How my email was configured before

Up to, and including the day before I started to move all my domains to the new server .. I was receiving (on average) about 900 emails per day.

Around January 2007 .. it was about 400-450 emails per day .. and last summer around 250-300 emails per day.

Basically, I attribute the increase of email due to blogging, Spam Karma notices, moderation requests and subscriptions to comment repies. Oh, and usually a couple hundred extra on Tuesdays over on Open Mic Night at Liz’s Successful-Blog!

But, my email has been set up for years. Basically, I was using 5 different domains for emails … PetLvr.com, HARTandYVONNE.com, 1800HART.com, PapillonLvr.com, and my business HBSMC.com. For each of these emails, I had carefully created addresses that I would want to use in certain instances .. like .. info@, webmaster@ sales@ accounting@ tax@ and about 70 more ‘aliases’. In my Eudora client, I would only be checking for new emails from one account, as all of those email aliases would route to one single login .. like, hart@.

That’s why I was always using .. hart (at) PetLvr (dot) com .. as my main email address.

And, I didn’t mind the large email traffic. I have TONS of filters in my Eudora that sorts all my email for me, when business writes, my wife writes, by blog reference, or certain individual, .. and my Spamnix add-on filtered all the junk mail into a JUNK folder, so I don’t even have to look at it. Of course, at the end of the day, or a few times during the day i DID look at it, because you never know what the program might catch as Spam… and I “unjunk” it … and the rest gets transfered to the TRASH folder.

How I configured my email this time

I’ve got tons of domains, 52 actually. I can receive emails from all of them, but in the past .. outgoing email had to be screened as one of those 5 email accounts that I setup. This time, I wanted the opportunity to reply to an email from the same email address it was sent to .. so, I am creating a new email for every domain I have, as I am setting this up on the new servers. For instance .. all of these accounts are valid:

hart (at) PetLvr (dot) com
hart (at) HART-Empire (dot) com
hart (at) Battling-Addiction (dot) com
hart (at) The-Singers (dot) com

… and so on, and so on, and so on. If you send an email to hart@ any of my domains .. you should be able to get me.

But -then I had a phone call from a client, who mentioned that my email was getting bounced. She knew I had no email, because she reads my business blog .. but, when I announced that I had finally received email .. she tried to contacted me. You see .. on all my invoices and letterheads .. I use info@ instead of hart@.

Okay. So I went back to my old server’s email set-up and picked about 5 good emails that I liked to use like .. h@ (and other alphabet single letters), info@, advertising@ and a few more I would like to keep secret for now. Then, I started to created the new emails!

Well – I got through half of the Battling-Series of blog/domains before I said something .. “TO HELL WITH THAT .. THIS IS TAKING TOO LONG!” … So what I did was set up one new email for every domain and let it be a “catch-all” for all unrouted email to be forwarded to this one new email address.

BAD MISTAKE

Today I received over 5,000 emails … (give or take) .. and I’m still downloading new emails as I write this. Rather than discontinue this “catch-all” practice .. I have decided to just eliminate this feature on offending domains. Today, 97% of those 5,000 emails have come from two domains that I set-up .. both in the “Battling-Series”… going through the alphabet trying to find active email addresses.

I’m still a fan of using this catch-all feature for email addresses .. but I will have to go back to manually create some unique emails for these offending domains. I use Fax-To-Email .. and don’t know if I received any faxes this morning – because it’s still downloading new emails.

Regardless – I will be keeping .. hart@ any of my domains ..

PS .. of these 5,000 or so emails .. so far only 17 emails reached my INBOX .. Another reason why I prefer to use EUDORA email client!