EarthLink makes it easy to be a Postmaster through the
Post Office Manager, accessible from the
Hosting Control Panel. You can create email
accounts for yourself, or anyone that you choose at your own domain
name.
The Web-based Post Office Manager uses a very simple interface
to administrate every aspect of your Email Post Office. It even
handles such tricky items as email forwarding, auto-responding,
and managing simple mailing lists, right from your Web browser!
A
POP
(
Post Office Protocol) account
is a standard email account that you, and those you specify, access
using an email client such as
Outlook Express
or
Eudora. Creating
a POP account amounts to creating a mailbox for an email address.
This is a place on your Web Hosting server where incoming email
to that address will be stored.
Before creating a POP Account, you must open the Post Office
Manager using the Hosting Control Panel.
To create a POP account
From the Post Office Manager, select the
POP Acct tab . You will see a list of current POP accounts.
To create a new account, select
Create new POP Account.
Enter a name for the account in the
Account Name field.
Type a
password in the
Passwordfield, then confirm it in the
Confirm Password field. Your password is case sensitive, and should use
a combination of numbers and letters.
Click the
Save button.
When you are adding and modifying accounts, only type the
first part of the email address, not the entire address. For example,
if you wanted to create an email account with the address of
webmaster@yourcompany.com
,
you would only type
webmaster
into the
Create new POP Account dialog box.
Note: Note: Only full-featured Hosting packages, which include
Web hosting in addition to a domain name, have Email List and FTP Dropbox
capabilities. To upgrade your account contact Sales at 1-800-EARTHLINK.
To
change POP account's password
Highlight the account name in the listing you wish to
change, and click the
Change Account Password button. A screen will appear allowing you to make changes
to the account password.
The Post Office Manager
When you are finished, click the
Save button.
To
delete a POP account
Select the
POP Acct tab to see the existing accounts.
Highlight the account you want to remove.
Click the
Delete selected Account button.
Assuming you have created a POP account for yourself, you
can check for new email using a program such as
Outlook Express. To add a POP address
to Outlook Express, follow the procedure below. You can configure
Outlook Express to check as many email addresses as you like.
To configure Outlook Express for
a POP account:
Launch Outlook Express.
Choose
Accounts from the
Tools menu. The
Internet Accounts window will open.
Click the
Mailtab. This will show you any email accounts that are currently
set up in Outlook Express.
Click the
Add button. A menu will pop up; choose
Mail. The
Internet Connection Wizard will guide you through a series of configuration steps
for the email address you want to add.
Enter your name, as you want it to appear in emails
you send. Click
Next.
Enter the email address you want to add, in the form
of
username@yourecompany.com
.
Then click
Next.
Enter the following information:
-
My
incoming
mail server is a:
POP3
-
Incoming mail (
POP3
or IMAP) server:
pop.business.earthlink.net
-
Outgoing mail (
SMTP)
server:
smtp.earthlink.net
(If your ISP
is someone other than EarthLink, you will need to ask them for the
appropriate SMTP server.)
Click the first
logon using radio button and enter the following information:
-
Account name: Your email address, in the form
username%yourecompany.com
.
Note the % symbol used here instead of the typical @ symbol.
-
Password: Your email password (This is case sensitive.)
Click
Next.
Click the
Finish button if it is available. Otherwise the
Choose Connection Type window will appear.
Choose one of the following connections:
-
If you connect to
EarthLink through your modem, click the
Connect using my phone line radio button.
-
If you are connecting to a mail server other than
EarthLink via your office network (LAN), click the
Connect using my local area network (LAN) radio button.
Note: You can only use EarthLink's outgoing mail
server (smtp.earthlink.net) if you are connecting to the Internet
through EarthLink. Talk to your local network administrator for
an outgoing mail server you can use on your
LAN.
-
If you wish to connect to EarthLink manually before
you open Outlook Express, choose the I
will establish my Internet connection manually radio button.
Click
Finish.
