Setting up the mail server is the most important of steps. Not to say that securing the server and installing Apache, MySQL and PhP isn't important, it's just that a mail server set up incorrectly can become a spam server. A spam server can have a negative impact on other people; where the other servers (Apache, MySQL and PhP), incorrectly setup, mostly have a negative impact on yourself. This is why I believe correct setup of the mail server is so important. Doing a lot of reading around this is important. The following is a good list of sites and pages to read as you become more familiar with setting up a Mail Server. After having read through all these sites and a few others, I would recommend the
Mail Server - Overview from rackspace.
- http://cloudservers.rackspacecloud.com/index.php/Mail_Server_-_Overview
- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MailServer
- http://articles.slicehost.com/2010/3/1/barebones-postfix-install-for-ubuntu
- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PostfixBasicSetupHowto
- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Postfix
I see all this reading, research and private study as step 4.0 of the mail server setup, step 4.1 describes the architecture of my mail server configuration due to it only needing to forward mail and not provide client access, step 4.2 will get into the actual process of installing, configuring and securing the mail server. I had a chat with rackspace technical support last night as I was considering using their
email and apps service. After describing my need of just a few email addresses from a few of my domains all redirected to respective gmail accounts it still seems like the best idea is to setup
postfix (and related mail services) on my own server.
Designing / Architecting the best mail server solution is the thrust of this 4.0 step.
