Is Your Domain’s E-mail Setup Properly?

If you’re an affiliate marketer or just have a web site, you probably have a Linux based web host that uses cPanel. You probably even host multiple domains from the same cPanel account. However when you setup those domains, did you setup your domain’s e-mail properly? Chances are you haven’t. Let me explain…

When you setup your shared hosting account, you specified an initial domain and then your web host configured your account for it when you signed up. Then you probably went into your cPanel and setup an e-mail address or two. If you added additional web site domains to your account inside of cPanel, you might have added additional e-mail addresses under that domain too. But did you setup all the addresses that you should have?

It’s not always a well-known fact, but there are actually requirements that say certain types of e-mail addresses should always exist for every domain.

RFC… Rules and Standards

Before I list the most important e-mail addresses that should exist, let me explain what I mean by "requirements." The Internet is governed by what’s known as RFC’s. This gets really geeky and technical, but basically it’s a common set of rules and standards that help everyone on the Internet stay on the same page. You can imagine how important this can be when you consider how many companies, operating systems, browsers, platforms, etc. all co-exist online. If they all did their own thing–without any rules or any standards–it would be pretty tough to communicate across platforms.

RFC’s are not absolute rules, and companies and web sites do break them from time to time. However it is clear that the more closely you can adhere to the RFC’s, the more likely you are to be accepted by everyone else.

Example: there’s an obscure RFC relating to e-mail that 99% of the e-mail software out there adheres to. However of the 1% that don’t adhere to it, 99% of that is spam. So the company I work for rejects all e-mail that doesn’t adhere to that RFC… period the end. If a legitimate person is sending a legitimate e-mail but doesn’t adhere to the RFC, it won’t get through our system. Sorry…

Now it’s possible that your domain’s e-mail might very well be in violation of RFC’s, but you might not have noticed any problems. So why do we care? Because as I showed in the example above, sometimes if you don’t follow the RFC, you’ll eventually find yourself having trouble communicating with your site’s visitors. What if a visitor’s ISP decided that any domain violating common RFC’s got their messages blocked by default? Or a domain violating RFC’s would have their web site automatically considered a phishing site? It isn’t impossible that this could happen, and it could already be happening to a degree today.

The most common e-mail related RFC that affiliate marketers (and regular web site owners) break is RFC2142. This RFC states that certain mailboxes should always be setup for every top-level domain.

Note: if you add sub-domains (such as widget.domain.com), you only need to setup these addresses for the main domain (domain.com).

Required E-mail Addresses

Here are the addresses you should always setup to ensure compliance:

postmaster@domain.com
This is a main e-mail address for a domain that sends or receives e-mail messages. If someone needs to contact the owner of a domain, they’ll most likely send to this account by default.

webmaster@domain.com
This is the e-mail address people use by default when they want to contact the person in charge of a domain’s web site.

abuse@domain.com
If someone has a complaint about a domain, this is the account they’ll use.

Suggested E-mail Addresses

It’s also a good idea to setup these standard accounts that your visitors often expect will exist:

support@domain.com
Visitors to your site will often use this address if they are having trouble or have questions.

info@domain.com
Visitors will also send to this address if they have questions about your site, services, or products.

Conclusion

By having the required e-mail addresses setup at a minimum, you will ensure that your domain won’t be rejected by mail servers or ISP’s because of RFC non-compliance.

On my web hosting accounts, I setup a master e-mail account on the first domain that is setup. Then for that first domain and all add-on domains, I create e-mail forwarders inside of cPanel and point them back to that master e-mail account. That way I only have one account to check to view any messages sent to those accounts, yet as far as anyone on the outside knows, they all exist.

Once you have these setup, you can be assured that you’ll never miss any important communication from your visitors, and you won’t be violating the RFC for your domain’s e-mail accounts.

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