cPanel, Manage e-mail, Fight SPAM

Yes, it is true, you are the best manager!

You probably already have a couple of e-mails with free services as gmail, hotmail or through your ISP; if you have a WebSite you have an Internet Service Provider as well.

You might be wondering why you should get more e-mail accounts:

• If you running your own business you need to offer a more polished appearance. If you communicate with customers via hotmail e-mail, you don't look professional
• You need to have complete control of your account send automated e-mails, create/delete e-mail, forward e-mail from one domain to other domain and so one.
• You can improve anti-spam feature using technologies cPanel offer to you (they depend on your web host)
• Have many choices to access your e-mail: via any web browser, download e-mail to your PC, or both
• You are limited by the disk space and features of your web hosting plan. This is why you must be careful when you chose your web host.
• You can manage e-mail via cPanel and also keep at least one other e-mail that is not part of your domain for security
• E-mail via cPanel has a lot of features but it is easy to learn, and use them

Let's talk about the e-mail features now.

I create all picture using my cPanel on my own host Hostgator, which is a very powerful host. The list of features can be a little different for other hosts.
Example: Fantastico which is a great feature to create WorldPress blogs with a couple of clicks, is a utility that the host must buy separately, and not all the hosts want to buy it!

My intend was to list all the features but the picture is so clear you can just read them, and in the process you will start to be familiar with cPanel. I promise, it is a very short learning experience.

The names of icons are intuitive but I'll comment some of them.

If you want to create or manage an existing email account, click on e-mail accounts (in other systems it is an icon named "Manage/Add/Remove Accounts"), and fill in info on the top part of the screen:

If you want to manage an existing email account click in one of the left functions in the bottom of above screen where all your emails accounts are listed.

The purpose of this lens is to show you that cPanel has a software to protect you against SPAM. There are a lot of packages that do just that but sometime you must pay fancy fees to get a package.

SpamAssassin is an automated email filtering system that attempts to identify spam messages based on the content of the email's headers and body.
SpamAssassin:

• blocks known spamers
  
• rewrite the headers of other e-mal msg. so you can filter them out

SpamBox will deliver any emails identified as spam by SpamAssassin into a separate mail folder named "spam". This "spam" folder will fill up and should be emptied regularly. I keep Spambox disable
Click the Enable SpamAssassin button to turn it on.
Click the Configure SpamAssassin to edit the rules.

To configure SpamAssassin you must fill in a form with the following info:
These 5 lines in the configuration ares are reserved for you to add e-mail addresses that you notice SA is not marking as spam, but you want to.
blacklist_from
blacklist_from
blacklist_from
blacklist_from
blacklist_from

Set the number of hits required before a mail is considered spam. "n.nn" can be an integer or a real number. 5.0 is the default setting, and is quite aggressive but you can change this to a higher number if you find that message that are not spam are always labeled as spam
required_score 5 (by default, the smaller number the higher restriction you get)

Text added to the Subject line of mails that are considered spam.
rewrite_header subject

Assign scores (the number of points for a hit) to a given test. Scores can be positive or negative real numbers or integers. If only one valid score is listed, then that score is always used for a test. If four valid scores are listed, then the score that is used depends on how SpamAssassin is being used.
Setting a rule's score to 0 will disable that rule from running.
score....
score...
score...
score...
score...

The last 5 lines are for whitelisted addresses. The meaning is that SA automaticaly marks them as spam but you feel should not be.
whitelist_from
whitelist_from
whitelist_from
whitelist_from
whitelist_from

At this point you can save.

If the SA is incorrectly labeling files, return to CPanel and edit The SpamAssassin settings and correct them.

Note: It is not easy to fill in this form and it is a good idea to call your host to help you with this info, usually they have a default setting and you must change only some specifics if you want to.

SpamBox is a server-side method used to automatically filter out messages marked as spam by Spam Assassin.
The messages are not deleted and they reside in a specific directory on the server.
You can view what is in that folder;

• If you use SquirreMail web mail client
  
• By appending /spam to the end of your e-mail account user name in your e-mail client

Getting Spam or other unwanted e-mail out of your box, you actually want to block your e-mail based on your criteria and interest.

You have the following choices:

• Based on To: header or
• From: headerA word(s) on the body of the e-mail or
• Any other header line

After to set up your criteria of blocking, you must test, cPanel facilitate the test for you.

At this point I hope you have an idea how powerful is cPanel and how many advance feature cPanel provides for you.

Just 3 years ago I have created an account with Hostgator, I had no idea that I created a durable, useful, pleasant business relationship.

The reason I chose Hostgator was the fact that they have Fantastico utility and I intended to create Blogs with WorldPress.

After 3 years I can tell you that the best benefit was:

• A superb support team. At that time I never used cPanel, I had a ton of questions, they always answer in meter of hours, same day
  
• Very good, affordable hosting plans
  
• Yes, Fantascico, to set up a WorldPress blog is a piece of cake
  
• Reseller hosting accounts
  
• Dedicated hosting accounts, and
  
• They are GREEN

It was and still is a perfect business relationship for me.

I highly recommended HostGator as a hosting account. Click on link, you'll thanks me later.