Sending Email That Appears To Come From Surfrider.org

» View updated information about the Surfrider.org email service here

Perhaps you have sent a Surfrider related email message from your personal email account, and wished that instead of it coming through to the recipient(s) as mehere@yahoo.com, or brian@gmail.com, etc., it came through as mychapter@surfrider.org. That is, you want it to come into the recipient's inbox as if it came not just from you, but from your Surfrider chapter. This is good for style points, and it's practical, as it increases the odds that your email will be read.

Prior to anything:
1) Make sure you have a working surfrider.org email address for your chapter.
(If your chapter does not have an email address, contact your regional coordinator to initiate setup.)
2) Your email may have one or more aliases. Always use the main, primary one for any configurations, setups, and/or logins.
(Not sure which is the primary? Ask your regional coord or SF tech assistance).

There's a different way to setup sending which depends on how you access your email: 1. via webmail, 2. via your own email client/service, or 3. as a forwarding address.

1. Via Surfrider.org Webmail.
The Surfrider Webmail URL is http://mail.surfrider.org. It operates just like any web-based email client, like Gmail or Yahoo. When you use webmail, you need not do any other setup. You are essentially operating on the Surfrider Foundation mail server, so emails you send from here actually are coming from surfrider.org. No additional configuration is neccessary.



2. Via Your Own Email Client/Service
» View setup instructions for various clients/services
BUG ALERT! If you ever receive "doubles" of your SF emails, it may be because you are accessing your surfrider.org email directly AND as a forward. Contact SF tech assistance to fix this behavior.

Once you setup your client/service (ex. Outlook, Gmail.com, etc.) to receive (and send) email via surfrider.org, you only need to make sure that when you send out emails related to Surfrider, you choose the specific surfrider.org account you just setup. You do this slightly differently in different clients and services.

Here's an example using gmail. Gmail has a modifiable "From: " field when you send. So you just need to set up the Surfrider.org account, and then switch as neccessary before hitting "Send".


In gmail, setup is in "Settings::Accounts::Send Mail As".


3. As A Forwarding Address

In the case where you receive your surfider.org emails at a separate, different email account, a reply-to address is the best option. In account setup, set your chapter@surfrider.org address as the reply-to.

Reply-tos are like sending an actual package from your house but putting a different address on the return-to label. Except that in the digital world, clients and spam filters can tell that the different address is not authentic, and may misinterpret that as mailicious.. which is why this method is the least preferable.







That's it!