Euro Fast Host

Does you client or customer call you to say they have a bounce saying your email server has rejected their email?

It might have Sending address not accepted due to spam filter and if you or someone has access to email logs it will show why it was rejected.

A common reason is Reverse DNS lookup or lack of it. This is fast becoming a standard feature to email Servers as it helps cut SPAM down hugely. In the logs it will show Mail rejected due to SMTP Spam Blocking: _REVERSEDNSLOOKUP and is usually because the company is using a mail exchange server from their office with no reverse DNS Lookup
The rejected email could cost you and them money so it does need fixing on the offending side and not implementing it is costing you money.

Reverse DNS or rDNS works in the opposite manner to the standard DNS in that it takes an IP address and resolves this to your domain name. Reverse DNS lookups was brought in a few years back now as a good way to combat spam for big ISP’s. Email spammers quite often used an IP address that does not correctly resolve to their host name. BT, AOL, Verizon, Yahoo and a lot of others will not receive email from a server that fails a Reverse DNS lookup. You should see these failed email attempts as bounce backs in your inbox.

I hope you see now why this is an important setting to have on a mail server.
How do you get reverse DNS working for your own servers in your office? The short answer is to contact your ISP and do one of the following:

1. Ask them to add a reverse DNS record for your domain to their DNS server.

Or:

2. Ask them to delegate authority for your reverse DNS to your own DNS servers (hoping you know how to do this).

Your ISP should be familiar with these types of requests and Option 1 will be enough.

Happy pain free emailing.

We host a blog for Bettabuy.com,  site that compares prices on thousands of products. The blog has sections on Competitions, New Products, Price Reductions, Sales, Top Sellers, Voucher Codes, and Web Exclusives.

The blog part of the web site is powered by Wordpress, and we have installed the Helicontech ISAPI re-write module. This means that the blog can use search engine friendly URLs (as has long been the case on Linux sites, but is much less common on IIS). An example URL is http://www.bettabuy.com/blog/2007/09/dorothy-perkins-sale/.

We have also installed the same on this blog, so it will be interesting to compare search engine rankings before and after the URL rewrite.

The nice thing about helicontech is that the htaccess file takes the same format as those on Linux, so pretty much no editing is required. This is a great bonus because writing htaccess files is not simple if you are new to them.

We will be writing some documentation on how to do this but in the meantime if any customers want some help setting it up please email support@eurofasthost.com and let us know!

Duncan

We use Windows Messenger a fair bit at work - even in the same office it’s ideal for, for example, sending links to a colleague to take a look at. And of course when people are working remotely, it’s an ideal way to stay in touch. But, it still suffers from the usual Microsoft problem of being over complicated!

I accidentally deleted a contact from it, and when I tried to re-add them, the link at the top just wouldn’t work (this is in a Vista machine). So I started messing around and before I knew it, a browser window popped up asking me to enter some details so that my contacts could stay up to date with my contact details… fair enough I thought, should only take a few minutes.

So I entered some of the required information then it all became just to much of a pain in the neck to complete - it was no longer a 2-minute job, but was looking like it could take quarter of an hour. So, being busy , I gave up.

Next thing I know, there’s an email in my inbox from Windows Live Spaces welcoming me to “Windows Live(TM) Spaces!”. They have very kindly allocated my own URL where I can publish all sorts of things… is it a nice snappy domain? Something easy to remember and spell? Something you can tell someone in the pub and they might remember it? Well… its…

http://cid-00037ffe84eff1a2.spaces.live.com/

Got that? Easy peasy. No-one could ever forget that URL.

And, helpfully, the email went on to explain that this site could be viewed on a mobile with the URL:

“You can also access your space from a mobile device using this web address:
 http://cid-00037ffe84eff1a2.mobile.spaces.live.com/ ”

Now that should be a snap to enter on a mobile

Duncan

Just a quick post to air my mind on the whole 0870 premium call charging business.

Companies that insist on having premium numbers that charges you a fortune, really are raking it in. They keep you on hold and are making money from it, even when half the time it’s a problem of theirs your calling them about.

The usual candidates for 0870 numbers are Gas, Electric, Broadband, Web Hosting, after sales service lines, support lines of any kind etc.

So I scanned the internet for forums or web sites that had views and/or solutions on the whole 0870 scam.

I came up trumps with this site www.saynoto0870.com

You can enter an 0870 number for a company and it will come back with normal land line numbers for it. Or just enter the company name and again comes back with normal land line numbers or sometimes 0845.The site is all end user built so it depends on numbers been submitted by the public.
All this brings me to us at Eurofasthost.com we have a 0800 free phone number and we aren’t a chicken call centre. So you can guarantee no queues or silly phone bills.Enjoy

Since installing our SpamBlock server we have access to detailed statistics about the number of spam emails being delivered to some of our customers, and the figures are truly amazing.

Of 2.2m messages delivered to the system, 1.8m were spam. That’s 82% spam… 82%!

