More wildcarding or suffixing options for email

[jshaver]

I have a personal domain hosted by Sonic that Sonic hosts email for as well.

It would be great to have more options then just "+" to route to the same email address (i.e.: j+test@test.com goes to the mailbox j@test.com). The problem I run into is that many sites have decided that "+" is not valid in email addresses. In an ideal case, I would be able to define email delivery rules with wild cards (e.g. j*@test.com goes to a particular inbox), but I realize that is likely not practical with the mail cluster. Is there a way to allow me to turn on some other suffix indicators (maybe "_", "-" or ".")?. These would behave just like a "+" from a routing perspective.

A third approach that would achieve what I want would be the ability to define a catch-all delivery mailbox for my domain for any email addresses that don't match a known email, but that does not seem to be currently supported ether.

Obviously, these options only really make sense for people with custom domains rather then @sonic.net emails.

Is any of this possible currently (I looked but didn't notice anything), Is this something you could, and would be up for adding?

Thanks.

[miken]

It would be great to have more options then just "+" to route to the same email address (i.e.: j+test@test.com goes to the mailbox j@test.com). The problem I run into is that many sites have decided that "+" is not valid in email addresses. In an ideal case, I would be able to define email delivery rules with wild cards (e.g. j*@test.com goes to a particular inbox), but I realize that is likely not practical with the mail cluster. Is there a way to allow me to turn on some other suffix indicators (maybe "_", "-" or ".")?. These would behave just like a "+" from a routing perspective.

I don't know any way to get this working. Most websites I have used accept the '+' and for websites that don't, I use a separate junk mailbox.

A third approach that would achieve what I want would be the ability to define a catch-all delivery mailbox for my domain for any email addresses that don't match a known email, but that does not seem to be currently supported ether.

In your Domain Aliases page, put in an alias of *@yourdomain.com.

[jshaver]

Mike, That last one worked great. Thanks. I thought I had tried to set that up before, but guess I missed something.

[virtualmike]

In your Domain Aliases page, put in an alias of *@yourdomain.com.

How is this processed if I have other addresses defined? Does the *@ only catch email sent to addresses that aren't already defined? Or does it override them, basically meaning all mail sent to yourdomain.com will get directed to the "points to" mailbox?

Can I define a subdomain (e.g., foo.yourdomain.com), and use this trick, so that mail sent to (anything)@foo.yourdomain.com funnels to a single mailbox?

PS. In Web Sites / Domain Names -> Edit DNS -> Modify Host Records, the "Export Zone to Text File" function seems to have changed from a link to plain text. Is that tool no longer available?

[dherr]

I am using this service, so can answer some of this...

The global wild card only applies to things not otherwise defined.

You can only set rules for the left side, thus only before the @.

The most important rule ability to know about is:

whatever@domain.com points to devnull@sonic.net

I have lots of the devnull rules.

The listing of rules is shown in alphabetical order with the * rule sitting at the top of the list. That *is* sort of confusing but it is easy to test that the rules are working correctly so I do know for sure that the wildcard is processed last.

I just checked and found that I currently have 51 rules. I am not aware of a limit.

[miken]

How is this processed if I have other addresses defined? Does the *@ only catch email sent to addresses that aren't already defined? Or does it override them, basically meaning all mail sent to yourdomain.com will get directed to the "points to" mailbox?

The *@yourdomain.com will only forward addresses that are not defined.

Can I define a subdomain (e.g., foo.yourdomain.com), and use this trick, so that mail sent to (anything)@foo.yourdomain.com funnels to a single mailbox?

The tool doesn't give an option to modify the domain part of the address. The tool is essentially: (?) @yourdomain.com points to (?)

PS. In Web Sites / Domain Names -> Edit DNS -> Modify Host Records, the "Export Zone to Text File" function seems to have changed from a link to plain text. Is that tool no longer available?

If you look to the right, you should see a button for 'Export Zone' that will open the text in a new tab.

[virtualmike]

Thanks to both dherr and miken.

Good to know the wildcard is used only after defined addresses are processed.

I'm guessing that I can't do anything with email for a subdomain, except set up MX records to direct email to another server? I'm already doing that to send a subdomain's email to Google Apps. I was hoping that I could manage that within my Sonic mailboxes.

Thanks also for the pointer to the button. I had to scroll my window to the right to see it.

[miken]

I'm guessing that I can't do anything with email for a subdomain, except set up MX records to direct email to another server? I'm already doing that to send a subdomain's email to Google Apps. I was hoping that I could manage that within my Sonic mailboxes.

I believe we can do this for you - but the MX for the subdomain would be it's own MX handling service ($1.95 a month).

[virtualmike]

That sounds like a deal. I'll get through the next couple of weeks, and then I'll sign up. I assume I can just contact the Sales office to add the subdomain with DNS service?

[miken]

Technical support would be the better call since this is an addition to hosting. You could also send me a PM on here and I can help you get everything set up!