As you all know, I recently moved the Blackapache site to a new server. We had some teething issues, as ya do when making the move, but all is now well. One of the things that I hadn’t got round to fixing was my SpamAssassin installation.
I’d already gone through the fun times of setting up email (POP3s, IMAP4s) with Qmail, which after a bit of time (and a learning curve) was working fine (with SSL, hence the ’s’ at the end of the names 
) and all my users were able to send/receive without an issues. While trying to set it up, I was having issues getting both SpamAssassin and Clam AntiVirus working. Both of the daemons would run fine, but I just couldn’t quite get the configuration right.
Thankfully, AV isn’t so much of an issue as my users all have AV protection on their local machines. Spam, while annoying, can be lived with until I find the time to get the filters working properly - so I basically left these two things alone for a while until I found the time after doing all the other urgent bits.
I finally got round to making an attempt to fix the problem a weekend or so ago, but still couldn’t get it to behave. I read forum upon forum, blog upon blog, and readme upon readme, but for some reason the bloody thing just refused to work. I got frustrated, reverted all the settings back to how they were before, and gave up for the day.
During the last week I was prepping myself for another attempt at getting it work, when I heard about Google Apps. I was a bit surprised when I first read all the details, because it was the first time I’d heard about it! Being a geek I thought I was pretty good with keeping up to speed, and I was a bit narked with myself for letting this golden nugget slip through the net.
I’m not going to go through the ins and outs of what Google Apps is all about as there are already a stack of pages out there already talking about it. What I will say is that I should have made the move earlier!
Not only do I no longer have to worry about keeping my entire email configuration (Qmail with vpopmail and courier imap, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, Horde/SquirrelMail) up to date and patched, I don’t even have to have it running. The “precious” resources on the server can now be utilised for other things such as an SVN install. Each email user has 2GB of space, webmail comes for free and has the fantastic facilities that come with Gmail. Users can easily configure their own accounts, handle their own password changes, etc. My administration of email has basically dropped to just above zero. The only thing I need to do as an administrator is get the account set up initially, the rest is up to the user.
You can probably tell that I’m quite excited about this. It’s great that I don’t have to worry about this any more, and I can put more time and effort into other things. Of course, my excitement only extends as far as email for now, but I’m pretty sure that over time I’ll also come to love the added features of Google Calendar and Google Calendar.
This service does come with its limitations, and with the possibility of Google Datamining, but for a home server which I use for a blog, having this facility to lighten the admin load is just fantastic.
I highly recommend considering this as an option if you’re looking to sort out an email host! Give it a trial, at least for a while, and you may find you’re as happy as I am. If you don’t like it, you can always revert back to your old setup.
May 6, 2007
You seem very excited about Google Calendar
The calendar is OK, and the ability to be able to share your calendar makes it easy to keep track of the other half, but the reminders suck. The web ones rarely work, and I got SMS’d at 4am the other day to remind me of an all day event…
May 6, 2007
Well, yes partly excited
I tend not to use reminders, as I find them annoying in general. But having the calendar accessible from anywhere and viewable by others at any time is pretty sweet too!
4am SMS!? Shit I’d be pissed off
Did it wake you up?
May 8, 2007
While we’re getting excited about Google Calendar, send your gmail account an email like “Let’s meet at the Queen St Mall, Brisbane on Tuesday at 12:30.” Open the received email and “Create Event” in the drop-down on the toolbar. It parses the address and time/date and will add to your calendar, complete with a “map” link.
May 8, 2007
Now that is cool
May 8, 2007
Im like you OJ, hard to get excited about reminders… esp when - like IanB they come at the oddest of hours (are you listening Nokia?).
But I am a lover of the way Google maps handles adding events, and a huge fan of Google Mail - ive been using it to gather all my emails (work/home/etc) for a while. Its spam filter is great, I do get the odd email or two that don’t make it through to my inbox - but unlike Outlook It actually remembers my setting of “Not Junk”.
Oh and hey OJ, when is that suckerfish header gonna disappear?
May 8, 2007
I see the “OOOOH” factor of Calendar, but to me it’s like diaries - I would buy them every year, and every year they’d never get used. I think Google Calendar will be the same for me. Shows how bad I am with planning eh?
Gmail just rocks. Moving blackapache mail to Google Mail was a bloody good move, and my spam issues are slowly waning (they never actually make it to my inbox!). The few emails that I’ve had caught in the spam filter which technically aren’t spam are the kind of emails that don’t interest me anyway
ie. forwards, jokes, etc. I still check the spam folder in case, but I generally just delete them all without thinking.
Good question about the header Danny. I think it’s about time I did something about it, and I will probably sort that out this evening.
May 9, 2007
All I can say is: WOW to this google app
http://www.google.com/reader/view/
May 16, 2007
I also use Google apps for mananging my emails. A small issue is when using it to send emails through scripts such as ones in contact forms. It rewrites the from address to be the default one registered with that account, so when you carry out a pop3 download of emails, it doesnt pick up the ones where the from address is the same. No a major issue, but one to bear in mind if you plan to use it for sending emails from web forms.
http://tinyurl.com/386no8
May 24, 2007
Beh, I hate out of hours reminders. Orange occasionally send me a text at around 7am to tell me that I haven’t added enough credit on my phone this month to earn free calls. It’s woken me up a couple of times and I don’t see a way to unsubscribe from these pointless alerts. Grrr!!!