Managing Mail
Today I finally got my email working exactly the way I want:
- Both my main addresses (jot.com and fettig.net) get forwarded to a gmail account.
- I download mail into Thunderbird from gmail via POP
- I send mail through gmail using SMTP. Until recently any mail sent through Google appeared to come from your gmail address, so I had to use my own SMTP server in order to preserve the my From: address. But now Gmail lets you set up alternative From: addresses. I like using Google’s SMTP service because my sent mail gets archived online with my received mail.
- I use the Gmail philosophy of “search, don’t sort” in Thunderbird. New mail comes into my Inbox, and when I’ve read/responded to it I put it into a folder called Archive. I also configured Thunderbird to put my sent mail in Archive, so both sides of my email conversations are in one folder.
- Dragging and dropping mail from Inbox into Archive gets old fast. Today I finally found a solution: the GmailUI extension. It adds some Gmail-inspired features to Thunderbird, making the “Y” key a shortcut for “Move this message to my Archive folder”. Now I can push messages out of my Inbox without having to use the mouse.
- That just left one problem: I want to use my jot.com address to respond to jot email, and my fettig.net address for personal email. That too was solved with a Thunderbird extension: Correct Identity. This automatically picks the right account to use when replying to mail, based on the address the original message was sent to.
I did have to create a dummy account just so Thunderbird would know about my jot.com email address, but that’s a small price to pay.(Update: not actually necessary – see comments)
Benefits of this setup:
- All my mail flows through Gmail. Gmail is essentially acting as a free mail host with all the goodies: Excellent spam filtering, a nice web UI, archiving/backup, search, SSL connections.
- My Gmail address isn’t used for sending or receiving mail. I like Gmail’s service, but I’m not going to let myself get bound to an email address at a domain I don’t control. This way I can switch off Gmail at any time in the future, and it will be completely transparent to other people.
- I have my mail locally in Thunderbird, so I don’t have to be online to read old mail.
- I have multiple accounts flowing into a single POP mailbox, but I still get the correct From: address when replying to mail.
Hmm, interesting!
Are you sure you needed to setup a different account? You don’t need to for Thunderbird, since you can have multiple identities with one account (see the Account options), but maybe the extension won’t work with that?
Comment by Manuzhai — November 4, 2005 @ 4:50 am
Ah, you’re right! I created a second identity in a single account, which feels much less hacky. And it works perfectly with the Correct Identity extension. Thanks!
Comment by Abe — November 4, 2005 @ 8:33 am
I was about to suggest the same thing :) I didn’t know about Correct Identity though, so I look forward to trying it out. I am doing something similar with fetchmail and a local IMAP server. Fetchmail grabs all my POP/IMAP mail from various email accounts, everything goes into one account on my local box, and I get to it locally or via a SOCKS proxy (via Putty, at work on my Windows laptop). I’ve been pretty happy with the setup so far.
I personally still sort, but with incoming mail filters in Thunderbird. The main reason for still sorting rather than searching is that I want to be able to put off reading mailing list posts until a certain time, without having to wade through it all to get to my non-list email.
Finally, a little off-topic, but congrats on the new book! I just started flipping through it on Safari while I wait for my copy to ship to me. Can’t wait to start trying my hand at async network programming ;)
Comment by Shawn Wheatley — November 4, 2005 @ 9:24 am
Excellent post. I really like how Gmail works, and I’d love more gmail functionality in a mail tool. Does anyone know how I can simulate the gmail “labels” functionality in thunderbird, if it is at all possible?
Comment by Alastair — November 5, 2005 @ 6:58 am
Shawn – thanks for ordering TNPE. I hope you like it.
I do use filters to put mailing lists in their own folders. But I no longer do any manual filing of non-mailing list mail in my Inbox. I just stick it all in the Archive folder.
Comment by Abe — November 5, 2005 @ 8:04 am
I am having no luck with sending mail through this system! Well, the mail sends fine, however emails sent always report the mail coming from my gmail account rather than my domain name. Any suggestions?
Comment by Alastair — November 7, 2005 @ 5:53 am
Alastair – Log into Gmail, and under Settings choose the Accounts tab. Under “Send Mail as”, there’s a link that says “Add another email address”. This will let you set up additional From: addresses for use with Gmail. You have to go through a verification process before you can use different From: addresses, to prove to Gmail that you really are the owner of that address.
Once you’ve registered a new “Send mail as” address, Gmail will preserve that From: address when you send mail through SMTP.
Comment by Abe — November 7, 2005 @ 1:16 pm
[...] to lock up and it was just a hassle. Needless to say, I was EXTATIC when I found out what Abe Fettig was doing with Gmail because of similar reasons. I have forwarded all of my busine [...]
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