Of these, 201000 are ones delivered to random names at a domain (ie csdwewr@whatever.com) which is one of the reasons we don’t recommend “catch-all” mailboxes where anything@whatever.com is delivered to a default mailbox. It just makes the spammers job easier.

Just over 1m messages were blocked by RBL (realtime block lists) available freely on the internet. When used carefully, these lists are fantastic resources in the fight against spam.

So it seems the solutions are out there to reduce spam to practically zero, but they need constant hardwork to keep them effective - as usual its a constant technological battle between the spammers and the wider internet community.

SMS messaging is big business, and we have recently had the opportunity to work with a customer to setup an SMS competition to win 50cc Scooters. Working with another of our customers as the SMS provider, entrants can text the answer to a question to an SMS short code to try to win the scooter. The 3000th entrant wins the 50cc scooter, tax, registration and delivery!

The cost of the text can be set by the operator, and in this case was chosen to be £1.50 and then there is a revenue share agreement on income generated. The twist with the competition though is that when a contestant enters, they are texted back with their postion (if they give the correct answer). So, it’s made clear on the web site that the 3000th entrant wins, and once each contestant has answered correctly, they are texted back and told where their answer was… so if they are correct entrant number 2654 they will receive a text telling them so, and they can re-enter if they like!

It is a new area for us, so will be an interesting exercise, and it may be something that we offer as a service on a wider basis - there are all sort of possibilities. What about domain name registration by SMS for when you have that great idea for a web site in the pub? Service status messages by SMS? E-mail alerts for sales from your site? Affiliate sales notifications? The possibilites are endless.

With all the recent publicity over “dodgy” competitions, we have been careful to make the contest as fair as possible, and make the terms and conditions clear. And unlike many premium rate SMS competitions, entrants will not be sent multiple text messages at £1.50 a time. The idea is that it is fun, you have a realistic chance of winning (much better than the National Lottery), and it increases sales for the site owner.

If any of you have a great idea (or even a boring one!) for how you could use SMS within your businesses, let me know (duncan@eurofasthost.com) and we’ll see if we can help.

And, for anyone who wants a go at winning a 50cc Scooter, the competition can be found at ScooterSpot.co.uk (and no, the guys from our office can’t enter!)

We will shortly be launching an online backup service that you can use to backup your local laptops, PCs and servers to our network. It’s all done automatically over the internet and provides excellent security for your valuable data.

We are trialing a service at the moment with a number of customers and will post more details about the full service as soon as possible.

Duncan

Just a reminder that we are now taking daily backups of all web hosting accounts, including e-mail, databases (SQL Server and MySQL), and web directories.

If you accidentally delete some files, we will usually be able to recover them for you (please note that this is not guaranteed however) and a quick email to support should get you back up and running.

Thanks,

Duncan

Following on from a previous post about delays on the SpamBlock server, we have moved it to a new faster server to improve performance further.

We will monitor spam filtering performance on Monday morning as traffic starts to build but we feel that the upgrade should improve performance considerably.

Thanks,

Duncan

At last, we have launched our new web site along with new logo and branding. We hope you like the new look, and as always, comments are welcome!

We have also launched a new range of shared web hosting, VPS hosting (virtual private server) and dedicated servers. Over the coming weeks we will be promoting the new products extensively and refining the product range in response to customer feedback.

We are particularly excited about the virtual server offrerings - this is a new product for us, and one we’ve been asked about a lot. A handful of customers have been trialing it, and we are now looking forward to rolling it out on a wider basis.

There will be a number of other refinements occurring over the next few weeks, and we will be posting more information as they happen.

As always, thanks for your continued support!

Duncan

We have noticed that at peak times our spam blocking service is causing mail delivery delays. No mail is being lost, but there are some delays with the delivery of the mail to end-users. There appears to be a number of causes of this, and we have made some configuration changes which we think will help.

One of the problems is that take-up of the spam blocking service has been high, and the server is now handling approcximately 100,000 messages per day, of which a very large percentage is spam.

We have enabled recipient verification which will ease the load since a lot of messages can be rejected instantly (since they are not to a valid recipient), but this does mean that all domains using the service can no longer have a “catch-all” email account.

We will monitor delivery times on Monday as the mail load increases again, and if we still have delays then we will commission a new server to spread the load.

Sorry for the inconvenience with the occasional delays - we will get them sorted out. Overall though feedback has been fantastic - the service really does remove the vast majority of spam, with incredibly few false positives.

Duncan

Our new SpamBLock service is now well and truly live, and blocking tens of thousands of spam messages per day - Viagra sales must be on the decline

The system works by intercepting and quarantining spam before it hits your inbox - meaning you only need to download the email that means something. Just in case, you also get a daily spam quarantine report which lists the subject lines and sender addresses of all blocked emails. In the unlikely event that a legitimate mail is blocked, you can whitelist it there and then so it never gets stopped again.

