Why is email from my server marked as Spam?
As the technology and methods for combating spam become more and more advanced, so must the measures being taken to avoid having email sent from your server or domain also marked as spam. Free email providers such as Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail have specific requirements for mail servers attempting to send to them for the mail to avoid being sent to a Junk Mail folder, as well as most major Internet Service Providers.
This article will provide a few essential settings which can be put into place to decrease the chances of mail originating from your server marked as spam.
Sender Policy Framework Record
A Sender Policy Framework (or ‘SPF’) record is a DNS text record which explicitly defines which mail servers are allowed to send email for a specific domain name. SPF records are very easy to create and can solve a number of issues regarding sending email.
SPF records are one of the first things that incoming mail servers check to make sure the server sending the outgoing message is authorized to send it. They can be edited and refined to reflect multiple servers and IP addresses which are allowed to send emails.
For more information and instructions on setting up an SPF record for your domain, please visit the following Knowledge Base article:
How to create SPF records
Reverse DNS & Mail Server Hostname
Each mail server has an IP address associated with it. For instance, when you attempt to send an email message via a client program, such as Microsoft Outlook, it will attempt to locate the email domain, which is typically, 'mail.yourdomain.com'. Your computer uses it's DNS addresses to translate 'mail.yourdomain.com' into an IP address, which your computer then connects to and sends the email through. In turn, when the mail server attempts to send the message out to it's intended recipient, the receiving server will check to make sure that a DNS lookup for the sending mail server retrieves the proper email domain for the IP address sending the message. This is known as a Reverse DNS lookup.
If they do not match, the email can very easily be marked as spam, as the receiving mail server might think it's being tricked, as the message appears to be coming from a specific email domain, however a DNS lookup on the IP address reveals a different domain name.
Having a Reverse DNS entry in place for your mail domain which corresponds to the primary IP address of your server can greatly help in reducing the chance of your messages being marked as spam.
Unfortunately, this is one settings which cannot be changed without assistance from our Technical Support Department, however it is a change which is easily made by submitting a support ticket via the Unity Customer Portal.
In addition to setting the Reverse DNS, it is also essential to also update the mail server hostname, which can be done directly in SmarterMail, to correspond with the domain experiencing the issue of outgoing messages being marked as spam.
You can find a walk-through for changing the hostname in SmarterMail within the following Knowledge Base article:
How to change the hostname in SmarterMail
DomainKeys
DomainKeys are a public-key cryptography system engineered to verify the authenticity of a mail domain attempting to send mail, and are extremely useful when sending to free email providers such as Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail. DomainKey are able to insert a very specific string of characters into the email headers of each message send, verifying that it did indeed originate from the sending domain, and is not a 'spoofed' message.
SmarterMail version 5 includes a free DomainKey generator which can be used for any and all domains present within SmarterMail, and you can find step-by-step instructions for implementing DomainKeys on your server within the following Knowledge Base article:
How to set up DomainKeys in SmarterMail v5
With the above measures in place, the chances of outgoing mail originating from your server being marked as spam by other mail servers are drastically reduced.
If you need any assistance with implementing any of the above features, please don't hesitate to contact our Technical Support Department, and they will be more than happy to assist.
FROM:http://www.serverintellect.com/support/email/avoid-spam.aspx
Usability On The Cheap and Easy
Writing code? That's the easy part. Getting your application in the hands of users, and creating applications that people actually want to use -- now that's the hard stuff.
I've been a long time fan of Krug's book Don't Make Me Think. Not just because it's a quick, easy read (and it is!) -- but because it's the most concise and most approachable book I've ever found to teach the fundamental importance of usability. As far as I'm concerned, if you want to help us make the software industry a saner place, the first step is getting Don't Make Me Think in the hands of as many of your coworkers as you can. If you don't have people that care about usability on your project, your project is doomed.
Beyond getting people over the hurdle of at least paging through the Krug book, and perhaps begrudgingly conceding that this usability stuff matters, the next challenge is figuring out how to integrate usability testing into your project. It's easy to say "Usability is Important!", but you have to walk the walk, too. I touched on some low friction ways to get started in Low-Fi Usability Testing. That rough outline is now available in handy, more complete book form -- Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems.
Don't worry, Krug's book is just as usable as his advice. It's yet another quick, easy read. Take it from the man himself:
Usability testing is one of the best things people can do to improve Web sites (or almost anything they’re creating that people have to interact with).
Since most organizations can’t afford to hire someone to do testing for them on a regular basis, everyone should learn to do it themselves. And …
I could probably write a pretty good book explaining how to do it.
If you're wondering what the beginner's "how do I boil water?" recipe for software project usability is, stop reading this post and get a copy of Rocket Surgery Made Easy. Now.
One of the holy grails of usability testing is eyetracking -- measuring where people's eyes look as they use software and web pages. Yes, there are clever JavaScript tools that can measure where users move their pointers, but that's only a small part of the story. Where the eye wanders, the pointer may not, and vice-versa. But, who has the time and equipment necessary to conduct an actual eyetracking study? Almost nobody.
That's where Eyetracking Web Usability comes in.
Eyetracking Web Usability is chock full of incredibly detailed eyetracking data for dozens of websites. Even though you (probably) can't afford to do real eyetracking, you can certainly use this book as a reference. There is enough variety in UI and data that you can map the results, observations, and explanations found here to what your project is doing.
This particular book is rather eyetracking specific, but it's just the latest entry in a whole series on usability, and I recommend them all highly. These books are a fount of worthwhile data for anyone who works on software and cares about usability, from one of the most preeminent usability experts on the web.
Usability isn't really cheap or easy. It's an endless war, with innumerable battlegrounds, stretching all the way back to the dawn of computing. But these books, at least, are cheap and easy in the sense that they give you some basic training in fighting the good (usability) fight. That's the best I can do, and it's all I'd ask from anyone else I work with.
FROM:http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/04/usability-on-the-cheap-and-easy.html
Debian LAMP server setup quick reference
Login as root
apt-get install apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork
apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5 php5-cgi php5-gd php5-cli
cp /usr/share/doc/php5-common/examples/php.ini-recommended /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
vi /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
add lines:
extension=mysql.so
extension=gd.so
a2enmod php5
a2enmod rewrite
/etc/init.d/apache2 reload
apt-get install mysql-server-5.0 php5-mysql