While reviewing access logs this evening (mostly out of boredom), I noticed that Myspace.com had run up over 2800 hits to my server just this month. Due to limited data of my stats aggregator, I couldn’t tell exactly what was being linked, or from which profiles, but 2800 hits in a week is a lot, especially when the source is completely unknown.
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Greetings everyone! I’ve been holding back from announcing this, but I think the time has come. I’m really excited about it
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Question for the techie-types out there…

I’m planning to move to a co-located server in about September to replace my current simple-hosting account with iPowerWeb. They’ve been a great host, but recent complications have shown that I need more control over my server, so it’s time to move on.

Unfortunately, I’ve hit a very significant speed bump in my planning. I’ve discovered that mail server software, particularly the kind that includes webmail access, is obscenely, painfully, ridiculously expensive. Merak Mail Server, what I was originally looking at, would cost about $1500 PER YEAR, for example.

So, does anyone have any input? Here’s what I need:

-Needs to run on Windows*
-POP3, SMTP (authenticated), and webmail access
-At least 1000 users, preferably unlimited
-Multiple/unlimited domains
-Capable of some sort of spam filtering
-No more than $500, preferably free

Exchange 2003 is theoretically an option, but having heard what a soul-crushing experience it is to configure Exchange and keep it running, I’d rather stay away from that one.

Thanks!

* = There are a multitude of reasons I can’t/won’t run unix, not the least of which being that I have no freaking clue how to use it despite multiple attempts to learn. Regardless, keep in mind that “run unix” is not a valid option in this case.

This is the response I received from Yahoo in reference to my last post.
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For those who aren’t aware, I run a website at the domain Lupinia.us. There’s not much there at the moment, but I provide hosting for several different communities, including Furry Teens, I Read This, Feralys, and others. All of these sites send out automated messages when someone registers, as well as for things like private messages and the like. Basic forum stuff.

As of today, these messages sent to yahoo.com email addresses are bouncing, with a reference to this article in their FAQ. Why? Well…

A few weeks ago, I started getting a very large number of returned messages to my catch-all account from domains I’d never heard of, from all over the world. After reading the return errors, I saw that the email accounts referenced were utter gibberish (uzjrfnfo3338@lupinia.us, for example) which didn’t exist anywhere on my server. And, the messages being returned were viruses. Yay.

These were not coming from inside my home network, nor were they originating from my SMTP server. They were just using my domain for spoofed emails.

Well, apparently, this got all email with my domain as the From address blacklisted from Yahoo. Fucking wonderful. Fully 1/3 of the users at my sites use Yahoo email accounts, and new users with Yahoo addresses can’t activate their accounts until this is fixed.

If you’re reading this, and you’ve ever been to lupinia.us, or sent or received an email from it, please do me a favour and run a virus scan. A free scanner is available at http://www.kaspersky.com/ that will do the job.

Currently, my hosting account has 1000mb of disk space, and 40gb/month of data transfer. I set up an account for someone else recently, and new accounts with the same host have 10000mb disk space and 250gb/month bandwidth. So, I sent an email to the company:
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