NetworkSolutions.com Vs Deliverable Mail
The task of setting up my own e-mail systems for this domain was a slightly daunting and highly frustrating one. Little did I realize that once I'd finally got all the necessary software installed and configured that my battle had just begun.
Unfortunately, because Networksolutions.com are ignorant of their customer's needs and intent on inconveniencing them in an effort to force them into buying more crap from NetworkSolutions.com that they simply don't need, I've had a pretty badly crippled e-mail system for this place. It rather reminds me of what appears to be the Microsoft business model: Sell 'em something and then do anything you can to stop 'em from buying/obtaining things from elsewhere. Well I wouldn't think they're anywhere near as bad Microsoft, but I gave them the same treatment I gave Microsoft anyway; I gave them the boot in favour of something much less restrictive.
After months of putting it off and generally not having enough time to do pretty much anything for myself or my site, I've finally found some time to get things done. With any luck I'll get a good bit more of this place built in the few weeks that I have. I guess it all depends on whether or not any unexpected disasters pop up (which they invariably seem to do). At the time of writing, this place is not accessible to me through the current ISP I'm on for the next few weeks. I'm hoping that this is not yet another unexpected disaster and is simply because of the transfer process of changing the registrar of record from Notworksolutions.com to what appears to be a much better alternative: GoDaddy.com.
The reason I changed registrar is because it seems that most of my mail from this domain was getting rejected not because I was doing something bad, but simply because there were a couple of things I had not done. Or, to be more accurate: a couple of things NetworkSolutions.com refuse to allow their customers to do. Quite a lot of mail was being rejected because I could not implement SPF. I'd also imagine that some mail would be getting rejected because of my inability to implement DKIM. As if that wasn't enough, it also seems that there's no shortage of jackasses posing as email authorities that many organizations rely on to identify good mail from bad, but appear to arbitrarily brand you as a spammer if you have not implemented SPF, DKIM or both. This is made all the more annoying by the fact that I was branded a spammer before my domain had even sent out its first e-mail and that for about 15% of the day the Spamhaus systems agree that I am indeed not a source of spam (or UBE as they like to call it). Once the next day rolls around, though, I'm a spammer again...
Now that I'm with Godaddy.com, things will hopefully start to improve very soon. Who knows, if I can get my mail working well enough, the user registration process might even start working for a few people. Fingers crossed for now.
Looks like I was wrong about GoDaddy.com being a much better alternative. They are indeed different from Networksolutions.com, but I wouldn't really say they're any better. As a matter of fact, I think I'd much rather have stayed with Networksolutions.com. Networsolutions didn't provide all the services I need and GoDaddy.com provide me with even less of a service. When I moved to GoDaddy.com, I couldn't find any kind of DNS record management interface. So, naturally, I contacted customer support to find out where it was. The basic gist of their response was You haven't bought any hosting services from us, so screw you
; nice.
So since then I've had to use my hosting-provider's DNS servers which also meant having to convince them that SPF exists and also trying to get them to delete erroneous DNS records that I didn't want.
So far I have managed to now add my SPF record in a TXT type RR, but, apparently, my hosting provider can not yet provide me with actual SPF type RR entries. I also seem to have managed to settle my problems with almost all mail block-lists on the internet too. The only block-list I have found so far that still blacklists me is some useless crap that pretty much everyone seems to agree causes more problems than it solves. Apparently, I'm blacklisted because I happen to use a hosting provider that is the client of an ISP that once-upon-a-time had a customer somewhere do something naughty
: that's how stupid that list is. Pretty much the web-equivalent of branding someone a criminal because they live less than 200 miles away from a known/suspected criminal.
So overall, I'm having a lot less trouble than I was doing when I first posted this entry, but I'm still not out of the woods yet. The last I checked, Hotmail automatically chucks mail from this place in the spam folder and the domain of the NHS that I need to be able to mail reliably still rejects connections for about 51 minutes of every hour of the day. During the small time-frame in which it does not automatically reject connections from here, it accepts mail from me, but never delivers it to where I need it to get to.
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