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!

Surfrider Is Using A New Email Service; Here's What You Need To Know.

We have transitioned all Surfrider email over to a new and genuinely improved email system. Here's the details on how to use the new system, some troubleshooting, and some general new notes.

If you use webmail, login at http://mail.surfrider.org.

For all other email clients, setup instructions can be found
at this support link. (If you use an email program or service that isn't listed here and are having trouble setting up, please send me a message (my email's also in the Chapternet).

Make sure you are logging into the "Email Account", not the "Control Panel".

Your username is your email address.

In most cases the password is the same as before. In some cases tho, the password did not satisfy the new "strength requirements"... for instance, a password of "mypassword" is too weak. We'll need to set you up a new one. If you have setup your email client as described in the documenation above and/or can't get onto webmail, please contact me (my email's also in the Chapternet) and we'll get you re-setup.

Just to refresh, we can setup your chapter email in any way you see fit... we can make it a distribution list that forwards to several people, have it be an alias for one or many other emails, or have it be a bona fide email mailbox that one or more chapter administrators may have access to.

In most cases, if you use webmail, you can now go into settings and update things like your password, which you could not before. Legacy Exchange accounts, in general staff, however have less power to update their own settings than the newer style
accounts (the official name for this newer type of account is "Noteworthy").

Organize And Streamline Cooler Email: Simplify Your Control Panel

Software systems are like cars. They need regular checkups and maintenance in order to run well. Here we're going to go over a couple points and things you can do with your Cooler Email account from time to time, or as a habit (depending on the type of activity), in order to make it work more smoothly for you.

All of these points have to do with managing your Control Panel, which is the default screen you see after logging into CE.

Basically, the more lists you have, and the more editions you have, the more difficult it is to manage your account. Additionally, performance suffers... pages take longer to load and searches and form elements take longer to complete. So let's look at what can be done to clean up and maintain.

1. Archive Old Editions

You don't have to keep old editions that you're not managing anymore in your face. But neither do you need to trash them. Really simple solution: archive them.

The archive button is located at the top right of the control panel, above all your lists (and below the tabbed menu). Once there, you'll be taken to the archive manager:



You simply choose to make an edition "Active" or "Archived". You can archive and de-archive at your leisure. Just remember to hit the "Update Archive" button before you're done.

2. Delete Unsent And Incomplete Editions

Some editions you archive, and some you don't need anymore. Especially for editions that were never sent or those that were simply used in development of final editions, there's no sense keeping them around. You can Delete them via the Control Panel, using the buttons to the right of each edition.

3. Name Your Editions According To An Alphanumeric Pattern...

... That is, of course, if you want them sorted in your control panel, per list. (Many chapters have only one list.)

One of the drawbacks in CE is that for each list, editions are sorted in only one way: alphabetically.

If you have more than just a couple active editions, you may want to see these in an easy to search order. This also goes for other areas of the CE system where editions may appear in a list to choose from.

The good thing is that you can rename Editions anytime. (You can't rename Mailing Lists, but you can rename the Editions.) To rename an edition, simply edit it, and look for the field that displays the Edition Name. Change and save!

You can pattern your Editions in anyway you see fit... a common way is to do it by date, in format YYMMDD (2 digits for each date, no matter what, starting with year and month).

Here's an example of a list with editions named and sorted in this format:


Hope this helps you to get thru CE faster, easier, and more pleasantly. Surf on.