Thirdsphere issue impacting Horde? What have I done...

Steel_2

A few weeks ago I decided to ditch the website that I created through Thirdsphere in favour of having a website in a blog format.

I have the domain name through GoDaddy.

I wrote completely new text, got the blog up and going and then pointed the servers towards the blog etc. Everything going swimmingly so far. I am still paying Thirdsphere at the moment, having not wanted to cancel any accounts until I had made sure everything worked ok with the blog and didn't have to abandon ship if it proved too complicated or didn't work.

Then I tried to log in to my Horde email. Cannot do it. Sent test emails to the account only to have them bounce back. Permanent error.

Go to my Thirdsphere account and try to log in to the user panel, only to discover that I'm taken to a parked domain page full of ads by GoDaddy.

The email address is the only thing now that is not working that I need. I cannot get to my dashboard anymore on Thirdsphere but there were no real valuable files in there anyway.

Can someone please explain (in layman's terms) what I've done to banjax my email account so I know for the future.

Also how do I set up a new email account with the correct address that features my company's name?

davb

From what you say, it's not completely clear - but my guess is that once you pointed the DNS to a new server, then anything related to your Domain Name on the old server will break, as DNS will route it to the new server. So email etc will fail.
I assume that you will need to set up email accounts with your new hosting - do you have Cpanel access or similar?

Steel_2

davb wrote: »

From what you say, it's not completely clear - but my guess is that once you pointed the DNS to a new server, then anything related to your Domain Name on the old server will break, as DNS will route it to the new server. So email etc will fail.
I assume that you will need to set up email accounts with your new hosting - do you have Cpanel access or similar?

The blog is hosted with typepad and yes I have a dashboard, but there are no facilities with a blog to set up emails.

The webmail facility I did have was Horde provided through Thirdsphere, and the address was of the format: info@mycompanyname.co.uk.

How do I get that back? Do I have to go through Horde and set up an independent email address or is this email address now lost for good?

Sorry if I sound thick.

RobTang

Imagine the DNS Nameserver is an address book, with place names and addresses. and whenever wants to go somewhere (or send mail) they need to look in the address book.

Now imagine changing your address book for a completly different one, no one will be able to go back to anywhere in the old address book.

Im this case im assuming your using GoDaddys blog service, If so you have a few options.

A. use the email redirection service to send your mail to a free account (ie gmail / hotmail)
B. buy an email account plan with godaddy

There is a 3rd option messing around with DNS records and either keeping thirdsphere or using a free service but I really really really really do not recommend it if you dont understand DNS records.

davb

So if I understand correctly mycompanyname.co.uk used to be hosted on Thirdsphere, and is now on Typepad. Also, to make this happen you adjusted the DNS servers for mycompanyname.co.uk to point to Typepad.

If this is right, then any email sent to anything @ mycompanyname.co.uk will be sent to Typepad, and Thirdsphere will never see them.
To correct this you normally recreate the email address on Typepad, and then receive the emails on there. If they don't have the facility to do this, then things get more complicated - you would need to modify the MX portion of your DNS records to point to somewhere that can receive email - either Thirdsphere or somewhere else.
It may be easier to just set up email forwarding on your Domain setup to point to a Googlemail account.

Steel_2

RobTang wrote: »

Imagine the DNS Nameserver is an address book, with place names and addresses. and whenever wants to go somewhere (or send mail) they need to look in the address book.

Now imagine changing your address book for a completely different one, no one will be able to go back to anywhere in the old address book.

In this case I'm assuming your using GoDaddy's blog service, If so you have a few options.

A. use the email redirection service to send your mail to a free account (ie gmail / hotmail)
B. buy an email account plan with godaddy

There is a 3rd option messing around with DNS records and either keeping thirdsphere or using a free service but I really really really really do not recommend it if you dont understand DNS records.

Hi there, RobTang. Yep. Understand now why I'm banjaxed.

I'm not with GoDaddy's blog. I'm with Typepad.