Note: The instructions above are for the Windows 98 version
of Outlook Express. To learn how to use other email clients to check
your POP account, refer to the EathLink Personal Support Center
at
support.earthlink.net
or
to the documentation that accompanied your email client.
When configuring your email clients, be sure to use pop.business.earthlink.net
as the POP server,
smtp.earthlink.net
as the SMTP
server, and a username in the form of
username%yourcompany.com
.
If you are not using EarthLink for connectivity, check with your
ISP for the correct SMTP server to use.
Email forwarding is a method of automatically directing email
from one account to another. Using forwarding you can have several
aliases or email addresses, and have all incoming email routed to
one address.
For example, if you have an employee who is responsible for
all email sent to sales@yourcompany.com, you might want
to have all email to that address forwarded to her personal account
so that she does not have to constantly check two email accounts.
Another common use for forwarding accounts is to direct multiple same-type
addresses to a single person. For example, let's say the president
of your company is named Jane Smith. She may want to receive email
sent to jsmith@yourcompany.com, JaneS@yourcompany.com, jane_smith@yourcompany.com, and
president@yourcompany.com.
All these forwarding accounts can be set up to go to her regular
POP email box.
Remember that when sending email to an address, capitalization
does not matter. JaneSmith@yourcompany.com and janesmith@yourcompany.com
and JANESMITH@yourcompany.com are the same thing.
However, when you set up your email software to check mail,
the POP account is
case sensitive. For example, if
you set up an account for JaneSmith@yourcompany.com your
POP account would be JaneSmith@pop.yourcompany.com not janesmith@pop.yourcompany.com
To create a forwarding account
Select the
Forward Acct tab from the Post Office Manager. You will see a list
of your current forwarding accounts.
As with the POP accounts, you can either Create, Edit,
or Delete forwarding accounts.
To create a new account, choose
Create new Forward Account.
A page will load which will allow you to enter the
Account name of your forwarding account and the addresses
to forward to. Enter this information in the
Forward to: field.
When you are finished, click
Save.
To edit a Forwarding Account's
properties
After choosing the
Forward Acct tab from the Post Office Manager, highlight the account
name you wish to change, and click the
Edit selected Account button. A screen will appear allowing you to make changes
to the Forwarding Account.
When you are finished, click the
Save button.
To delete a Forwarding Account
Select the
Forward Acct tab to see the existing accounts.
Highlight the account you want to remove.
Click the
Delete selected Account button.
Note: See the next section for important notes on editing
the "default" forwarding account.
The "default" forwarding account is used
when someone sends a message to an unknown user at your domain.
For example, let's say I have the domain threelegdog.com.
There are two email addresses configured for my domain- louis@threelegdog.com and
henri@threelegdog.com and the default forward is set to charles@threelegdog.com.
If someone sends a message to alfredo@threelegdog.com,
the message will be forwarded to charles@threelegdog.com.
If someone sends a message to itsybitsyspider@threelegdog.com,
it will be forwarded to charles@threelegdog.com. Any message
to any unknown address at threelegdog.com will be forwarded to charles@threelegdog.com.
Do not delete the default forwarding account.
If
there is no default forwarding account, some messages to your domain
may bounce back to their sender. Technical Support cannot retrieve
such messages, since they were returned to the sender. The default
forward should be configured to send mail to someone who has authority
over the administration of your Web account.
Autoresponding accounts send an
automatic reply to users whenever email is received. You could use
this system to respond with information about your company. Many
companies use the email address info@theircompany.com in
this way.
Having an automatic message sent back to customers can save tremendous
amounts of time that you might otherwise spend responding to the
same requests over and over.
Another benefit of autoresponders is that users inquiring about
your business will get a quick response through email without having
to wait until the next business day. Even at 4:00 in the morning,
your email responder will promptly answer requests for information.
To create a new Autoresponder
From the Post Office Manager, click on the
Autoresponder tab.
Click on the
Create new Autoresponder button and set up an email account name just as we did
for the regular POP email accounts.
At the
Autoresponder Name: text entry field, enter the name of the auto responder
account. For example, if this were an autoresponder for
info@yourecompany.com
,
you would type
info
.
