Positive provides you with one of the most comprehensive and
fully featured mail systems available. You have complete administratitive
control over email sent to your domain name. This means you decide what happens
to email sent to any address on your domain. Essentially, you
have control over <anything>@yourdomain.com.
Because our system is so comprehensive and flexible, it is
not quite as straightforward and simple as some other
systems, please take a moment to read through this document
and keep a copy for later reference.
Your email system is administered via a web interface. You
can access this using your account login details by pointing
a web browser to the /admin directory on your domain. For example:
http://www.yourdomain.com/admin/
Users and Aliases
There are two basic options for any email address you set
up via this system, users and aliases:
- You can create an address as a user which will create a mailbox
on our servers. This allows mail to this user to be picked up
using any POP3 email software (such as Outlook Express, Netscape Mail,
Eudora and so on) direct from your Positive account. You will
need to configure your email client to connect to this mailbox (see
our collecting email section for further details.
- You can create an address as an alias which will forward email
to another known email address (e.g. your regular dialup ISP
email address). The advantage of this setup is that you don't need
to change your email software configuration because email is forwarded
on to an existing email account.
To summarise the above: a user is a mailbox on our servers. An
alias is a mail forwarder to another address. You can change any
address from a user to an alias, or vice-versa, at any time.
More About Users and Aliases
We do not place a limit on the number of aliases or mailbox users you can
set up on your account. However, we ask customers to be sensible and not
attempt to run a huge free email service from your mail admin system. Our
email service is intended for use by the account holder and associates,
plus of course representatives of the account holder's business or
organization. It is not intended for offering free email addresses on
your domain to all and sundry.
When your account is originally set up, we have configured
the mail in a certain way in order that you can start receiving email
straight away and do not lose any mails. You can of course change this
setup as soon as you wish by adding mailboxes and aliases.
By default, we have created for you one catch-all POP3 mailbox user and one alias.
The alias is a special default alias known as a star (*).
This special alias forwards all addresses (i.e. <anything>@yourdomain.com)
to the one default catch-all POP3 mailbox. This ensures that initially no mail
is lost. If you would like information on how to connect to this catch-all mailbox
to download any messages that gather there before you get a chance to fine tune your
email settings, please see here.
Importance of the Star * Alias
Please note the following about the default star * alias.
- It will be overridden by any other aliases or mailbox users
you set up. For example, if you set up an alias or mailbox for 'info' this would take
precedence over any settings for the default star * alias.
- Consider it as meaning either "everything" if no other aliases or
mailboxes are present, or "everything else" if you do have other aliases or
mailboxes.
- It is a last resort for mail delivery if the system finds no user or alias for an
address. If you remove the star * alias, then any address not explicitly set up as an
alias or mailbox user will bounce back to the original sender.
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