Forum Moderators: phranque
I am wondering if anyone has any experience using Gmail for your domain for a domain that they host a discussion forum or similar application on. Specifically, any application that sends out various automated emails (sign up responses, etc).
Since one of my domains gets a large amount of spam, I suggested to my host (I am not commercially hosted) that I could start using Gmail for your domain to handle the mail for this domain, to cut back on the spam her spamfilters has to handle.
However, she thought it would cause a problem with my discussion forum, as it would be sending the mail via her servers whereas the MX records for the domain would say that the mail should be coming from Google. Which could lead to mails being blocked by spamfilters.
I don't quite understand how all of this works, but perhaps there is a workaround for this?
Until recently, there was nothing that said where mail ought to come from. Now we have SPF records. The sole purpose of SPF records is to tell others where you mail might come from. This allows spam filters to optionally block mail that comes from a source not named in your SPF record.
In any case, you should make sure you have an SPF record for your domain. The SPF record can name multiple sources for mail, so the scenario you give is not a problem.
Do all spamfilters that check the FROM header and compare it with the originating server also check SPF records, or could some mail still end up being stopped as potential spam even with the SPF records set properly?
Do all spamfilters that check the FROM header and compare it with the originating server also check SPF records, or could some mail still end up being stopped as potential spam even with the SPF records set properly?
SPF records are the only thing that you have direct control over that spam filters might check agaist the originating server.
Other things that spam filters might match against the originating server are RBL lists, etc. You have no direct control over this. If spam originates from the server you send from, the server might wind-up on an RBL list. The solution is to not spam, and not use servers that are used to send spam.