At the
From Block: field, enter the address you would like to show up in
the
From
section of the email that your
users will receive. Usually you will want to use your company's
name or a key contact person's name.
The next text field
Subject Block: is similar to the previous option. Whatever text you
place in this box will show up in the
Subject
field of
the user's email.
Finally, the
Message you wish it to send back text entry box is used to input the information you
want to send to the users. The illustration below shows how a typical
info autoresponder will look before you set it up.
Click
Save and the account will be created.
To edit an Autoresponder's
properties:
After
choosing the
Autoresponder tab from the Post Office Manager, highlight the account
name in the listing you wish to change and click the
Edit selected Autoresponder button.
Creating a New Autoresponder
A screen will appear allowing you to change the properties
for the account as described above.
When you are finished, click the
Save button.
To delete an Autoresponder:
Select the
Autoresponder tab to see the existing accounts.
Highlight the account you want to remove.
Click the
Delete selected Autoresponder button.
The Email List feature allows you to create special accounts
that are associated with a number of other email accounts, or subscriber accounts.
Email sent to the email list is forwarded to everyone on the subscriber
list.
To
create an Email list:
Select the
Email List tab from the Post Office Manager. You will see a list
of current email lists.
To create a new list, select
Create new Mailing List. A configuration screen will load allowing you to create
the list .
Type the name of the email list at the
List Name text entry box.
Modify the following fields:
-
To: This field allows you to modify what users will see in
the To: field of any letter sent to the Email List. Usually you
will want to leave this field blank. One possible use of this field
is to include a common sense description of the email list. For
example, if you create an email list address, friends, you may
wish to put the following value in the
To field:
The Friend Email List< friends@yourecompany.com >
.
The bracketed information will now be included in the To: header so
that users reading this message will understand that it was sent to
an email list before it got to them.
-
From: Due to a bug in the Post Office Manager, the
From field is currently disabled for mailing lists. Any value
entered into this field will be ignored by the system.
-
Subject: The
Subject field allows you to pre-fill the original mail subject
with words or characters of your own choosing, so that when your
subscribers get email from your mailing list, they will be able
to tell immediately from the subject that this letter is from
a mailing list. One convention is to use a bracketed one or two
word phrase to indicate a mailing list. For example, you might
put: [Friend List] in the Subject: box. The
result: any message sent to the mailing list called Hi there! will
show [Friend List] Hi there! in the Subject field.
-
User List: Enter the email addresses of all your subscribers, one per
line, in this space.
Click
Save and the list will be created.
To edit
an Email List's properties:
After choosing the
Email List tab from the Post Office Manager, highlight the account
name you wish to change, and click the
Edit selected Mailing List button.
A screen will appear allowing you to make changes to
the Mailing List.
When you are finished, click the
Save button.
To delete an Email List:
Select the
Email list tab to see the existing accounts.
Highlight the Mailing List you want to remove.
Click the
Delete selected Mailing List button.
Here are some common accounts that you may want to create:
default-This account is mandatory. If it is not there,
the server will not be able to handle misaddressed email messages
being sent to your domain. This account is used whenever the EarthLink
Server Post Office receives email that does not have a valid account
name. You can check this account periodically to see if any email
has been mislabeled. Or, you can forward email from this account
into another one.
info-This is a standard email address where people
will often write to get more information about your company. It
is generally a good idea to create this as an autoresponder. Many
companies use the
info@company.com
address
as a first point of contact for customers and clients to find more
information about a company as well as contact information such
as phone numbers and other company email addresses.
postmaster-This is an email address that should be set up
and used by the person handling the email configuration for the
account. This address is not absolutely necessary as it can be covered
by the default account, but if you are planning on having various
employees manage different areas of your EarthLink Server, you may
want to create this account.
webmaster-This is a commonly used email address people
use to write email to whoever maintains the Web portion of your
EarthLink Server. This email account should be forwarded to the
person responsible for your Web pages.
