WebSpawner.com Blog

If you’ve already had WebSpawner help you set up your own domain for your website, any and all email sent to your domain will automatically be delivered to your WebMail account, where you can retrieve it. Messages addressed in the format of anynamehere@yourdomain.com (for example, info@yourdomain.com, webmaster@yourdomain.com, or sales@yourdomain.com) will arrive by default in your WebMail Inbox.

In a few easy steps you can set up a WebMail Folder and then define a WebMail Filter to look for all incoming email sent to a specific address and automatically move it to the Folder you’ve specified. In this post, we’ll take a look at how you can use WebMail Filters to automatically organize your incoming messages for easier handling.

Let’s say for example that you want all mail sent to sales@mydomain.com to go directly to a Folder in your WebMail titled “Sales.” To begin, login to your WebSpawner account and then click the WebMail icon under the orange Add-Ons tab in the Member Menu, as shown below. WebMail is available to all WebSpawner Members who have Enhanced accounts.

Next, click on the Folders link located on the left menu as pictured below.

On the right you will see a Create Folder button next to a space for the name of the Folder you want to create. Type “Sales” into that space and then click on the Create Folder button.

The screen will refresh and should now display a Sales Folder listed along with any other Folders you have created… this is the location where your incoming Sales emails will arrive once the Filter setup is completed.

Now we can proceed to set up the Filter which will do the automatic sorting. Click on the Options link on the left menu.

In the lower right area of the Options screen you will see a Filters link - click on it.

Next, in the upper right click the link to Add New Filter.

Now you should see the Options-Filters screen with a blank form. Fill out the form in the following manner (as shown in the sample below):

1. Enter a Filter Name such as “Sales Filter” and be sure to keep the Enable Filter option checked, as it is by default. A Filter Description is optional; enter the purpose of the Filter if you want to complete that field (for example, “This filter sorts all Sales email to the Sales Folder”).
2. Under Rules you will want to have Filter messages where all of the following rules apply selected (it is the one selected by default).
3. Complete the next part by changing the pulldown menus and entering the e-mail address so that line reads “If To: exactly matches sales@mydomain.com“… it is recommended to leave the Case Sensitive option unchecked.
4. Under Action leave the Move to: option selected, and then select the “Sales” Folder you created from the pull-down menu.
5. When all the settings and changes are correct as shown below, click the Update Filter button.

Setup of your Filter is now complete, and the new Filter will appear in the Filters List as shown below.

The Filter will cause any mail that is sent to sales@mydomain.com to automatically be placed into the Sales Folder when it arrives. To view any new email to that address at any time, simply enter your WebMail account and click the Folders link on the left menu, then click on the Sales Folder, where you will find any new messages.

You can create additional Filters and Folders in the same manner as you like to organize all incoming email to your domain.

Unsolicited bulk email, known as “spam,” is an unfortunate fact of life for all email users. While there is no foolproof way to prevent or eliminate spam, there are some things you can do to reduce the problem. Today we’ll go over how you can set up Filters in your WebSpawner WebMail account to keep many unwanted spam emails from clogging up your Inbox.

To begin, login to your WebSpawner account and then click the WebMail icon under the orange Add-Ons tab in the Member Menu, as shown below. WebMail is available to all WebSpawner Members with Enhanced accounts. If you haven’t upgraded your account you won’t see the WebMail link; click the Enhance Your Site link instead to upgrade and add WebMail, Image Galleries, Unlimited Page Creation, Opinion Polls and many other great features to your website.

After you’ve clicked on the WebMail link, the WebMail window will appear. Click the Options link on the left side menu.

In the Options screen, click the Filters link.

The Filters screen lists any existing Filters. To add a new one, click the Add New Filter link on the right as depicted below.

The screen will refresh to show a blank Filter creation form like the following one.

The Filter form consists of 3 areas: Filter Name and Description (optional); Rules, to specify the criteria for which incoming messages the Filter will catch; and Action, to indicate what should be done with those messages caught by the Rules.

Complete the form to create a Filter. For example, let’s assume that you are tired of receiving spam emails offering you “male enhancement” products like Viagra. Additionally, you keep receiving emails with the Subject line “The Pharmacy America Trusts” but you don’t trust the sender one bit. You can create a Filter to prevent these types of messages from arriving in the Inbox.

The screen will refresh to show your new Spam Filter listed, along with any other Filters you have created, as shown below.

You can make changes to your Filter at any time by clicking on its name (”Spam”) in the List… for example, to add additional Rules to catch and reject other types of unwanted emails (always click the Update Filter button when finished to save your changes). A single Filter can contain many Rules but can have only one Action.

You can also click Add New Filter at the right of the Filter List to add another Filter with different criteria and Action options. You can create many Filters for different purposes.

A few closing suggestions:

• Be careful when setting Rules; if they are too general the Filter may inadvertently catch and act upon some email that you would prefer to have arrive in your Inbox.
• Even with multiple Rules some unwanted messages may show in your Inbox from time to time… you can add new Rules to your Spam Filter to prevent them from recurring.
• Don’t open unwanted spam emails, and if you do, definitely do not open any attachments sent by users that you are unfamiliar with… your computer could catch a virus.
• Don’t reply to senders of spam emails, and don’t click “unsubscribe” links if present… doing so just confirms for the sender that your email address is valid and the message was received.

We’ve come across this question quite a bit recently.

“I don’t see the security icon when I view the order forms on your site, is it secure?”

A user who wants to confirm that a particular website or online web application connection is secure will look to one place - the place they have always looked. If it’s not there, red flags go up, and rightfully so in today’s environment of phishing schemes and online identity theft.

Upon further investigation we found that all of the customers who asked had one thing in common - they were all using Internet Explorer v7.0. Turns out that the users are getting a secure connection, they just don’t see the padlock icon where they expect it.

It is not that the security icon is gone or missing. It is that Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, decided that moving it in IE7 would be a great thing - never considering that we are creatures of habit.

The familiar “padlock” icon now appears just to the right of the Address Bar in IE7, as shown in the image above. And, just as before, clicking on the security icon will allow you to review the secure certificate details.