Why Can't I Forward Email from My Web Site to My AOL Email Address?

These days, it's unlikely you can find a web host service that will allow forwarders from your domain to an AOL email address. When I first discovered this problem, I checked with several web host services and they all said the same thing ... here is the problem:

You setup a forwarder from your domain to your AOL account (you@yourdomain.com -> you@aol.com). Your customers happily send email to you@yourdomain.com and everything gets forwarded to you@aol.com. Life is good!

Then one day you receive spam at you@yourdomain.com which, of course, is forwarded to you@aol.com. You open your you@aol.com email box, see some spam, then click "This is spam" - but you don't realize that this piece of spam was forwarded to you from your you@yourdomain.com account. All you know is, the spam is gone, and life is good!

However, here is the problem: AOL's spam filter (wrongly) does not mark the originator of the message as the spammer - instead, it marks the last place the e-mail came from as the spammer, and the last place the e-mail came from is YOUR server (yourdomain.com). So now, without realizing it, you have marked yourdomain.com as a source of spam with AOL. But the story doesn't end there ... AOL does not simply block yourdomain.com - they block the entire server that yourdomain.com is on, which means all the other web sites that share your server (maybe hundreds of others) are now blocked by AOL, too. Then all those web site owners who share your server begin to scream at your web host service's tech support guys because they are being blocked by AOL, and your web host service has to beg, plead and cajole at AOL to unblock the server (this is no simple task because AOL is notoriously difficult to deal with).

The result is that web host services have basically just given up and made a rule: "We are not going to allow anyone to forward email to an AOL address anymore."

There are several options you have to solve the problem:

1. Don't use you@yourdomain.com at all - just use your AOL e-mail address for all correspondence.
2. Use web mail to read you@yourdomain.com, and use your AOL browser to read you@aol.com.
3. The most flexible solution of all, but more technically challenging: Setup Outlook (or whatever e-mail software you use) so it reads e-mail from both you@yourdomain.com and you@aol.com.

One e-mail software reading two email boxes - take my word for it - it makes life soooo much easier. But I know that setting up e-mail software can be challenging for some (and I don't think Outlook Express will do this - it has to be the full version of Outlook). So if you have a computer whiz friend or family member who can help set this up for you one time, it would really be worth buying him or her a dinner and a movie to do so.

Of course, there's always a 4th option to solve the problem - maybe the best solution of all:

4. Leave AOL and go with a less problematic ISP .
;-)

How Do I Change Web Host Services?

This is yet another question I get routinely - if a client wishes to find a new web host service for any reason (price, number of services offered, quality of support, etc.), the question becomes "how difficult is it to move my site to a new web host service?" The short answer is: not difficult at all.

Generally, you can move to a new web host service with no interruption to your web site - no one will even know that you've moved. Below is a description of the process most people will be able to follow. However, I would be remiss if I didn't give a caveat: "your mileage may vary," so please contact me before you move your site, just to make sure there aren't any "gotchas" that might pop up and bite you.

The steps are as follows:

1. You provide me with your domain registration information - that is, the company name/web site where you registered your domain, along with the login id/password for your domain registration account (if I don't have this information already). There's no need to give me access to your domain registration account if you prefer to change the DNS information by yourself.
2. You open an account with a new web host service and send me the new account login/password.
3. I upload your web pages into the new web host account and setup email boxes for you (if necessary). I will provide you with the new email server info.
4. I login to your domain registration account and re-direct your domain from from your old web host service to your new web host service (that is, if you don't do this step yourself).
5. After about 24 hours, the re-direct will take effect. Once I verify that your domain name is pointing to your new web host service, I will call you and let you know. At this point, the world will be viewing your web pages at the new web host service and your email will be flowing into your new email box, so you can call your old web host service and close the account and change your email settings on your computer to start reading email from your new email box.

The one thing you must be prepared to do on your own is change your email settings. I will give you all the new information (new email server name, email box login id and password), but you must know how to change these settings in your email software yourself or have someone on hand to help you. I can try to guide you, but it is very difficult to diagnose email problems over the phone, so this method should not be depended on to resolve your email issues.