Age Off Email Messages

[JWSheff]

I have a BlueHost email account that has an automatic forwarder assigned. I check the email at the forwarded end but need to revisit the BlueHost side now and then to delete the messages that have been forwarded. I would like to have a way to automatically age off the bluehost messages after a few days. I have looked all through the Control Panel but can't seem to find any way to do this. Anyone have an idea to age off email messages?

[Evil_Dictator]

Why do you have an email account AND a forwarder? You'll get 2 copies of the email. All you need is the forwarder. Ageing sounds like an email client feature. I'm not aware of any of the webmail clients offering this.

[Eriksrocks]

Why do you have an email account AND a forwarder? You'll get 2 copies of the email. All you need is the forwarder. Ageing sounds like an email client feature. I'm not aware of any of the webmail clients offering this.

Bluehost doesn't make it very clear that a forwarder can work on its own. I assumed that you needed to setup an email account in order to be able to forward mail for it, until I discovered that a forwarder works without the email address being setup.

[felgall]

Bluehost doesn't make it very clear that a forwarder can work on its own. I assumed that you needed to setup an email account in order to be able to forward mail for it, until I discovered that a forwarder works without the email address being setup.

The one problem with using a forwarder on its own is that the emails getting forwarded don't get filtered so all the spam gets forwarded as well. Where you have an email account with a forwarder and also have spam assassin enabled then the emails get filtered by spam assassin and only those it doesn't flag as spam get forwarded.

The issue with using a forwarder by itself is that some mail servers that you might be forwarding to do not properly examine spam emails to find out where they really came from and so the BlueHost mail server ends up on the spam blacklist as a result of people setting up forwarders that receive and forward a lot of spam.

[Eriksrocks]

The one problem with using a forwarder on its own is that the emails getting forwarded don't get filtered so all the spam gets forwarded as well. Where you have an email account with a forwarder and also have spam assassin enabled then the emails get filtered by spam assassin and only those it doesn't flag as spam get forwarded.

The issue with using a forwarder by itself is that some mail servers that you might be forwarding to do not properly examine spam emails to find out where they really came from and so the BlueHost mail server ends up on the spam blacklist as a result of people setting up forwarders that receive and forward a lot of spam.

That's a very good point. :)

[MrDelish]

Setting up charlene@yourcompany.com = Professional.

Replying to your emails with daisydukesxoxo@yahoo.com = Not professional.

[halfpastzero]

I would like to have a way to automatically age off the bluehost messages after a few days. I have looked all through the Control Panel but can't seem to find any way to do this. Anyone have an idea to age off email messages?

There isn't a way I am aware of in the cPanel that will do it based on date. You can use the Account and User Level Filters to discard new messages but that would delete them all as soon as it's delivered to the account. The forwarder will still work but you could not retrieve any messages from the account on Bluehost. The functionality you are looking for to filter messages after the fact would have to be done through a custom script of your own writing.

[JWSheff]

Thank you all for the responses. Now that you mention it, I think I remember that you don't need an Email account to forward. I would like to reduce the amount of Spam forwarded so as it turns out the Email account is still desirable. It seems I need to select between the two: Email account with spam control or to remember to cleanup the bluehost account on a regular basis.

[JWSheff]

There isn't a way I am aware of in the cPanel that will do it based on date. You can use the Account and User Level Filters to discard new messages but that would delete them all as soon as it's delivered to the account. The forwarder will still work but you could not retrieve any messages from the account on Bluehost. The functionality you are looking for to filter messages after the fact would have to be done through a custom script of your own writing.

Thank you HalfPastZero, that may be the way through this. I am not too concerned with the fact they will be deleted right away, more interested with the Spam control. I will play with it a little.

[Early Out]

Replying to your emails with daisydukesxoxo@yahoo.com = Not professional.
That depends entirely on your target audience. ;)

[felgall]

Setting up charlene@yourcompany.com = Professional.

Replying to your emails with daisydukesxoxo@yahoo.com = Not professional.

So set up your email program to send the emails from the alternative address. You don't have to send emails from an email address that has an actual account attached - all email programs allow you to override the from address with whatever address you want.

[Eriksrocks]

So set up your email program to send the emails from the alternative address. You don't have to send emails from an email address that has an actual account attached - all email programs allow you to override the from address with whatever address you want.

Gmail has this feature as well. As far as I know they are the only webmail client that offers this. :)

[Eriksrocks]

Thank you all for the responses. Now that you mention it, I think I remember that you don't need an Email account to forward. I would like to reduce the amount of Spam forwarded so as it turns out the Email account is still desirable. It seems I need to select between the two: Email account with spam control or to remember to cleanup the bluehost account on a regular basis.

Go with spam control. One possible approach is to set a low quota for the account and test out what the server does when the quota is reached. If it deletes old emails, you're golden, but if it rejects new incoming mail then that won't work.

Otherwise you could just have an unlimited quota and set a reminder to clear out the mailbox every few months or so. Depending on how much mail you get, you may need to do it more or less often than that, but you should be fine. :)

[EricJ]

It doesn't delete old emails.. That would cause problems with people that do this, "I thought i HAD to set the quota.. I had five hundred thousand orders for my webbased company and you deleted some of them! NOW HOWZ AM I SUPPOZED TO GET THE ORDERZ OUT?!?!?!" --angry customer :P.. haha that would be bad.

I'm not exactly sure what happens to the incoming messages though..