Email directed at your domain name can be received in a number of different ways. How you wish to receive your email will depend on your own personal requirements and preferences. The instructions for the various configurations described below should cover virtually all possible scenarios. Please remember that you won't be able to receive mail directed at your domain name until the DNS has fully propagated.
A. Receiving mail from your "catch-all" or "wildcard" email. The "catch-all" account will catch all mail directed at your domain for which there isn't a specific POP3 account set up already (see B. below for setting up specific POP3 accounts). By default, a catch-all email account is set up on all new accounts. To check this mail from a conventional email client, such as Outlook Express, follow the instructions below:
- Open your email client and add a new account. In Outlook Express new accounts are added by going to the Accounts option in the Tools menu, selecting the "Mail" tab and clicking Add --> Mail.
- Enter the display name and email address (the email address should be in the format someone@yourdomain.co.nz).
- Set both the incoming (POP3) and outgoing (SMTP) servers to mail.yourdomain.co.nz. If applicable, set the server type to POP3. If your DNS has not yet fully propagated you will not get mail delivered until it has.
- Set the username and password for your account as provided in your welcome email. In Outlook Express make sure the "Log on using Secure Password Authentication" option is unchecked.
- In Outlook Express, the create account wizard is now finished, however, there is one more option we need to address. Go to the Tools --> Accounts menu item and select the account you just created and click "Properties", then select the "Servers" tab.
- Check the "My server requires authentication" box and click "Settings".
- Select the "Log on using" option and enter your account's username and password as you did in step 4.
- Finally, in Outlook Express, just click Okay or Close on each window and you should be ready to go.
Your "catch-all" account can also be checked through Webmail. To do this, simply go to http://yourdomain.co.nz/webmail and enter your username and password. There are three alternative Webmail interfaces: Squirrelmail, Neomail and Horde. Each essentially does the same thing and which you choose really depends on personal preference.
Note: Catch-all accounts can be abused and become big spam traps. If you do not wish to receive email in your catch-all account you can deactivate it by setting the Default Address setting in Cpanel to :blackhole:.
B. Setting up an individual POP3 email account. The difference between the "catch-all" account and an individual POP3 account is that the POP3 account will only receive mail specifically directed at that account's username, i.e. username@yourdomain.co.nz. Each POP3 email account has its own unique username and password. We recommend that users requiring individual POP3 accounts follow through and test A. above first, before proceeding with B. To set up a POP3 email account, follow the instructions below:
- Log in to the site admin control panel at the temporary URL in your welcome email.
- Click the "Mail" icon.
- Select the "Add / Remove Accounts" link.
- This shows a list of your current email addresses. Initially one address should appear there - this is your "catch-all" email account. Note: the "catch-all" account cannot be removed, but it can be blocked or re-routed (see C. below).
- Type the username you would like for your email account. For example if you want the email address "webmaster@yourdomain.co.nz" you would create a user called "webmaster". Create a password and click "Create".
- You have just created a POP3 Email account. You can check it using webmail or a POP3 email client:
- To check your account with webmail, simply go to http://yourdomain.co.nz/webmail and enter the full email address as the username (e.g. username@yourdomain.co.nz) and the associated password.
- To check your account with an email client, follow the instructions exactly as for setting up a "catch-all" account, except in step 4, set the username as the full email address that you set up in CPanel (e.g. username@yourdomain.co.nz) and set the corresponding password appropriately. Note: the username and password for server authentication in step 7 should still be set as those for your main account. So, for clarity, to summarise the settings for a separate pop email account:
Incoming mail server: mail.yourdomain.co.nz
Account Username: username@yourdomain.co.nz
Password: as set up in Cpanel
Outgoing mail server: mail.yourdomain.co.nz
Username: your main account username - i.e. that used to login to Cpanel/FTP
Password: that of your main account - i.e. that used to login to Cpanel/FTP
Note: the username in both webmail and your email client is case-sensitive and should be entered in all lowercase characters.
C. Forwarding all email for your domain to an existing account. You may wish to simply forward any mail directed to yourdomain.co.nz to an existing email account. If you choose to do this, you will not need to make any changes to the settings in your email client.
- Login to the site admin control panel at the temporary URL in your welcome email if your domain name has not yet fully propagated.
- Click the "Mail" icon.
- Select the "Default Address" link.
- Click on "Set Default Address"
- Select your domain name in the drop-down menu on the left, then in the box to the right, enter the email address you would like the mail forwarded to.
- Click on "Change". Once your domain name has fully resolved you will be able to test if you've done it correctly simply by sending some email to anything@yourdomain.co.nz
D. Forwarding email directed at different addresses to various existing accounts. You may wish to forward email directed at different addresses of yourdomain.co.nz to different people. e.g. webmaster@yourdomain.co.nz may go directly to webdude@myisp.com and sales.co.nz directly to mrsales@anotherisp.com. This can be set up using the instructions below:
- Log in to the site admin control panel at http://yourdomain.co.nz/cpanel/ (or http://yourdomain.ignitehosting.biz/cpanel if your domain name has not yet fully propagated).
- Click the "Mail" icon.
- Select the "Forwarders" link. This page will list all forwarders set up for your account.
- Click on "Add Forwarder"
- Enter the name of the address in the left box (e.g. webmaster) and enter the full destination email address in the right box (e.g. webdude@myisp.com).
- Click the "Add Forwarder" button. After the forwarder has been created, you can follow the "Go Back" link to check that it has been created correctly. Any changes made are effective immediately, so you should be able to test if the forwarder is working by sending an email to the new address.
Note: 1. Individual POP3 accounts should not be created for addresses that are being forwarded. Doing so, will result in messages being both forwarded and stored on the server. 2. Multiple forwarders can be set up for the same email address to allow the same mail to be sent to multiple addresses.
A Quick Word About Spam
One of the nastier artefacts of the internet revolution is spam. We've all seen it and we all hate it. As with most diseases, the best defence is prevention. If you have just registered your domain name, its associated addresses can be kept clean of spam by following a few simple precautions.
- Try to use your main email address (i.e. yourname@yourdomain.co.nz) only for emailing known contacts. For signing up for services, catalogues or anything where your address will end up on a mailing list, use an alternate address (e.g. othermail@yourdomain.co.nz). You can still set up forwarders so that this mail still ends up going to your main email address, or alternatively just use your catch-all account. Consequently, using alternate addresses need not be any extra hassle to collect. If one of these companies ever distributes, loses, or abuses the mailing list, you can simply put a block on that address, and your main email address is left intact.
- Never put your main email address on your website, unless it has been obfuscated. An unobfuscated email address displayed on the internet will ultimately be picked up by spam bots (which are automated scripts sent out by spammers to hunt for email addresses). As you will know, once your address is on a spam list, it will never be removed and the waves of spam will keep coming. There are many articles available on the internet describing various techniques for obfuscating email addresses. A couple of good examples are: alistapart.com/articles/spam/ and javascriptkit.com/script/script2/antispamemail.shtml. Alternatively, try a Google search on "email address obfuscation" or "email address hide".
If your email address has already been "poisoned", then you could consider blocking it and trying the above guidelines on a new address. If this isn't an option, you can activate SpamAssassin in your account's control panel, which does a pretty respectable job of filtering out the garbage.
If you have more questions, remember to check out our FAQ, which addresses many of the most common problems that our customers encounter.
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