Users' mail: configuring SMTP account to send mails with Doke0s

Note: as of 2010, BeezNest has moved away from supporting Dokeos and launched the Chamilo project. This article was written in 2009, when BeezNest's team members were still the main developers for the Doke0s software, under the responsibility of the Doke0s company. Chamilo has since then reached double the size of the Doke0s project and is much more transparent in terms of code publication and community support. This article surprisingly still holds true for Chamilo up to version 1.11, but this might change in Chamilo 2.0 with a new system for e-mail sending.

Avoid sending e-mails to many recipients "in clear"

This article was first written in June 2004 for the BeezNest technical
website (http://glasnost.beeznest.org/articles/131).
You should always avoid to send e-mails to many recipients at the same time with their address in the To: or Cc: field. The reason is that if you use Bcc:, any recipient will not be able to see other's e-mail address.

Why would you want that?

Because many viruses on the Internet these days know how to go into your e-mail archives and search for the e-mail addresses that you can see too.

Answer under the question: example

This article was first written in January 2004 for
the BeezNest technical website (http://glasnost.beeznest.org/articles/103)
You should always try to answer right under the question when replying to an e-mail. This is only to ensure maximum readability, which is the goal of what you write. Here is a (fake) short example: 1) No! 2) I've been there on holiday once.

Cover only one topic per e-mail and give a sensible subject

This article was first written in March 2005 for the BeezNest technical
website (http://glasnost.beeznest.org/articles/213).
Answering under the question should be the default. Similarly, and to avoid complicating answering to e-mails, try to cover only one topic (even huge) per e-mail. It will not cost you more to split your different subjects in several messages, and will allow you to give sensible subjects to your e-mails easily. In return, you can expect the answers to be more readable and finding something through all your e-mails far faster.