Email With Websites

If you own a website then your domain name will be associated with your hosting account. In this case your hosting provider will supply you with a control panel to manage email associated with your site and its domain name. You will have the option to either set up a POP3 mailbox - in effect creating an email account on the server - or simply forward email from an address to another external account or both. Don't worry about POP3 accounts for the moment. Most hosting accounts are set up with at least one default POP3 mailbox. In this example, I'm just going to assume that you will forward email to your Yahoo email account, although the technique will work for any email external account you may own, for example Gmail.

The Email 'Catch-All' Address

When you take ownership of your website your hosting provider will probably have set up something called a 'Catch-All' address for your email (also called the default address). Any undefined email addressed to your domain that simply ends with @yourdomain.com is 'caught' by this address. Your hosting account will normally come with a control panel to manage this address. Its default is to reject all incoming mail:

*@mydomain.com ->REJECT

Don't be tempted to simply forward the Catch-All address to your external email account as it will likely be overwhelmed by spam. Instead, simply decide on an email address for your site that you want to manage and forward it. For example:

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   -> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

In this scenario, all email addressed to your domain will be sent to the Catch-All address except for This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   which will now be forwarded to your Yahoo Mail Plus account. The specifics of each hosting accounts's control panel may vary, but most provide the facilities of managing the Catch-All address and email forwarding.

Using Yahoo Email

Yahoo email is an amazing web-based email management tool - now with unlimited email storage - with many advanced spam and addressing options as part of its Mail Plus service. It's those addressing and filtering options that we will want to use for our email command and control centre.

You now have email arriving from key addresses of your website to your main Yahoo Mail Plus account; in this example This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . If you just left things at this stage your main Yahoo inbox would fill up with a confusing mix of email from various accounts. To streamline things still further you can use the ability of Yahoo Mail Plus to sort incoming email to an appropriate folder using an email filter or rule:

Select Mail Options from the Yahoo Mail control panel
Select Filters
Select Add from the option on the form
Name the filter
In the rule section add the rule From Header Contains mydomain.com
Select a new folder name to move the email to in the Then section

Example Rule - Mydomain

IF From Header Contains mydomain.com
Move the message to Mydomain Folder

In other words, if someone sends an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   you should see a new email flagged in your Mydomain folder in your Yahoo control panel. If you had several addresses from this domain forwarded to Yahoo and you wanted these sorted into separate folders, you would have to have a more granular filter or rule. As an example:

IF From Header Contains This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Move the message to Info Folder

In summary

Step 1 - Forward An Email Address

info@mydomain - > This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Step 2 - Add An Email Filter

IF From Header Contains mydomain.com
Move the message to Mydomain Folder

It is important to note that we have simply setup a forwarding address on the hosting account; email is not stored on this server. For this you would have to set up a POP account, which is something different. You'll find that many hosting services provide you with the ability to setup unlimited POP email accounts on their servers; I only ever use one! Again this can be done via your Yahoo account and I'll explain how it's done in the next article in the series.

Tetsou

Send Me Your Questions

If you have any questions or comments on the above article or you have a question on a specific email problem, then email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it and I'll try to provide you with an answer.