Recently in Email Category

Today we can announce that Qmail (email) users on every subscription will have their own service user.

Wow you say that's brilliant?

Or maybe you might ask "What is a service user?".

Well simply put, you can login to https://cp.blacknight.com with your e-mail address and password and change your password.

This feature has been requested literally 1000s of times and it allows end users to maintain their own passwords and not have to bother their IT person.

As we've said in the past, we really do listen to people's feedback!

The email service we offer on all our new shared hosting plans is really cool - yes we are biased!

All users get access to a really nice webmail system (ATMail) and combined with basic email filtering for both viruses and spam it's a really winning combination. (Signup for an annual hosting account you get free advertising too!)

If you have registered a .com/net/org/info/biz or mobi domain name through us (or anyone else for that matter) you will normally get an email once a year asking you to verify your whois details.

This is normal.

If you need to update the details you can do so via your control panel.

At no time do we or eNom (the registrar of record for most of our com/net/org/info/biz domains) ask you to login to anything when you're checking the data.

So if you do get any emails asking you to login to eNom websites (which we'd never do ..) then please be wary.

Further details of the current phishing (email fraud) emails going around is available over on Domain Name News.

UPDATE:

Enom have provided a screenshot of the phishing email that is doing the rounds (click to enlarge):



NB: THIS IS NOT A LEGITIMATE EMAIL.

If you're using Plesk on a VPS or dedicated server you may want to configure email filtering.

There are two ways to block spam from reaching you on a Plesk server:

• Spam Assassin
• DNS Blacklists

DNS Blacklists can be very helpful, but bear in mind that you need to check what a blacklist is doing (ie. its criteria) before you implement it. You should also keep an eye out for updates and changes, or you can end up facing issues that affected some people earlier this year.
With a blacklist you can decide to simply drop ALL email from certain places.. This may seem like an extreme measure to take, but if you are constantly being spammed then it may help a lot.

SpamAssassin, however, offers you more options. You can choose how you want to handle emails and set scores etc., which gives you and your users a greater level of control.

Setting up both options is quite easy to do with the "Plesk updater", which also handled installing extra modules.

Login to your Plesk powered server or VPS. You should see a screen a bit like this one:
Click on the "Server" link (highlighted in the screenshot above).
That will take you to a screen like this one:
As you can see the "Spam Filter" option is greyed out, as are a few other things. This is because they are not installed.
To install them click on the "Updater" icon and then on the Plesk link.
You'll then be presented with a screen showing you which tools and modules are installed and which ones aren't. If you've already been "playing around" you may have already installed some of these optional modules. In my case the VPS I'm using is a fresh install, so none of the extras have been either installed or configured:
Choose the modules you want to install by clicking in the boxes on the left hand side and then clicking the install link at the top of the screen. You'll then be taken to a confirmation screen where you can also select which email addres should be sent a notification about the install.
The install can take several minutes, so it's a good time to go and grab a coffee.

If you now go back into the server section you should see that the Spam Assassin ninja is no longer greyed out and so Spam Assassin is now installed:
You can now click on the Ninja icon to setup your SpamAssassin settings for your server or VPS.

So what about the blacklist we mentioned earlier?
It can be configured via the "Mail" icon, which also offers you a bunch of other email settings including checking for SPF records and Domain Keys.

If you have a look at the screenshot below I've highlighted 3 of the settings that can be of interest, namely:

• setting email size limits (if you want to block emails based on size)
• SPF settings
• DNS Blackhole (blacklist) settings

SPF and DomainKeys can help with phishing (both against you / your domains and targetting your users). In terms or DNS blacklists I'd always recommend using Spamhaus' lists as they seem to be sanely managed. You can find more information on the Spamhaus site, but I'd recommend using sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org
DO NOT use Spamcop for blocking email. Seriously. Don't.

If you have any issues with setting up email filtering in Plesk that I haven't covered please let us know in the comments.

There will always be scams of some kind or other. The only thing that seems to change is how the scam is perpetrated ...

Google Adwords is currently one of the targets selected by phishers (see wikipedia for a definition)

The email may look like it came from Google, but it didn't (click to enlarge):





If you get an email like this simply delete it.

Earlier today our developers were doing some housekeeping on IE domains.

What we were doing was updating some of the technical contact details to maintain some level of uniformity.

While this change had zero impact on the domains themselves and only affected the WHOIS data, the registry's system still sent multiple emails to registrants confirming the changes.

Unfortunately the wording of the emails may have been a bit confusing!

