As a  website owner you will also use email for interacting with your site visitors.

Receiving Email From Site Visitors

Most new website owners and even many web designers use a simple mailto html tag  on the website that allow site visitors to email them.

Although it is very easy to implement it has two major drawbacks.

• It results in lots of spam

• It relies on the email client on the visitors computer being correctly setup.- Certainly not the case with public machines.

It is for this reason I don't use it or recommend its use.

The two ways I use are:

• Embed the email address in a graphic

• Use a PHP Contact form

Email Addresses

Whichever mechanism you choose you will need an email address. When you purchase a domain name you automatically have email addresses. Most domain name providers limit the number but there is always more than enough for small business/personal use.

 So if you own the domain name  yoursitename.com then you can create a selection of email addresses like email@yoursitename.com.

Most website owners either don't realise this or forget about it and use another totally different email address as the contact address, which not only looks bad, but is potentially confusing.

Accessing The Email

 Options

There are two main methods which can be used independently or together:

• Associate the email address with a mailbox

• Forward the email to another address that has a mailbox.

Associate the email address with a mailbox

To do this your package must include mailboxes this almost always requires that you have purchased a web hosting package not just a domain name.

How many email addresses, and how you access them depends on your hosting provider. However most will provide at least 5 addresses and POP3 access even with the most basic package.

Here are the email capabilities offered with 1and1 UK basic hosting package.

Most websites only require one or two email addresses like sales, newsletter, webmaster, accounts, contact.

I recommend this method

Forward the Email to Another Address that has a Mailbox

If you don't have a mailbox associated with the address then you can arrange that the email be forwarded onto another email address that does.

Although this sounds attractive it does have problems as it can cause confusion if you reply to the email. Therefore I would only recommend that you use this as a notification method.

Methods

There are two main methods used:

• Access via a web browser -so called Webmail

• Access via email client- so called POP3 or Imap4 access

Most hosting packages will proved access using both methods and you can use whichever you prefer.

The main advantage of the Webmail access is that it works from any computer and requires no configuration whereas pop3/imap4 access only works after you have setup the email client (outlook express etc) correctly.

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