Secure 5 Email Migration Information
August 3, 2010 by tracy · Comments Off
Due to time-sensitive nature of this migration, we have not been able to notify all clients ahead of time of the new server settings. While website data is backed up, email is not, and we wanted to make sure your email was transferred before the possibility of the server going down permanently.
For those of you having problems accessing your email today, you can try the following servers settings:
– Make sure to update your username to include the complete email address
– If the server your use is mail.yourdomainname.com or secure5.liveoakhosting.com WITHOUT SSL, use the following servers:
POP3 pop.yourdomainname.com port 110 or
IMAP imap.yourdomainname.com port 143
SMTP smtp.yourdomainname.com port 25
– If you use secure5.liveoakhosting.com WITH SSL, you will want to use the following servers:
POP3 with SSL secure.emailsrvr.com port 995 or
IMAP with SSL secure.emailsrvr.com port 993
SMTP with SSL secure.emailsrvr.com port 465
You can always go to https://webmail.liveoakmail.com and log in using your full email address and email password. Please bear in mind, some passwords had to be changed if they did not meet minimum security standards and we may need to forward those to your IT contact.
We apologize for the inconvenience and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us by emailing support@liveoakhosting.com or calling our toll-free number at 877.272.5743. Thank you for your patience!
LiveOakMail Control Panel Interface Maintenance on 3/3/2009
As part of our efforts to continually improve our product offerings, we will be performing maintenance on our administrative control panel interface for Hosted Exchange 2007 and SkyBox. The maintenance window is scheduled to occur on May 3, 2009 from 1:00AM US-CDT (6:00AM GMT) to 2:00AM US-CDT (7:00AM GMT).
During the maintenance window, users may experience intermittent interruptions of connectivity to their administrative Control Panel interface. All mailbox functionality will continue to work normally during this time.
The Scoop on Diskspace and Bandwidth
April 29, 2009 by tracy · Comments Off
We get calls from customers wondering “Why am I receiving these emails about my bandwidth/diskspace being over it’s limit? I only have a small site!”
The reality is, if you don’t have one of our premium email packages, your disk space and bandwidth are accumulated not only from your website, but from your email and databases as well. The types of files that can easily contribute to bandwidth and disk space overages are below:
- Zip files
- Audio files
- Video files
- PDF files
You’ll always want to check the size of the files you upload to your site, send via email, or offer for download on your site. These can add up quickly:
- If the disk space limit for your site is 512 MB, one 50 MB file is 10% of your disk space. It doesn’t take many of those to exceed your diskspace.
- Don’t forget when you send items via email. A 2 MB document attachment sent to a single email address might not be a problem. However, if you send that same 2 MB file to 250 email addresses, that equates to over 500 MB in bandwidth usage for that single mailout. Sent out regularly, usage like this can add up.
- How about a media file (audio or video) on your website that is regularly downloaded by your site users? It may only be 50 MB, but 20 downloads adds up to 1000 MB of bandwidth usage. If your site becomes more popular, it may only take 320 downloads for you to reach your bandwidth limit.
- How many files do you have on your site? A large number of smaller files can also contribute to site overages — you’ll want to keep unused files to a minimum.
You can always check your site’s usage by logging into your control panel, clicking into the domain and then on the Report icon. There are several helpful areas within this page that can help you diagnose where all that bandwidth and diskspace is going. Still have questions? Call us — we’d be more than happy to walk you through the reports and explain what they mean.
Kick the Tires on Live Oak Mail
February 10, 2009 by tracy · Comments Off
If you are curious about our Live Oak Mail, we have a no-obligation way of taking it for a drive. Live Oak Mail has two premium email services options for your organization:
SkyBox. The webmail interface offers shared calendars, contacts, and tasks. And you can still check your email using your favorite email software. You can also use WinMobile and BlackBerry syncing to keep up with your mail.
Test it out by logging in at http://budurl.com/skybx using the email address demo@liveoakmail.com and a password of try1t0ut.
Hosted Exchange. This option allows you the same functions as the SkyBox webmail, with the additional benefit that it completely integrates with your Microsoft Outlook or Entourage. Don’t have Outlook or Entourage? Don’t worry — your Hosted Exchange comes with a free copy that you can download and install for your personal use. You can even use ActiveSync, BlackBerry, Good Network to sync with your mobile device.
Test it out by logging in http://budurl.com/exchg using the email address loh.demo@liveoakmail.com and password of try1t0ut.
You can poke around in either of these as long as you want. If you have any questions or would like to move to the Live Oak Mail solution, email us. We would love to hear what you have to say about it!
For Our IMAP Power Users (or those who just want to be)
January 7, 2009 by tracy · Comments Off
IMAP email has a lot of advantages. The main benefit being you can check your email from several different locations and then have it all sync up nicely at all the other locations.
In theory, this is the way IMAP should work.
However, we have seen a few settings and user habits that can cause issues when checking your email via an IMAP connection. The below recommendations can help you avoid the pitfalls of IMAP email and keep it a pleasant experience.
