A friend called in this afternoon, just to shoot the breeze. She happened to mention that she had a mailbox full of span that she wanted to delete. She bemoaned the fact that she would have to delete them 15 at a time, because she used squirrelmail.
I suggested that she click on "options" and have squirrelmail display 150 to a page instead of 15. That way, she'd be able to delete unwanted mail almost 10 times as fast.
Wow, she said, she'd never thought of that. This was a mailbox she never used, and so she hadn't checked on it in over a month.
Is there anything in the mailbox that is worth saving? There were a few really old ones. I suggested that she go to the last page, which would have those saved emails, and she could forward them to another mailbox of hers. Once the mailbox was 100% spam, she didn't even have to go through the page-at-a-time hassles - she could simply delete the mailbox. Then she could re-create it 2 minutes later, and it'd be a fresh, clean, mailbox. You can't do that with a primary mailbox, but for a secondary mailbox, it works great.
The "catchall" address is useful if your address is cookie@monster.org, and people write to you as cooky@monster.org. You can also set up a forward, so that cooky mail ends up going to cookie. If they write to you as oreo@ or fignewtons@, then you need to use the "catchall" to get those mails posted to the right mailbox.
On the other hand, catchall is really a convenience for spammers. On most of my domains, I've got it set so that bad email addresses go to :blackhole:. The new version of cpanel, though, they hide :blackhole: under "advanced options", and then they recommend against it.
If a spammer sends a spam to Bill, giving a return address of Joe, he ends up clogging the internet with *two* pieces of mail - because the one to Bill bounces, and a bounce notice (including the original email) gets sent to Joe. It seems a lot smarter to simply trash the mail instead of annoying Joe.
So while cPanel has one set of recommendations, we're recommending the exact opposite. Unless you really *want* that catchall working, we recommend you set it :blackhole:.
Accessing mail
I still can't access squirrelmail or Horde. Since we lost our e-mail accounts and had to set up new ones, nothing works. I used this e-mail address as my main family address. Since I lost the old account, I lost all of their e-mail addresses. Starting over doesn't seem to be working for me.
I log into the cpanel. Click on "read mail". Then I pick the Squirrelmail link and get a page that says "No input file selected." Then I back out and click on Horde. I get a log in page. I click on log in and then get the same blank gray page that just says no input file selected.
What do I need to do to use the mail system again?
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