Email problem at Toledo Industrial Sewing Machines has been fixed

[Wizcrafts]

If you've recently sent email inquiries to Bob Kovar, or used the contact form on his Toledo Industrial Sewing Machines website and got no replies, or, you called to follow up and they claim to have not received your email, it is because he probably didn't receive your email due to a website mail server problem.

Bob Kovar asked me to look into an email reception problem he has been experiencing since September 23, 2016. Between that day and October 20, he was not receiving any new email sent to his domain's email account, including messages sent via the contact form. He would check for new messages but found nothing new listed after 9/23/16.

I learned that the problem was caused by a misconfiguration of the website's email MX record, which was first setup in 2011 and worked fine. Sometime during the last year or so the email server prefix was changed by the hosting provider. The unchanged mail server record eventually stopped being recognized on Sept 23. It was corrected on October 20 (after over 30 minutes on the phone with tech support). Emails to tolindsewmach.com are now showing up in the inbox as expected.

So, if you have sent emails, or submitted questions via the Toledo Industrial Sewing Machines contact form, and received no answer, please resubmit your inquiries.

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If you happen to be a website owner, or a webmaster, it may be worth your time to poke around your cpanel - or equivalent - in the email configuration section, to make sure that the mail server is set to the current values used by your web host. Prefixes and ports get changed with server upgrades, as I just found out. A wrong mail server entry may lead to missed or bounced messages if the mail server doesn't forward messages sent to the old server to the new one.

Example:

Old incoming mail server was: your-domain.com

Server upgrade changes the MX Record to: mail.your-domain.com or pop.your-domain.com

These are regarded as different mail servers. Mail will eventually bounce or go to the bitbucket until you correct the entry. Ports may have also been changed during an upgrade, so verify IMAP, POP3 and SMTP ports if you use your domain to send and receive email.

Another thing I learned is that saved email messages are regarded as "Files" and count toward any max files limit imposed by the web host for your hosting account! Further, if there is such a numeric limit set on how many files can be stored and your domain's email Inbox (including junk and custom folders) reaches that number, the mail box will be listed as 100% full and will stop accepting any new messages until some old ones are deleted, or the limit is increased by the host's tech support. This is the same thing that happens to our voicemail boxes.

Now you know what else I do when I'm not sewing things, or playing steel guitar in Country bands.

[mikesc]

Hosters who impose max files limits !! or who change any server ( cpanel or other ) configs without giving you a heads up well beforehand..
I'd be gone to another host in heartbeat!

[Wizcrafts]

4 hours ago, mikesc said:

Hosters who impose max files limits !! or who change any server ( cpanel or other ) configs without giving you a heads up well beforehand..
I'd be gone to another host in heartbeat!

Some folks take the lowest level hosting accounts when they start out, many of which do impose file count and size limits. These accounts are much cheaper than unlimited/unmetered accounts. I know several people that chose this path at first, then had to upgrade to a more expensive plan as the website grew in content and popularity.

I have seen changes in my mail server designations from three different web hosts. This often accompanies upgrades to the Apache or Nginx software. I've personally had mail servers with no prefix, "pop." and "smtp." and "mail." prefixes. Then there's more changes when you sign up for Cloudflare or another CDN.

[mikesc]

Ah yes, Cloudflare, a world of potential duplicate URL ( in the eyes of search engines ) pain and unhelpful tech contacts*.
I've been using mail.example.com ( and also my own dedicated email domain, with everything unlimited** ) for years now, but I do remember the early days of using hosters who set hard small limits ( both space and BW, and especially RAM ) and every 5 ( and later 10 or 50 or 100 or 250megs space or BW or RAM ) over costs an arm and a leg or your firstborn as a hostage..

*Been there, done that, it got old fast, so, I said kthxbye.
**Been unlimited "everything" and with hosters who own their own DCs and are a 30 second walk ( 24/7) from the racks for a long while now..and where it is fully qualified , experienced tech who answers the phone, not a sales droid ..Yep, costs more, but not prohibitively so, and the OKLM factor is wonderful. :)

[Gregg From Keystone Sewing]

I'm using Web.com for hosting and email, and yes, they also have a maxiumum limit of 500MB, that sounds like a lot, but it's really not.  Then, if I push it up to one gig, it becomes more difficult to delete and clean up due to...the file size.  I've even deleted the account and recreated it, just to get rid of the emails.  

