E-mail Applications That Deserve Notice…

I am literally swimming in tech stuff, domain management and site development right now, and yesterday?s WordPress upgrade couldn?t have come at a worse time for me. Anyhow one thing I thought I?d share with you are the changes I?ve recently made with how I manage all the emails across dozens of domains. I think I?m just avoiding my disaster pile of work that?s waiting for me ;). But I had to hunker down and nuke my past email setup (email client was wonky) because it wasn?t as efficient as it could be. First here?s a bit of backstory:

1. I don?t allow my domain emails to pass through a third party (like gmail, yahoo, whatevs).
2. I?m a Microsoft fan, but not Outlook. To me?it?s a magnet for virus disasters IMO.
3. I?ve used a few different email clients through the years, namely Pegasus and Foxmail (can?t find the non-chinese link). Too limited though when things got complicated (ie. bunch of email addies per domain) and some features just aren?t there that I?d like.
4. I have a couple (or a few?depending on the domain) email addies per domain. Such as one for site contact form, one to use when making comments on other blogs, one for article/directory/whatever submissions, etc. The method to my madness is that when one gets picked up in the spam train (and when using them ?out there? for whatever reason?they will), I can just delete it and start with a fresh one. This keeps my main email addresses mostly out of the spam loop.

Since I am working with several live domains, with each domain having at least two email addresses, and download all the emails locally to my computer every few minutes rather than have an online third party handle them?things got a bit heavy and clunky. I have been using Foxmail for a few years now, but I seemed to have broke it with all my accounts and the megs of stored emails (it constantly drops the stored passwords).

I recently made the switch to Thunderbird and although I still need to figure out a few tweaks for personal preference, overall this email client is ?The One? for me!

First, a new trick I figured out for domain emails: And this one may make your eyes roll since it?s *always* been available to do, I just never picked up on it. In the past I always created a new account in cPanel for each email address. Hello! Just create one email address and then go into ?Forwarders? and create all the aliases you want to send and receive mail for and then forward to the one main email address. You can forward all emails from one domain to another domain?s email account too?I haven?t looked into that at all though since it?s not something I?m interested in doing atm.

What Happens: It saves your email client from logging in and checking dozens (maybe hundreds) of email accounts. It just has to log into the main account for the domain and grab all the emails including ones for the aliases.

Here?s where things get interesting with Thunderbird: You can create an account for the main email, then add a bunch of Identities to that account. What happens then is that you can create emails or respond with the ?email alias? you are working with instead of your main email account showing up in the headers as ?to? and ?from?. I won?t get into the details of how to do that, it?s laid out very well here: Web Worker DailyThunderbird?s Most Underrated Feature: Identities

Filtering Emails: When working with a crap load of emails each and every day, you need filters. And lots of them. I found that there are a handful of email subjects that I want to monitor *immediately* so I developed filters for those. Everything else can wait till the end of the day, some of my important ones are:

• Blog Comments: I take comments on my blogs very seriously. The spam is handled very well by Spam Karma, but some do sneak through. I want to know asap so I can remove them asap. I have one folder in Thunderbird that all the comments across all my blogs get filtered to. I can see right away when something has to be checked.
• Contact Forms: Another separate folder and another filter. No matter what domain it is, all the site contacts are filtered into one folder.
• Domains: Any domain management notices (renewals, moves, whatever) gets filtered through to a single folder, no matter what domain registrar is handling it. I can see immediately what domain needs to be looked and at why.
• Hosting: All correspondence from hosts get filtered through to a single folder. Payments, issues, server management files?everything is in one place.
• PayPal: Any payments sent or received go in one folder. I see immediately what?s happening and why.

Thunderbird Tweaks?I have more in place than the ones I?ve listed below, and more on the way, but these are making my email management a lot easier:

Email Reminders: I *totally function* with email reminders. You have no idea. I used to use this handy script until the host it was on tweaked something on the server and blew it up. But I found the extension for Thunderbird Send Later. If you don?t use email reminders in your ?GTD? arsenal, I very much recommend you give it a shot.

Scribble Notes on Your Emails: Love this addon - XNote

HTML Emails: I don?t send or view emails in HTML. Sometimes though I have to view one, and I found Toggle HTML to be the answer.

Folderpane Management: Hard to believe it, but Thunderbird isn?t very friendly with managing your folderpane area, this is the extension I found to overcome that - Folderpane Tools

Email Rules

Some email rules I?ve developed for myself over the years:

1. Use an ISP email addy for affiliate/money accounts
2. Use an ISP email addy for hosting accounts
3. Use an ISP email addy for domain registrars (GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc.)

These email accounts (or a single one if you like) are only used to do business with those particular areas. It really helps keep the spam levels down (and mostly non-existent) so when email does arrive in those (very important) accounts?you know it?s something applicable to those areas (your affiliate accounts, domain renewals/moves and your hosting accounts).

The reasons I don?t use domain emails for those things are simple: hacking and host management staff. Unless you own and manage the box your domains are on, the info in your account is susceptible to hosting staff getting access to them. Not a good idea considering you don?t have a clue who or how many are working in the background of a hosting company. Or the account can be breached by a hacker?not pleasant for them to get access to that stuff. Also if you have trouble with hosting, your email will be rocky too. Try explaining that to GoDaddy when you didn?t respond to their renewal notice on time.

And of course?I don?t use (or trust) Gmail or Yahoo!, etc., for anything important, so it does have to be my ISP handling the info for those three areas.

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