It is highly suggested that you set up a default mailing address
to handle all misaddressed email or email sent to an account that
does not exist. The name of the default account is simply "default."
Your default account can be a forwarding address, a POP account,
or any other type of email account. It is strongly recommended that
you set up the default account as a forwarding account which redirects
all misaddressed email to the email account of the person who will
be managing your electronic Post Office.If you choose not to set
a default address, misaddressed email will be returned to the sender
as undeliverable.
A
domain
email alias is an email address which does not have its own mailbox
or POP account on a mail server. Rather, it points to an existing mailbox.
It is based on your domain, such as
yourname@yourecompany
.com
Any email sent to the alias will be routed to an existing mailbox
that you specify.
Note: Domain email aliases apply only to domains not associated
with a Web Hosting account, including secondary domains.
For example, if Louie has the domain rottweiler.org and wants
to be able to receive email at louie@rottweiler.org, he
can create the domain email alias louie@rottweiler.org
and point it to his louie@earthlink.net address. This means
that any email sent to louie@rottweiler.org will end up
in the louie@earthlink.net mailbox. A domain email alias
can also point to email addresses outside of EarthLink, and can
even point to multiple email addresses.
To add
a Domain Email alias:
Log in to the Hosting Control Panel at
https://control.business.earthlink.net/
Note: You must log in using your Domain Name (as in yourecompany.com)
as the Username, and the Domain Password as the password.
Select
Edit your email aliases.
Click the
Add button.
Under the
Alias section type in a name for the alias. (You don't need
to type the @yourecompany.com part.)
Next to the alias you entered, type the email address
that you want your alias to point to.
Click the
Add Aliases button.
To
modify a Domain Email Alias:
Log in to the Control Panel at
http://control.business.earthlink.net/
Note: You must log in using your Domain Name (as in yourecompany.com)
as the Username, and your
Domain
Password as the password.
Select
Edit your email aliases.
Click the
Edit button.
Make the changes to your domain email alias.
Click the
Edit Aliases button.
To remove a Domain Email Alias:
Log in to the Control Panel at
http://control.business.earthlink.net/
You must log in using your Domain Name (as in yourecompany.com)
as the Username, and the Domain Password as the password.
Select
Edit your email aliases.
Click the
Delete button.
Select the alias to be removed by clicking in the box
to the left of the domain email alias.
Click the
Delete Aliases button.
For more information on domain email aliases, consult EarthLink's
Web Hosting Help Desk at
http://webhelp.mindspring.com/
If
you have account holders that need to disseminate or exchange files with
other account holders, then FTP Dropboxes are a simple, secure solution.
Dropboxes are special FTP directories that can only be accessed
by your account holders. FTP Dropboxes are associated with a particular
POP email account and share the same password with that POP account.
To add a new FTP Dropbox:
From the Post Office Manager, select the
FTP Dropbox tab. You will see a list of current Dropbox accounts.
Select
Create a new Dropbox. You will then be presented with a list of POP accounts,
which you have already created.
Note: The User ID and password
for your FTP Dropbox is derived from the POP mailbox (account) of
the same name. Because of this, you need to set up a POP mailbox
before setting up an FTP Dropbox.
Adding a New FTP Dropbox
To create a Dropbox from a POP account, select the account,
then click the
Add button.
To edit an existing Dropbox, you must change the properties
of the associated POP email account. Refer to
POP Email Accounts to learn how to create, edit, or delete
your POP accounts.
To
delete an FTP Dropbox:
Select the
FTP Dropbox tab to see the existing accounts.
Highlight the account you want to remove.
Click the
Delete selected Dropbox button.
There are two ways to use the FTP Dropboxes once they have
been created:
Through any FTP client. Using an FTP client, such as WS_FTP (Windows)
or Fetch (Macintosh), the user can log into a private Dropbox. To
do so, they will need the following information:
-
Host Name-
ftp.business.earthlink.net
-
User ID-dropboxname%yourecompany.com
-
Password-password for the Dropbox
Through a Web browser. Using a browser, you can type in the
location or URL box:
ftp://dropboxname%company.com:password@ftp.business.earthlink.net
to
be logged into the Private FTP Dropbox. For example, if your Dropbox
name is "bob" and your password is "secret" you'd
type:
ftp://bob%yourecompany.com:secret@ftp.business.earthlink.net
.
