delete "dictionary" spam attacks to your domain mail. 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