In any case, now you hopefully know what that was all about!

If anyone has any queries please feel free to contact us

I mentioned the Tuesday push recently in relation to pix.ie.

This week's Tuesday push is Toddle, which we also happen to host!

So what exactly is Toddle?

Toddle is the brainchild of SpoiltChild design. If you've seen our new site or any of our print ads etc., then you've seen their work.

In simplest terms it's a service to help you design your email newsletters.

You don't need to have any special skills to create an attractive email newsletter that you can send to your clients or prospects, as their intuitive interface does all the hard work for you.

Setting up an account takes less than 30 seconds and there are both paid and free options. I'd encourage you to play around with the free version first to see if it suits your taste / requirements.

Are we biased towards them?

Probably.

Do we feel guilty about this?

No.

If you've just gone to our website you may notice that it's changed. Not just a minor overhaul, but a full redesign (SpoiltChild) with CMS magic (2Bscene) and various other things integrated (Blacknight internal).

The new hosting plans offer:

• More space
• More bandwidth
• Single login
• More features
• More databases and database technologies

We will be migrating client billing accounts and domains into the new billing system as soon as we can (ie. over the next few weeks) but there is no magical way to move hosting from our old systems.

I'll be posting a bit over the next few days in more detail about the new plans and what we're doing that's different.

If you have any issues or simply want to give us feedback please do.

Every time I write one of these "heads up" posts I silently hope and pray that it will be the last. Of course it never is.

At present there are two scams doing the rounds.

Our "friends" in Domain Registry of America are still sending out letters to thousands of domain holders. As I've said before - dump the letters if you get them. You can read them if you want, but you're better off simply ignoring them completely.

Another, more disturbing, scam is being sent around by EU Business Services Ltd promoting the "EU Company Directory".

The devil is in the details, so if you look at the fine print you will find that signing off on a "simple" listing will set you back close to 1000 euro! I think I've personally received about 6 emails from these people about their "wonderful service" in the past few days. Do yourself a favour - bin it!

Basically they're doing the same thing as Euro Business Guide. They're probably the same people.

We have finally launched the first set of new products and services that we've been working on for months.

As of last night Blacknight VPS hosting is open for business.

The new VPS hosting is the perfect solution for people who want to run custom setups without incurring the costs of dedicated hardware.

For example if you want to experiment with JSP, Ruby on Rails, Light HTTPD or want to install custom DLLs on Windows.

With a VPS you have full control. The only limits are your imagination and your credit card limit!

What's a VPS?

VPS stands for virtual private server.

It's hard to put it into really simple terms, but it's a way to give you the control and flexibility of a dedicated server at a fraction of the price.

What are Blacknight offering?

We're offering a full range of Windows Server 2003 64 bit and Centos 5 (Linux) based virtual servers.

Can I get a control panel for this?

Yes. All VPS servers come with the Virtuozzo Power Panel which gives you control over the basic operations of your VPS.

If you're not comfortable managing your server over SSH / RDP then you can opt to get Plesk as well.

What about other linux distros?

We'll be adding other popular Linux distributions in the coming weeks. For the moment we're offering the most popular alternative to RedHat Enterprise

Will you be offering Windows Server 2008?

We intend to offer it as soon as it is viable ie. fully supported and tested

The entire system is securely hosted in one of Ireland's leading data centres, Interxion in Dublin, Ireland.

In the last few months we've mentioned a lot of upgrades and improvements to our network. Part of the reason for doing all this was to make way for the rollout of our Parallels network.

If anyone has any feedback we'd really love to hear it.

Let us know in the comments or if you'd prefer discretion email management@blacknight.com

We informed you some time ago of an upcoming upgrade to our billing / control panel system.

You will probably receive an email from us later today regarding our billing system.

The text of the email is below:

Dear XXX

As you may know we are currently deploying a new billing and control panel system.

In order to facilitate the migration we would appreciate your help.

Please follow the link below to create your new control panel login.

NB: We will not ask you for any personal information at any time.

To create your new control panel login, please visit

Should you encounter difficulties please contact support@blacknight.com

--
Regards
Team Blacknight
http://www.blacknight.com

Once you get this email you will be able to setup your new login for our new billing system which will be going live very soon.
If you have any queries or issues please let us know.

NB: This change affects ALL Blacknight clients

If you're not an existing Blacknight client this post isn't going to be that interesting or relevant to you, so you might want to move along...

The short version of this post:

We'll be emailing you to get you to choose a new username for the new control panel and billing system. The email will be clearly identified as coming from us and we won't be asking you for any sensitive information (ie. it won't be a phish!)

