The first of our "how-to" series gives advice on dealing with spam email.
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Welcome to the February Newsletter
Welcome to the first newsletter of 2007. As well as the usual news and updates, we've also introduced a new "How To" series of tutorials, helping you get the most from your domain and hosting with us. In this first issue, we tackle the subject of spam email, and how to reduce if not eliminate it.
Domain Name News
EU Domains reduced by 30%. We're pleased to announce that the .EU registry has cut their fees, allowing us to pass on this reduction to you. .EU domains are now just £10pa so there's never been a better time to market your website to the entire European community. More info on .eu can be found at: www.nsdesign.co.uk/domains/eu
.MOBI domains now available. The Internet's first dedicated domain for mobile content can now be purchased as normal via our website. With the ever increasing number of internet-enabled mobile phones, this newest domain provides a much-needed platform for any website's accessibility via mobile devices. More info at: www.nsdesign.co.uk/domains/mobi
Private Whois Service now just £5pa. Our Private Whois Service (for Global domains) is now reduced to just £5pa. Protect your identity today, by ensuring your name and address details are not revealed in your domain's "whois". Visit www.nsdesign.co.uk/domains/private for more.
Company Growth
A warm welcome to our new reseller customers previously with HostWired. NSDesign recently acquired the customer base of HostWired, helping further establish us as one of the leading UK providers of home and small business hosting solutions.
Winning Tenders
January has already proved a busy month for new web design projects, securing a number of high profile commissions including websites for the Scottish Women in Business Network, an award winning Glasgow architects firm, a major EU funded research programme, a car dealership, and the UK's leading Tanning Salon chain.
If you are thinking about a new website design, or perhaps getting existing site redesigned, we'd welcome the opportunity to speak to you. With an NSDesign website you can be assured of a first class web design, matched with standards compliant code to ensure maximum accessibility. Please visit our portfolio for a few examples of our work: www.nsdesign.co.uk/design/portfolio
NSBuilder Upgrade
NSBuilder (our bespoke web site builder and content management system) has recently had a few upgrades. These include an auto-generated contact form, and much improved image management. We've also made a few tweaks here and there to further improve the accessibility features, helping keep you on the right side of the law with regard website accessibility, and the disability discrimination act. Look out also for a range of new templates being added to the system soon. More details at: www.nsdesign.co.uk/nsbuilder
How To - Reduce Spam
The first of our "How To" series, tackles an ever increasing problem - Spam. According to the latest figures, spam email has increased by over 100% in the last 12 months, and the sad fact of the matter is, if you use email, then you'll inevitably get sent spam mail.
The good news is, that as an NSDesign customer, there are certain features in place that allow you to deal with spam, from cutting down the volume, to pretty much eliminating it all together.
Users of our Linux Hosting have a number of options that the can implement to improve things.
Turn Off the Default (catch-all) address:
If you have your account setup, so that anything@yourdomain.com gets sent to you, then you're a sitting duck for spammers. It means they can guess random email addresses, and all of them will arrive at your inbox because you let them. By setting your default address to :blackhole: (including the colons) a spammer must use a valid email address in order to send you spam. They may still be able to guess or find your legitimate sales@ or info@ addresses, but the decrease in volume will be significant. The downside is that you will need to setup individual email boxes (or forwarders) via your control panel, and not rely on just the default address to accept all your email.
Turn On SpamAssassin:
SpamAssassin is a powerful spam filtering system, that uses a variety of methods to identify incoming email as spam. Messages marked as spam can either then be delivered as normal (allowing you to easily filter them via your own email application such as Outlook), moved to a special "spam folder" which you can regularly check to ensure no "real" emails have been wrongly tagged, or automatically deleted. SpamAssassin can be user configured to your requirements and once setup, will help reduce spam emails by approx 75%.
Consider BoxTrapper:
BoxTrapper protects your inbox from spam by forcing all people not on your "white list" to reply to a verification email before they can send mail to you. Since spammers tend not to use "real addresses", or respond to any actual replies to their emails, BoxTrapper can virtually eliminate all your spam email. BoxTrapper may not be suitable for everyone - especially companies that do not wish new new potential customers etc to have to "verify" themselves before their email is received, but for individual personal or business email accounts, BoxTrapper can clear your spam headaches!
All three of the above options can be setup via CPanel's "Mail" option, and of course, if you need any help, our 24/7 support desk is there to help - www.nsdesign.info
If you have any suggestions or ideas for future "How To" features, then please let us know.
If you have any questions on any of the above items, please don't hesitate to get in touch, and as always we appreciate your feedback.
Until the next time.....