Server Work
Sun Aug 22 22:28:41 MDT 2021
For those of you on GMail - Sorry, but messages from Support@SoftHome.net are not going through right now.
Here is a blanket post covering a bunch of information. The email is flowing and is being stored. Webmail is not available. Login based features of the website are not available.
What happened:
We had several pieces of equipment fail at the same time.
Shortly before that, there was an invalid user who had figured out a way to send through our system, getting past our outgoing filtering. They had queued over 2.5 million messages onto the server, which delayed some of the valid messages on the server while we sorted that out. Our filtering is fixed again. I am trying to fix relationships with other email providers. That is why the GMail messages are not flowing well right now.
Moving forward:
We now have a new web server. I made a configuration setup that messed up availability for some web browsers, so for some people the website came back today or late yesterday. The webmail will be down for several days. We have a version of webmail that we have been testing, but it is not ready for prime-time just yet.
The move to a new web server is requiring a move to a new database machine/format. We are migrating accounts. All the things that you would normally do on the website, such as purchasing a plan or changing your password are also down right now.
The login box will return and the built-in functions will return. As we get features working, we will open things up.
What can you do right now?
All valid accounts are allowed to connect to POP or IMAP at this time. Once we get webmail working, we will return to our normal operation.
If you have an email program such as Thunderbird, you can setup that email program to get to your email right now. All the basic email and functionality is still there for POP incoming and SMTP outgoing. To keep your account compatible with webmail - Choose the settings for POP where you keep the message on the server. Note that some software remembers our settings and can do setup with only a username.
For POP, those settings look like the following for the incoming side:
Server Name: mail.softhome.net
Port: 11110
Security: None
User Name will be your SoftHome user name (before the @SoftHome.net)
You can also use the IMAP server. One of the benefits here is that unless you remove or move a message out of the server, it stays on the SoftHome server with finding the setting on the program.
Server Name: pro.softhome.net
Port: 143
Security: STARTTLS
On the outgoing email side, you can connect to smtp.softhome.net
Server Name: smtp.softhome.net
Port: 465
Connection security: SSL/TLS
Authentication Method: Normal Password
User Name will be your SoftHome user name (before the @SoftHome.net)
(Note that you can also connect to alternate non-encrypted SMTP ports, such as 2500, 2501, and 25000.)
Account Subscriptions:
Professional accounts that will be expiring will get their time extended to keep things working as needed.
For those who have lost-password needs/etc, the support email will be the primary method for fixing accounts.
Thanks to everybody for hanging in there with us.
We will be making changes to look and feel that are now possible with the updated hardware and software.