And for those with more patience ...

As some of you know we are currently working on a new shiny hosting system which is going to make your lives better and cure the world's ills (marketing speak gone mad! I know!).

If you can get past the marketing blurb one important fact remains. We will be moving away from Modernbill before too long. While it has served us well over the last few years our relationship has had its ups and downs, so now it only seems fair that we part our ways.

Now we know that migrating people to new systems can be disruptive and we also know how annoying it is when you're forced to use an insanely complicated username and password pair.

So our little elves (forgive the terrible metaphors!) have devised simple solution.

If you are an existing client of ours you will be getting an email at some point in the next few weeks. Within that email will be the basic details you need to choose your new username for the new billing system. It will all be quite painless we hope (and pray!).

In any case if you have any questions do let us know.

When is this going to happen?

I can't give a fixed date just yet, as we're still ironing out some issues and I hate making promises that I can't deliver on.

The expression "there's no such thing as a free lunch" may seem a little overused at times, but scam artists of all shapes and sizes are still "in the wild".

In some cases being a small bit more cautious or actually reading the fine print could avert disaster (or at least go a long way to avoid headaches).

It doesn't really matter which "offer" I am referring to.

It could be Domain Registry Of America (DROA) whose modus operandi consists of sending thousands and thousands of nicely laid out and very official looking letters to domain registrants. If you get one - dump it. If you don't want to dump it immediately, by all means open it and read it. But please read ALL of it.

One of the offers doing the rounds at the moment is from Euro Business Guide.

There are a couple of things about it that raise red flags:

- they're doing it via email en masse (basically spamming)
- the wording is more than a bit misleading

If you sign up with them WITHOUT reading the fine print you could be liable for a EUR 965 charge.

As it's a Friday evening I thought I'd have a quick look at the spam filtering stats to see what's been going on.

I haven't looked at ALL the figures yet, but just to give you a flavour of what's going on...

One of our filtering nodes was sent 372,460 emails yesterday. It rejected 88% of those mails!!
Of the 30 thousand plus emails that it filtered nearly 30% was marked as spam.

Can you imagine that amount of junk hitting your office mail server on a dsl line?

I'd rather not!

While I may have a love-hate relationship with servers I simply dislike faxes and fax machines.

I can't get excited by them and simply consider them to be a waste of space and money.

Yes - we still have one in the office, but I've stopped using it for inbound faxes.

We had an issue several months ago where one of the telcos managed to cut off our fax lines with a digger for a few hours so we took our faxing online. I haven't looked back.

Not only can I get all my faxes in a handy electronic format (who needs expensive scanners?) for storage I can also send on the faxes to 3rd parties easily if needed.

So what?

Well you too can dump your cumbersome fax machine!
Signup for a free 30 day trial and choose from a multitude of localised numbers (we've got ones in the US and UK!)

No more worrying about expensive fax ribbons, splodgy printouts or simply mangled faxes... Not to mention the amount of paper you can get rid of..

Kiss your fax machine goodbye !! (Or turn it into a bookend!)

There are several reasons why this blog exists and one of them is to get feedback from clients.

It may come as a surprise to people, but we actually do pay attention to what they say to us and about us.
I'd love to think that we do a good job all of the time, but there may be aspects of our service that fails to meet your expectations and if that's the case I'd like to know about it. (If you don't want to comment in public you can always email me directly: michele@blacknight.eu ). It might be something as simple as the way we worded our product or service offering ... If people don't let us know we have no way of knowing!

We are currently working on rolling out a new suite of websites and we will be unveiling a whole range of new products and services over the coming months. I'll be teasing you all with little details as we finalise the details, but now is also the ideal time for us to take your feedback. If you want us to offer something that is feasible then we might just do that. Of course we might think your idea is crazy ... but if you don't talk to us we will never know.

What kind of services would you like to see hosting providers like us providing in the future?

What elements of our current hosting plans would you like us to change? (I'm not saying we will change them, but I am more than willing to listen)

Which technologies would you like to see us offering in the future?

As we are active members of Nominet, the .uk registry, we often have to modify, renew etc., domains on our account.

While it might be possible for each and every member of our staff to become intimate with the specific commands necessary to interface with the registry's systems it would be a bit unrealistic. Our staff have enough on their plates!

So just over a year ago I asked one of our technical staff to do up a simple, easy to use, web interface for non-technical staff to use.

Over a year later it's been re-written several times and now supports most of the Nominet automaton commands.