Like the sound of option A, but don't have Godaddy'sblog service! Ahhhh.....

RobTang wrote: »

So if I understand correctly mycompanyname.co.uk used to be hosted on Thirdsphere, and is now on Typepad. Also, to make this happen you adjusted the DNS servers for mycompanyname.co.uk to point to Typepad. If this is right, then any email sent to anything @ mycompanyname.co.uk will be sent to Typepad, and Thirdsphere will never see them. To correct this you normally recreate the email address on Typepad, and then receive the emails on there.

Yep that's right.

RobTang wrote: »

If they don't have the facility to do this, then things get more complicated - you would need to modify the MX portion of your DNS records to point to somewhere that can receive email - either Thirdsphere or somewhere else. To correct this you normally recreate the email address on Typepad, and then receive the emails on there

Typepad does not have the facility to do this. And you just made my stomach go a bit queasy

I think it was the words 'MX portion of the DNS records'. It sounded like "Second Steel F**k up on the Horizon!":rotfl:

I'm sure that's me just being superstitious though....

RobTang wrote: »

It may be easier to just set up email forwarding on your Domain setup to point to a Googlemail account.

That sounds doable. How do I do that? Am I right in thinking that doesn't work going the other way and sending emails out - the outgoing won't have the company email address?

Is the email account still there, just the connection gone? Like two people on two different islands without a rowing boat to get to one another?

davb

Steel wrote: »

That sounds doable. How do I do that? Am I right in thinking that doesn't work going the other way and sending emails out - the outgoing won't have the company email address?

Is the email account still there, just the connection gone? Like two people on two different islands without a rowing boat to get to one another?

On the outgoing address you would just put the company email as the reply address in the email client setup.

You would set the forwarding up on the Godaddy domain management.

Nope - the email address doesn't exist at the moment, so mail will be either bounced or blackholed.

Steel_2

davb wrote: »

On the outgoing address you would just put the company email as the reply address in the email client setup.

You would set the forwarding up on the Godaddy domain management.

Nope - the email address doesn't exist at the moment, so mail will be either bounced or blackholed.

Right...ok thank you. Could I set up the forwarding to come into my personal BT Internet email account or does BT not like that? Going across to GoDaddy now to see the domain management page...

Just trawled through the Domain mapping Instructions on Typepad and it says the following in domain mapping configuration:

Enter the advanced DNS settings at your registrar

Now, go to your account at your registrar/host to configure the advanced DNS settings for your domain. The CNAME will always be your main TypePad URL (such as example.typepad.com).


The A and MX records will continue to point to your server, not at TypePad's servers. The reason for this is so that services like email (if you're using it) will continue to work even after your domain has been mapped to your TypePad site.

So if the email should still be working according to typepad, why isn't it. I did everything on that instruction page as laid out....

davb

You need to treble check the settings on Godaddy - splitting DNS records is not the best thing to be doing. And remember, every time you do a change it can take up to 48 hours to update the internet DNS servers

Steel_2

davb wrote: »

You need to treble check the settings on Godaddy - splitting DNS records is not the best thing to be doing. And remember, every time you do a change it can take up to 48 hours to update the internet DNS servers

I'm on there now and looked up the procedure for doing this and HOLY MOLY! I think I'll just quietly back out of the room.....:D

Went to my products page and discovered there is no email of any kind here associated with my account. Nothing. At the place where Godaddy's help page says there should be if you have it, 'it' is ominously blank.

Don't feel like I'm onto a winner with this.

I'm heading for bed now to consider my next move. Thanks for all your help guys - it's much appreciated.

S0litaire

if you want emails it's best to set up a "google Apps" email account.

it's free! and can link into your Domain name so you are not dependent on your host for emails.

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html

you then change the MX records to point to Googlemail servers and log in like gmail.

I've done a few times conecting GoDaddy to Gmail apps account, for myself and other people. it only takes about 30 mins to set up and google has a good guide to follow