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Creating Email Forwarders |
Last modified: Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Within the context of the CPanel site management interface, email handlers can be created as either forwarders or email accounts. This article relates specifically to forwarders.
A forwarder is simply a virtual email address which accepts email sent to your server, and which routes that email directly to a another target email address.
Two types of forwarders can be created...
- Onsite forwarders: This is where email is forwarded to an onsite email account already configured on your hosted domain. This type of forwarder is generally used to provide an alias address to an existing email account.
- Offsite forwarders: This is where email is forwarded to a target email account not related to your own domain. This is probably the most common use for a forwarder, and provides for the routing of email to an offsite address, such as that provided by your ISP.
General Notes
At the simplest level, forwarders and email accounts should be unique. You should not use the same name for a forwarder as for an email account unless you actually have a reason for doing so, and unless you fully understand the consequences of such a configuration.
It is important to remember that when a forwarder and email account exist for the same name, email sent to that address will be handled by both the forwarder and the email account. A copy will be sent to the configured target email address by virtue of the forwarder, and a copy will be stored on your server by virtue of the configured email account.
If you do create duplicate forwarders and email accounts, you must be sure to regularly empty the associated email account, or email items will remain on your server wasting your disk space. Once the space allocated to your email account is exhausted, individuals sending you email will receive a "mailbox full" bounce message even though the forwarder will still function.
Although the duplication of forwarders and accounts can be an extremely useful tool when you need to send copies of email received by one user to another onsite or offsite user, you definitely need to carefully think about the email routing and storage which will result from your intended configuration.
The important characterstics of forwarders are...
- Forwarders accept incoming email and route it to a target onsite or offsite email address.
- Unlike email accounts, forwarders do not store incoming email.
- If a forwarder and email account exist with the same name, the forwarder will route incoming email to the configured target email address, and the email account will store a copy on your server.
- Multiple forwarders with the same name can be created on the one domain to facilitate the multiple routing of a single email address.
To create a forwarder within CPanel...
Connect to the Internet.
Open your preferred web browser.
Using your administrative user name and password as provided in your original "Welcome Aboard" email, login to your hosting control panel at...
Find the "Mail" icon group.
Click on the "Forwarders" icon.
Click on the "Add Forwarder" button.
Enter "" (without the quotes) in the "Address to Forward:" box.
Select "" from the dropdown selection box.
Select the "Forward to email address:" radio button and enter "" in the associated data box.
Click on the "Add Forwarder" button.
At this point, any email received by your server for "@" will be forwarded to your "" email address.
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