Sunday, January 05, 2003

IE Spell Checker - Perfect for Radio Userland Weblogging Google Search It A few months ago I read an opinion that one of the reasons Radio Userland did not have the top weblog spot was that it didn't have a spell checker.  Well, although this is true I found and easy work around today.  IESpell offers this feature and it is freeware for personal use. Tools of the day: IESpell  4:32:07 PM   []    comment []

Spamcop Blacklists My IP Address Google Search It Firstly, since I am forwarding my email from my server to spamcop and then back to my server it arrives at spam cop with my server's header information, indicating that it went through my server.  On its own this is not a problem but when spamcop does a reverse DNS lookup on my IP address it comes back with an att.net domain name not my michaelis.net domain name.  This is because I don't host the reverse DNS lookup on my server.  As a result, spamcop decides that my IP address is spoofing the michaelis.net domain and, therefore, it blacklists the IP address.  Yuck!!! My forwarding is a proposed way to configure to use spamcop so the fact that this has happened is seriously not appreciated.  Furthermore, the fact that there is no way to configure spamcop to whitelist my IP address for messages that I report is even more frustrating. Anyway, the resolution is to go to the Fully-qualified domain name setting (found by clicking on the Advanced button of the on the SMTP protocol properties delivery tab an entering in the what is returned by the reverse DNS lookup of my servers IP address.  3:54:15 PM   []    comment []

Spamcop.net Google Search It I recently signed up for Spamcop.net, paying the non-refundable $30 fee.  At first it caught way to much spam but after a few week I trained it on all the lists I subscribed to and it is quite a bit better now.  I configured it as follows: Set up a contact for my spamcop email address. Change my primary email address mart<at>michaelis.net to something else.  I changed it to mark<at>mail.michaelis.net making sure I had an MX DNS record for mail.michaelis.net.  (This removes my primary email address until step 2.) On my exchange server create a backup mailbox user and assign it my primary email address mart<at>michaelis.net. Set the mail box option on my backup mailbox to forward a message to my spamcop.net email address in addition to keeping the original message. Set my spamcop email address to forward the emails to mark<at>mail.michaelis.net. Okay, that was pretty much all I had to do for configuration.  I then proceeded to get a lot of my junk mail filtered but where it failed (usually filtering too much) I would whitelist the domain so the problem wouldn't repeat itself. The one significant issue with this configuration is that if I connect to my Exchange server using Outlook and and Exchange mailbox then my replay address will be my alternate address.  The only way I have found around this so far is to use POP3/SMTP rather than an Exchange mailbox for sending mail.  Note, I can still use and Exchange mailbox for recieving mail.  Another solution would be to find a provider that would be willing to forward all the mail for my server.  I am seriously considering this and http://www.readyhosting.com is at the top of the list.  The only feature missing is spam filtering which is what got all this started in the first place. 3:35:22 PM   []    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Mark Michaelis.