- Keep your Inbox folder cleaned out. The more email you have in your Inbox folder, the longer it will take to sync up with the server. The reason being that your local email software and server must talk to each other for much longer times in order to make sure that everything is there that should be. This can result in long download times for you, delays for other users on the server, result in corruption of your mail folders over a period of time, and even cause your email software to crash.
You will want to go through your Inbox folder regularly and either delete or move all emails into other folders; the fewer emails in your Inbox, the faster you will receive and download new mail and the less chance for folder corruption and crashes.
- Set your email software to check email no less than every 5 to 10 minutes. When too many users check their email at one time, it causes slow download times and even server connection refusals, creating an email nightmare for all users — especially if you keep large amounts of email in your Inbox folder.
You’ll want to set your email to check email once every 5 to 10 minutes — or longer — to keep the server load down while continuing receiving your email in a reasonable amount of time.
- Turn off the setting to keep your email software connected to the server. Some email software has a setting allowing it to stay connected to the server after downloading email. While this setting is great for in-house servers with few users, it does not work quite as well for remote servers with hundreds or thousands of users.
Please disable this setting for your IMAP connections and set your software to sync your email every 5 to 10 minutes.
By maintaining your email folders and settings, we hope to make the IMAP experience the best one possible. Should you have any questions regarding any of these settings and habits, we’d love to hear from you, so give us a call.
Email Password Security
December 23, 2008 by tracy · Comments Off
As hard as Live Oak tries to keep our servers secure from hackers and spammers, we are not able to oversee the passwords that our users select for their log-ins and email.
As a result, our servers are sometimes compromised by spammers able to guess our users’ email passwords. Bear in mind that if your email address gets compromised, you run the risk of exceeding your bandwidth, which can cost you or your company over-limit fees.
The most common guessable passwords are:
123abc
abc123
12345
54321
password
nopassword
However, they can also include words available in any standard dictionary. If you or any of your domain’s users have selected passwords that fit into this category, we recommend updating your passwords to something more secure.
The key is to create a password that you can easily remember, but is hard for someone else to guess. Below are some simple tips on creating more secure passwords for all our users.
- The longeryourpassword, the better.
- Always throw in some numb3rs, $ymb0ls, and/or punc.tua_tion marks.
- Mix cApItaL leTTerS with lowErcAsE.
- Create an acronym from a familiar phrase. An example would be to take a phrase “I live on 32nd street” and turn it into iL032st.
- Change your password often and don’t use the same password for all your log-ins.
Use a combination of the above methods and you should wind up with a secure password to thwart pesky hackers and spammers.
Don’t Let the Holidays Get in Your Way
November 17, 2008 by tracy · Comments Off
Sure, we’re coming up on the holidays, which can be the busiest time of the year for some businesses — or the slowest, depending upon your market. And just because people are in the holiday mind-set doesn’t mean you should neglect your online-presence.
“But My Customers Don’t Buy Until After the First of the Year!”
This may be true, however it doesn’t mean your customers aren’t planning for next year. Many use this slow period at work to do research on projects they know are coming up after the first of the year.
Will your prices be going up or down? Will your service structure change? Perhaps you will be releasing a new product or service? Make sure that those customers doing research now are aware that you and your organization are ready for the new year.
“But I’m Too Busy to Update My Site Now!”
During this season, saavy shoppers do a lot more searching online before getting in their cars to make a purchase. If the information on your site is out-of-date or not accurate, you stand to lose potential customers.
Are all your products listed and prices updated? Have obsolete products been removed? Provide your customers with hassle-free access to your products and services so they can decide before they buy, with no surprises when they go to make a purchase.
Painless Changes
Call Live Oak to get a quote on how long your changes will take. In most instances, we can have them done in an hour or two. More complex changes may take longer. You can take a look at how Live Oak can help update your site by going here.
If you have more questions after going over that information, please feel free to call us. We’d love to hear from you!
Secure25 and Secure27 Maintenance
September 17, 2008 by tracy · Comments Off
We have prepared the following summary for our regularly scheduled monthly maintenance window (normally the 3rd Sunday of each month). We strive to perform them without a negative impact to you. However, the possibility always exists that a maintenance event can have unintended consequences that negatively impact your business, up to and including unplanned or extended downtime. We hope you understand that such maintenance is necessary to benefit you and your customers.
Time Window: September 21st, 2008
Maintenance Event:
Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol Implementation
Impact – Low:
Maintenance Window: 12:01 A.M. to 3:00 A.M. CDT (6:01 A.M. to 9:00 A.M. BST)
In order to provide a faster response to any network topology changes; we will implement Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP). The implementation of RSTP will provide for faster convergence times in the event a failover occurs. Once the maintenance has begun a command will be executed causing a shift in traffic from primary to secondary. During this shift there may be brief periods of latency and packet loss as convergence takes place. There is no other expected impact associated with this maintenance.