Once they are connected, the Dropbox user can upload or download
files from within their FTP area (make sure your Web browser supports uploading,
or use an FTP client). If they are using an FTP client rather than
a Web browser, your users can also create or delete directories within
their FTP area.
When you are logged in under the admin account, you can explore
the user's
Dropbox
areas at
/usr/private/USERNAME
.
In addition to Dropboxes, your Web Hosting package includes
a full-featured FTP server. For more information, see
http://help.mindspring.com/docs/002/hosting_ftp
.
Your Web site, POP, and FTP accounts have, in the past, resided
on the same server. However, we recently moved the POP and FTP services
to new, separate servers.
The reason for the change is simple enough--to improve
the reliability and integrity of your EarthLink Web hosting service.
Dividing the various Web hosting services (POP, FTP, and WEB)
across a series of separate servers means that only one of these
Web services would be affected in the event of a server outage.
The other Web services, because they are located on different servers,
would continue to operate as usual.
This document will identify the settings that you need to
change.
With regard to your POP server, there are just two things
to remember:
-
Make sure your email
server is set to:
pop.business.earthlink.net
-
When accessing your POP accounts, you will need to change your username to
mailbox%yourdomain.com
There are two things to remember regarding your
FTP server:
Internet Explorer doesn't work well with the FTP
login format shown above. So if you wish to put a link on your Web
page to a FTP dropbox, it will need to look like this:
Yes, you can still use it.
If you're using a CNAME, or Alias, for your Web hosting
services, it means that your DNS server will look up info for your
real domain name, rather than the one requested.
For example, if you are currently using the
pop.yourdomain.com format for your email setting--for example,
pop.mystore.com--you will need to use the DNS editor to change
pop.yourdomain.com to be a CNAME for
pop.business.earthlink.net.
Likewise, if you are using the
ftp.yourdomain.com format for your FTP setting--for example,
ftp.mystore.com--you will need to use the DNS editor to change
ftp.yourdomain.com to be a CNAME for
ftp.business.earthlink.net.
Notice there's a "." between the FTP username and
the domain name, rather than a "@" or a "%." That's
because Internet Explorer doesn't like to see "@"s
or "%"s in the username portion of a FTP address.
Yes, you can still use it.
If you're using a CNAME, or Alias, for your Web hosting
services, it means that your DNS server will look up info for your
real
domain
name, rather than the one requested.
For example, if you are currently using the
pop.yourdomain.com format for your email setting--for example,
pop.mystore.com--you will need to use the DNS editor to change
pop.yourdomain.com to be a CNAME for
pop.business.earthlink.net.
Likewise, if you are using the
ftp.yourdomain.com format for your FTP setting--for example,
ftp.mystore.com--you will need to use the DNS editor to change
ftp.yourdomain.com to be a CNAME for
ftp.business.earthlink.net.
Documentation for the DNS editor can be found at:
http://www.help.mindspring.com/docs/002/dns_editor
If you have changed your mail exchange (MX) record to point
to your own or a third-party mail server, you do not need to adjust
your mail settings. However, you will still need to change your
FTP settings.
Your email forwarding accounts will continue to forward mail
as they have in the past.
No. Your email addresses and mail headers will remain the
same. This change will be invisible to anyone sending you email.
No. Your Web site was not removed from the original server.
Only your POP and FTP services were moved to new servers. Your Web
site files are unchanged.
Again, the answer is no. Your Web site was not removed from
the original server. Only your POP and FTP services were moved to
new servers. Your Web site files are unchanged.
No. FrontPage doesn't publish via FTP by default.
Unless you have specifically set FrontPage to publish via FTP, you
won't have to change anything in order to publish your
Web site.
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