mail server

[brocher]

I was wondering if it would be possible to have me own mail server set up on my pc that i could access from the internet and what software would i need to do this. The address would be something like this:

joe@joebloggs.com

 

[Mainframeguy]

yes - is the quick answer...

Software? Very much down to personal preference, I'd recommend the one built into Mozilla, or maybe the Firefox thunderbird, plenty of people happy enough with Outlook Express if you want to go with the M$ herd though.

Before all that though you'll need to register your domain (joebloggs.com in your example) and, by the sounds of it, you are going to need to read up on POP3 and SMTP which are the two components to that....

If you want an easier introduction to the mechanics of it that you can do right away sign up for a web based email account like Yahoo! and they have the option to configure it for POP3.

Ask more specific questions and you'll get more specific answers as you go along, but, like I said, the answer is yes!

 

[fitz]

yes - is the quick answer...

Software? Very much down to personal preference, I'd recommend the one built into Mozilla, or maybe the Firefox thunderbird, plenty of people happy enough with Outlook Express if you want to go with the M$ herd though.

Before all that though you'll need to register your domain (joebloggs.com in your example) and, by the sounds of it, you are going to need to read up on POP3 and SMTP which are the two components to that....

If you want an easier introduction to the mechanics of it that you can do right away sign up for a web based email account like Yahoo! and they have the option to configure it for POP3.

Ask more specific questions and you'll get more specific answers as you go along, but, like I said, the answer is yes!

As far as I know, Mozilla, Thunderbird, and OE are mail readers and cannot act as mail servers.

There are a couple things you will need to know about if you want to know about running your own mailserver (at least, if you want to run it right).

1) Learn DNS - in particular, you should know at the very least how DNS works and what MX records are..

2) Learn SMTP - at least, find some SMTP server software. SMTP is the protocol that sends email from server to server around the world over the Internet. Things like Sendmail, IIS/SMTP, Exchange, etc..

3) You will need some software that can host your mailboxes. Of course, you could always configure your SMTP server locally to deliver to another mailbox like gmail and/or hotmail, or other 3rd party. For example, you could have an email address for "joe@joebloggs.com" be sent to your local SMTP server and then have your local SMTP server forward the email to a 3rd party email account.