New emailing rules go into effect at the end of this month. Don’t get caught with your pants down on this one or you might have a problem. The changes aren’t earth-shaking but you will need to know and comply with them if you email any kind of commercial message to a list of virtually any kind.

The Federal Trade Commission has now issued four new rules that amend the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. The amendments go into effect at the end of this month - June, 2008.

The amendments affect all senders of any commercial email with a list of any size from 2, on up.

Here are the rules:

#1 The receiver of the email cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her email address and opt-out preferences, and must be able to opt-out of the mailing list using a SINGLE ACTION.

This may be by replying to the email - or by clicking ONE link to go to a SINGLE web page.

#2 The use of the word “person” is defined in regard to whether the CAN-SPAM Act applies. “Person” is now defined to include non-companies. In other words, any and everyone can be liable for sending commercial email - breathing person, company, organization, etc.

#3 You may use a post office box or private mailbox (PMB) - rather than the address of an actual private building - as the physical address in your commercial mailings to satisfy the CAN-SPAM Act.

#4 For any mailing containing advertisements from 3rd party advertisers, either the party who the email is “from” must have an advertisement in the email - or - all of the advertisers with ads in the mailing are responsible for opt-out requests.

This is known as the “Designated Sender” rule. When the party listed in the “From” field has an ad in the mailing, that party becomes responsible for processing opt-out requests.

Source: http://www.i-cop.org/journal/06-23-08.htm
Author: jl scott
You can read jl scott’s take on this in the June 23rd i-Cop Newsletter.

In my opinion, these new amendments cover the places where people most often run afoul of the CAN-SPAM Act. The most common error is not having a “single option opt-out.” And since the term “persons” now includes non-companies (individuals, in other words), it is easy to be in non-compliance even if you are sending emails to a group from your AOL or Gmail accounts or even from your desktop if your email contains any type of commercial solicitation.

Please be aware that complying with the Act and the new amendments is YOUR responsibility as a mailer. If you’d like to read the entire 109 memorandum on these amendments, you can get it here.

What if you could invest five minutes and possibly save yourself $100? And what if that same five minutes could provide you with peace of mind that all of your web server files were backed up?

Your OrangeCat server has a file backup system built into the Control Panel. It’s easy to use and could save you from having to rebuild your website from scratch in the event of a data loss. Complete data losses are very rare. In fact, we have never had one in the 12 years we’ve been in the hosting business. But as I am sure all of you are aware, hard drive crashes can happen. And you never see them coming.

We have put together the following tutorial to help you use the Orange Cat Control Panel to backup your web server files. There is also a video at the end of the article - click here to watch the video now.

Control Panel File Backup Tutorial

Here are the steps to backup your server files. The whole process should only take five minutes or so - it depends on how many files on your server need to be backed up. Point your web browser to your Control Panel. Your Control Panel is located at https:your domain.com (or .net, .org., etc.). Use of the “https” prefix will create a secure connection to your server. If you get a warning that the certificate doesn’t match the domain name, click “OK.” It’s your own domain and there is no danger of being redirected to another website.

You should see the following screen. Type in your username and password and login.

Scroll down to the 3rd row and click on the “Backups” link. You can also click “Utilities and Files” in the navigation on the left side of the page and then click “Backups.”

In the next screen, you will see a list of any backups you have already made - if this is your first backup, the list will be empty. You can delete any old backups by checking the box to the left of the old backups and clicking the “Delete” button. To make a new backup, click one of the “Create Backup” button at the right side of the backup list.

In the next screen, enter a name for your backup file. I usually use a date based naming system so I can track which are the newest backup files. In my naming system a file named “080509″ would have been created on May 9, 2008. This numbering system ensures that it is easy to sort the files by date. Use any file naming system you are comfortable with. Once you have entered a file name, click “Save.” The system will them create a backup file of your files. When it is finished, the new file will be added to the backup files list.

If you ever need to restore your files from a backup, just click the “Restore” link on the right side of the line that contains your latest backup. Backup files can be large. It may benefit you to delete older files from your server from time to time. You can delete backup files by clicking the “Delete” link next to the restore link. You can delete multiple backup files by clicking the boxes at the left and then clicking on of the “Delete” buttons on the left.

You can make your files even safer by downloading the backup file to your local hard drive on your computer. To do this, click on the “All Files” link under “Utilities and Files” in the left navigation on the Control Panel home page.

On the next screen, click on the link for the “Backups” directory.

On the next screen, locate the file you would like to download, right-click (PC) or control-click (Mac) and save the file to your computer. That’s all there is to it. Now, you have not only backed up your web server files. You have increased your security by saving the file in a second location.

We have also created a video that illustrates the steps to backup your server and download the files. You can watch to 400 pixel video here or watch a larger (640 pixel) version at OrangeCat.net.

If your email program is having difficulty picking up your email from a pop server, it may be because of poor mail account maintenance. Many people let email pile up on the server until a file corrupts and email service grinds to a halt. Good account maintenance practices can help prevent this.

So, if you go to pick up your email one day and get this error:

This error is often caused by an overstuffed INBOX or a corrupted file in the INBOX. Once you see this error, it is too late. You will need to use your WebMail client to pickup whatever messages you can, then all of the messages will have to be deleted.

…you will have take action as described in the caption. If that doesn’t work, your INBOX may have to be deleted. We can save it as a text file and you can go through it message by message, but that is an arduous task with a multi-megabyte file.

To give you an idea, most files that jam up a mail server are in the 50MB range. I just downloaded an INBOX file of 12.5 MB. Opened in a test editor, that comes to over 300,000 lines of messages. How would you like to deal with that?

OK, so let’s take some steps to avoid the problem before it happens.

By setting your email client (Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.) to delete read, deleted and junk mail from the server in a reasonable amount of time, you can avoid the problems associated with an overstuffed mailbox.

I’ve put together a series of videos to walk you through the process of setting your Preferences in various email programs to automatically delete old emails. So have a look at the video for your email client and then check to see if you have your settings the way you want them… BEFORE you have the problem of your email not working correctly.