 

[mikesc]

I'm using Web.com for hosting and email

You have my sympathies..
Any company that wants you to use flash ( source of 90% of all malware openings and exploits ) so that they can tell you how to set up spam filtering on their servers needs to be taken out behind the woodshed, with extreme prejudice, and then nuked from orbit.

There are other reasons not to host there, but I turned 60 this year and even if I get another 20 years or so, my time is now too precious to enumerate them.

What you can do on your own machine that you are sat in front of..no matter who you host with..it will help, and after a little initial time invested, will save you lots more time.

Set your email client to download leaving no emails on the server, then set it's filters to send all spam to the trash folder on it ( don't set it to "auto delete spam just yet, you want to see how accurate it is, don't want it to delete an order )..you might have to "train" it to recognise some spam , but most can tell that Olga isn't really going to send you pictures, and that you are quite happy with "your size" etc..set it to not "auto open" ( nor auto preview emails ) email attachments, not to load html, to auto block images ( you can look at them later if you want when you know who they are from ), never to autoplay embeded flash , and never to auto execute any file types whatsoever ..Couple of hours at the most doing a "one time" training of an email program to self sort spam and you'll be good to go..and your server's email box will not get near to overflowing..

or..move to a host who doesn't impose limits, and who has spam filters ( that you don't need to use a flash player to watch their "how to" ) on the server that will autofilter most gregarious spam out before you ever see it..spam assassin is one such..if you have Cpanel,( nope , you don't at web.com, they have a "rolled their own unintuitive kludge of an admin panel, like godaddy used to ) it is a simple matter of switching spam assassin( or equivalent ) on ( you can tweak it some more if you wish , as you can with most if not all serverside email filters)..

BTW..your own machine should always be set up to never autoplay anything, never auto execute anything , never auto run USB keys, always show hidden files and folders, always show all extensions..you should make weekly or ( better still daily ) back ups of your business machine ( which you shouldn't use for anything else, no games, no surfing, no whatever that isn't business, and keep those back ups on at least two separate HDs .."off site" one can be plugged in and you unplug it and take it home with you after it has backed up that days image, the other you keep elsewhere, not at home.That way you will not have to begin all again in the event of fire or flood etc..You don't store on the "cloud"..the cloud is just another word for someone else's server that you don't have any control over how secure it is..

the only people who do not make back ups ( and regularly test them ) are those who have not yet had HD or computer failure..

that applies even if you use a laptop, back it up daily twice, separately on two different HDs, off site, not on "the cloud"..

Like Wiz, one of my other businesses is ( or to be strictly honest "was" ) computer security and data recovery, now, with win10 ( the privacy nightmare that you cannot stop from talking to Redmond, even if you switch off all the "privacy options"* )..I'm closing that side business, advising everyone to install linux ( best choice ) if they want it to look and feel like win XP crossed with 7 , but better, then install linux mint, or Debian, or Ubuntu, or go BSD, or go Apple.

*In order to be compliant with EU data protection laws, no business here in the EU ( and that includes doctors, lawyers, and all self employed people, plus large and small businesses ) can use win10, because the entire contents of the hard drive are open to search by MS from Redmond from a distance, no way to switch that off, they can read and upload your customers details, and any other files on your machine if it is running win10, without you knowing they are doing it, and without you being able to switch that off in any way, even on the so called "enterprise" version..and how can you secure any machine that can have it's entire config auto updated ( and possibly reversed or totally borked as has been the case with millions of machines running win10 ) at any time by Microsoft..Simple, one cannot, so I'm not going to go through the pretence of trying, billing a customer, and then potentially facing a lawsuit because of some thing Microsoft did to the machine that reverses or changes what I may have set. Sysadmins and computer security service nightmare, so, if is win10, no thanks, try contacting another business..many thousands of sysadmins and computer security businesses agree..win10..not going to touch it.

Edited October 21, 2016 by mikesc

[Wizcrafts]

I started this topic to alert members of LWN that the email problems with the Toledo Industrial Sewing Machines website have been acknowledged and fixed. I then posted a little piece of potentially helpful advice to self-managed website owners using shared hosting accounts to log into their control panels and verify that the email server settings they are using are still valid.

Then my friendly little post got hijacked into a rant against Microsoft and other matters. So, I am using the powers vested in me to close this topic, as it is only going to denigrate further if left open.