At just £10 per annum per maiblox (with further volume discounts) there’s no reason to complain about spam again.

We are so pleased with this service, and feedback has been so positive, that we are offering a free trial to anyone who wants it. Just email sales@eurofasthost.com with your contact details and we’ll do the rest. You don’t even need to be hosting your email with Eurofasthost.com - we can filter remote emails too with a simple MX record update.

Just contact us and we can have your spam blocked within 24-hours.

Duncan

Hi,

There are many times when you are moving a domain name from an alternative host when it would be useful to view your web site on our servers before making the final change. So, your site stays live on the old host and you can check all is well with a copy of the site before the final move. But, your domain name is still pointing to the old host. What to do?

We have historically manually setup temporary domain names for you to use for just this purpose. But, now it’s automated! When you create your new web site, a temporary domain is automaticallty configured for you to view the new site straight away.

It will take the format of www.yourdomain.com.efhweb4.eurofasthost.com where yourdomain.com is obviously your domain name and efhweb4 is the particular web server on our network that the domain name has been setup on.

Simple!

Any questions, please email support@eurofasthost.com.

Duncan

Hi,

You can now create scheduled tasks in the control panel - ideal for regular jobs that need doing (e.g. sending mailing lists, updating billing accounts etc). You simply setup the script and then choose it in the control panel to run at specified times! Any questions, please email support@eurofasthost.com.

Duncan

Hi,

We have now started tracking email and database disk space usage in overall disk space calculations. We haven’t historically done this, but we have a number of email accounts and databases (particularly SQL Server) that are taking up very large amounts of space. These have not historically been billed, but we are now going to start counting this usage towards overall quotas. You should be able to see your total usage in the control panel within 24 hours. If it appears that you have a large amount of usage, please contact support@eurofasthost.com so that we can help you reduce it.

Thanks,

Duncan.

Hi,

We have today upgraded the version of Helm Control Panel to version 3.2.16 from version 3.2.11. This brings along several enhancements to the control panel. If you have any problems or questions following the upgrade, please email support@eurofasthost.com.

Thanks,

Duncan

We have recently upgraded our office telephone system to be fully VoIP based, and after a few teething problems, it works great!

Initially, we were using HomePlug adapters to connect phones (fantastic SNOM 360s) to the ethernet network where there wasn’t a handy CAT5 connection. When we were trialing the system, we found call quality was far from acceptable, with constant breaking up. We knew bandwidth wasn’t the issue, and we were pretty sure we had configured everything else correctly. In the end, it turned out to be the HomePlug adapters - remove these and use the normal CAT5 connection, and it all works fine.

So, what are the benefits? Well, it’s cheap for local and national calls, and even mobiles, but not really so much cheaper that it pays for the investment in phones. No, the real benefit is that we can run a virtual PBX to configure call routing, service status announcements, call diversion, forwarding etc all via a web browser interface. People can also logon from home and it’s as though they are in the office (not that we do this regularly!).

We have got rid of our expensive Alcatel phone system (complete with annual maintenance agreement) and now run all of our telephony via a VoIP. We have kept some analogue lines in case of any outages, but the initial signs are that the VoIP system is definitely the way to go!

�

Recently Vista updated itself, and after this certain web sites would “bounce” when viewed in Firefox. The bookmarks also disappeared - not the ones under the “Bookmarks” menu, but the ones between the navigation bar and the browser content. Bit frustrating, and led to using IE for a while before finding the time to investigate. Anyway, it’s easily solved by right-clicking on the grey area between web page content and navigation bar, and adding a new bookmark.

Thanks to http://kb.mozillazine.org/Window_shakes for the solution

Following on from the untimely withdrawal of our spam filtering service (when our supplier was no longer able to provide the service), we have installed our own improved spam filtering service. This is hosted and controlled in-house, and we have been trialing it with a number of customers. Feedback is excellent, and we are pleased to say that it will be launched next week!

Features include:

• Over 98% of spam filtered
• Daily quarantine email report with list of mails stopped
• Release and whitleist emails direct from the email quarantine report
• Simple web interface for configuring quarantine report settings
• No need for any client software
• Also filters viruses before they reach your PC
• Generally, its just great.

Further details on Monday!

For some time now, a company called Domain Regsitry of America (or Domain Registry of Europe) has been writing to domain name owners “warning” them that their domain names are due to expire unless they are renewed. These letters are being sent to our customers as well of customers of other ISPs and hosting companies.

The letters are a con and an underhand attempt to take ownership of domain names unethically. The company has been the subject of legal challenges in the US/Canada (see here) and the FTC taken them to court.

Please be assured that these notices should be ignored - they are not legitmate and if they are completed there is a danger that you domain name will be transferred without you explicit consent, and excessive charges will become payable.

We always write to our customers when domains are due for renewal, so there is no need to worry about missing any renewal dates. If you are concerned about any correspondence you have received, please just give us a call and we’ll check it out for you.