An annoying thing about building an email system is the fear of your server's IP getting accidentally logged on one of the many Anti-Spam blacklisting sites.

These site's basically record who they think is sending spam emails, so if they think you're one of the bad guys you go in their book; which as you can imagine services like GMail, YahooMail and Hotmail reference these to gauge bad senders.

To check if you've been unintentionally listed;

• First use SamSpade.org to get your site's IP Address
• Then type that IP in EmailStuff.Org to check if you've been blacklisted.

Most site's will allow you to request removal from their black-lists without too much of a problem.

Hotmail's SpamBox

Another thing i'm trying to figure out is how to stop emails my webapp sends from going into into Hotmail's spam box, it's ok with Gmail and everyone else, but bad with MS Hotmail.

'Hotmail have a propietry spam filter which is prone to false positives from some senders for no aparent reason. Hotmail wont tell you why it is classed as spam.'

Thankfully Thomas Glasgow has suggested that if you should first send an email from YahooMail to your site, then reply back to YahooMail; YahooMail should then interpret that as a good site and stop doing this.

Not sure whether it works for Hotmail but worth a shot.

DNS = Domain Naming Service
p. …quite simply the glue that ties your newly purchased .com to your server’s hardware.

There’s a few other bits to it, like the Name Server, or the original Domain Name Registrar (e.g. godaddy.com); they’re a little more involved but I’ll try to cover them here.

Buying your Domain Name

First off, go buy your new domain name at one of the domain name registrars. I’ve suggested godaddy.com purely because they’re so cheap, but you can use any other.

Next once you’ve bought your domain name, go in and you’ll be able to point it to a naming server. This connects your .com to the server containing your dns details and thus to your meat & potatoes server box.

So for this example, we’ll use SliceHost (although you can use the free DNS provider FreeDNS who provide the service free of charge, I’ve used and are really good.

Go to your DNS provider and they’ll provide you with a list of nameservers you can use.

e.g.
bq. ns1.slicehost.net
ns2.slicehost.net
ns3.slicehost.net

Go to your domain registrar and in the nameserver provider part, enter these three (3 for automatic failover, one fails the other takes charge, etc.).

Creating your DNS records

Now we’ve got the .com pointed to the DNS provider that will host our DNS records, let’s go create some.

So, for SliceHost, go to the DNS Records section, click ‘advanced view’ (specifically for slicehost); and now We’ll begin.

Create a record for each one of these

type: A

name: www

data: (ip address of your serverbox)

type: A

name: mysite.com.

data: (ip address of your serverbox)

Note the . at the end of the one above (DNS records always have a fullstop at the end), and that it doesn’t have www. at the start.

Next we need to tie the domain name to the name server for a sort-of reverse lookup. So create records like…

type: NS

name: mysite.com.

data: ns1.slicehost.net.

type: NS

name: mysite.com.

data: ns2.slicehost.net.

type: NS

name: mysite.com.

data: ns3.slicehost.net.

Notice the fullstop at the end of the Name and Data part.

Unfortunately now we have to wait for these settings to propogate thru the web, can take up-to 48 hours but usually quicker (try doing this at midnight in the UK).

Using Google Apps for your Email

Now we’ve got the site hooked up to the server box, how about email?. Well, you could install an exchange mail server on your box but they’re usually a nightmare for the beginners; so how about we use Google Apps & GMail?.

Google Apps is a new free service google has launched to provide home users and small business with a way of having standard google tools but tied to their domain name. So you can have john@mysite.com be your email address but use Google GMail to handle it without building an exchange server; big headache gone.

Go to the Google Apps website and register for the free Standard service. Use your new domain name mysite.com and create an email account for it.

You’ll need to verify your site with Google to turn the service on, quickest method is to put an HTML file on your server’s /public web directory and click VERIFY.

Once done go back to SliceHost / Your DNS provider and create a new record,

type: MS

name: mysite.com.

data: ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.

auxilary info: 1

..the 1 is the priority level, Google will probably tell you to create more of these but for now one will do.

Now once google shows your site as Verified all the services (calendar, excel, start page, etc.) will switch to Active. Setup your Email part and tell it you’ve done the MX record change and it’ll switch to Updating. Now wait 3-48 hours for it to check the MX record on your DNS provider.

If all ok, that’ll go to Active, send an email to the address to check and it should work.

Using shorter URLs for Google Apps

As you’ll have worked out, Google doesn’t give you the best web addresses to access your Google Apps email, docs, etc.

To make this more simple, go to each service in your Google Apps Dashboard and click ‘change url’, pick the one it gives you (usually mail.[mysite.com], etc. ) and click ok.

It will then tell you how to adjust your DNS settings appropriately, but to make this simpler, login to your DNS control panel in SliceHost (or whatever DNS service your using) and add some CNAME aliases.

type: CNAME

name: mail

data: GHS.GOOGLE.COM.

type: CNAME

name: start

data: GHS.GOOGLE.COM.

type: CNAME

name: docs

data: GHS.GOOGLE.COM.

type: CNAME

name: calendar

data: GHS.GOOGLE.COM.

CNAME records basically act like an alias pointing to your core domain. So adding a record with a name of ‘mail’ will suddenly redirect anything with mail.mysite.com to the location you put in data. Once done, it should take effect in 1-3 hours.

Final Points

A name records are much like CNAME records only they have a lesser performance impact, however if you are gonna create some more like blog.mysite.com I’d stick to CNAME’s; only create one A record for your www => www.mysite.com connection.

Drop me a line if you get stuck,

All the best,

John.