The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Thursday, Debtember 27, 2007

“Damn you to hell, Canter & Siegel”

When we first had problems in late 2004 we were sending out 50,000 member-requested emails a week. Since mail functions are so deeply wired into core server technologies the average web engineer has no ideas how many emails are going out. I sure didn't. But now I do. We're sending about 400,000 member-requested emails a week. We've had to dedicate significant amounts of time (and thus money) to become sendmail geeks, mastering the myriad error codes, loopback systems and contact policies of the large mail providers and scripting many back-end and website functions to stay in compliance as best we can. We've even had to retain a mail delivery analysis partner, and still debate if we'll have to pay a third party to send all out emails. If one of us was already a master of sendmail, and had connections at big mail providers this would be easy, but how many people fit that descirption in the average 10 person start-up?

Sending Email is a Big Headache for Small Companies with Popular Websites

The rest of the article goes into how difficult it is for a business to send out mass volumes of (and in this case, it appears to be very legitimate) email and all the tricks they have to do in order to satisfy their customers (who apparently get some form of notification via email).

And as a company that doesn't use email as our primary service (we're a web-hosting company), we still have to deal with some of this crap as we too, get blacklisted and blocked by larger ISPs.

I'm afraid that soon email will only be handled between large companies and anything from an “unregistered” server (read: “from a non-large company that hasn't paid the proper Danegeld jizya bribes licensing fees”) will be dropped. In the end, if we want email, we must submit to the Borg use Gmail and that has me worried.

Obligatory Picture

An abstract representation of where you're coming from]

Obligatory Contact Info

Obligatory Feeds

Obligatory Links

Obligatory Miscellaneous

Obligatory AI Disclaimer

No AI was used in the making of this site, unless otherwise noted.

You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go ahead, I won't bite. I promise.

The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent links to that entry only. The format for the links are simple: Start with the base link for this site: https://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are interested in, say 2000/08/01, so that would make the final URL:

https://boston.conman.org/2000/08/01

You can also specify the entire month by leaving off the day portion. You can even select an arbitrary portion of time.

You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that important.

It is assumed that every brand name, slogan, corporate name, symbol, design element, et cetera mentioned in these pages is a protected and/or trademarked entity, the sole property of its owner(s), and acknowledgement of this status is implied.

Copyright © 1999-2024 by Sean Conner. All Rights Reserved.