So you don't need to spend 3/4 of an hour reading up on which template you need to use to perform a specific action.

Now I would never be so silly as to say that it's attractive to look at, but it's not meant to be!

So, in the interests of helping the wider Nominet community we've decided to make the interface software available to other Nominet members.

NB: If you are not a Nominet registrar this software will not be of any use to you. I repeat. You need to be a Nominet registrar (tag holder) to use this. You'll also need to read the include README file carefully.

Although we're generous people we would ask that you maintain the copyright notice that is included.
Full details are in the aforementioned README along with our nice big disclaimer - simple version being - if your server explodes or anything else happens please don't complain to us.

So, without further ado here is the link to the software:
Nominet Automaton Web Interface

You will need a recent version of PHP 4 or 5 to make use of it. Further details in the "famous" README.

Any issues please let us know.

A lot of people signup for hosting using free email accounts or maybe their "current" work email address.

Unfortunately nobody on our end can possibly know if those email addresses are valid weeks, months or years later.

If you change your email address or telephone number you can easily update it via the control panel, or contact our accounts team and get them to do it for you.

If you don't keep the details up to date you may miss important emails from us about your hosting account, your domain renewal or even the chance to get something for nothing :)

Seriously, though, it is important that people keep their contact details up to date.

If you change jobs or stop using your free email account you do run a very serious risk of missing an important email from your hosting provider, registrar or ISP.

Take the time to check that the details on your .com domains are correct, especially if you have transferred them from another provider.

Under ICANN rules the WHOIS data has to be accurate at all times.

With other registries, such as Eurid, only a very small amount of personal data is viewable to the public via standard whois. It is very hard to spam the contacts on a .eu domain, for example, so please do not let a fear of spam lead to you losing out on a domain's renewal.

We've re-enabled partial access to our billing system, so we can now take new orders.

If you want to pay an outstanding invoice please bear with us.

Our billing and ordering system is currently offline so that we may conduct maintenace. We don't like doing this during office hours, but we've no choice.

Yesterday we made a mistake. I was informed that the mistake had been fixed and that it was all "ok".

It wasn't.

I'm not going to apologise again - I already did - instead we're taking it offline until it is fixed properly.

I don't like "fire fighting", but we've no option again this morning.

Please bear with us!

Ronan Kirby from RedHat did a nice write up on his trip to Skycon the other week.

Much to my amazement he not only mentioned my talk on email filtering but also includes a photo of me. It's taken from a rather odd angle and before anyone asks, no I wasn't drinking beer while giving the talk!

You can read the article on their site here

It looks like several of us will be attending Bar Camp Southeast this weekend in Waterford.

I'd a really good time at the Cork event last year, so I was delighted to get us involved with the Waterford one.

Hopefully I'll get to take more photos than I did last time!

So if you're going to be in the general vicinity of the venue on Saturday why not pop in?

We've always tried to pass on savings to our clients where possible.

Earlier this year we offered IE domains for a mere € 30 as a special offer, while we consistently charge one of the most competitive prices in the Irish market.

We're now upgrading ALL of our shared hosting plans on both Windows 2003 server and Linux.

All package quotas have been increased, so you will get "more bang for your buck".

Take our Soho Linux plan for example.

It now comes with the following features:

• 500 MB fast disk space
• 5 GB monthly transfer
• Host up to 4 sites on the one account
• 2 MySQL databases
• 200 pop3 accounts
• PHP 4 & Perl 5
• Free web stats (Webalizer / Awstats)
• Free site builder
• Irish based servers

All new hosting accounts are on Dell Xeon servers on our Inex peered network.

I'll be giving a talk on Open Source software in business at the ICT Expo next Friday, 5th May, 2006 in the RDS.

The talk is part of a series being organised by Open Ireland in collaboration with ILUG that will run over the course of the two day event.

The talk is officially entitled:
Linux and some of its friends in the enterprise

Linux and its Gnu/other friends in the enterprise, introducing several ways that this flexible system can be exploited within the enterprise. Here there will be a talk on the use of databases, email, appropriate content on the network be that servers or on the desktop. This space is so broad but we have managed to extract from the field just a few gems.

So you can expect to hear about a very wide range of topics crammed into a very short period of time

At Blacknight we use a combination of both Open Source solutions and proprietary ones to run not only our core systems but many aspects of our business interaction with our clients. As a business we do not have the luxury of making decisions based purely on philosophy. We have to make the right choice in order to deliver the best solution to our clients and partners at all times.