Knowing about MX Records will help you in self managing your dedicated server, especially if you are using one server as a mail server and hosting your website on a separate server, etc. So here is a brief FAQ on MX Records.

What are MX records?

MX records assist your domain name in handling email. These DNS records point the email to the mail server where it is supposed to go.

Where can I see my MX records?

Normally they will be located on your DNS provider or web host’s server. To view them, simply visit www.mxtoolbox.com/, type your domain name into the search field, and view your records instantly.

What do MX records look like?

Every MX record includes the same fields (though they can be formatted differently), such as:

Name – yourdomain.com
Class – IN (Internet)
Type – MX
TTL – This stands for “time to live”: i.e. the time it takes to update the record, measured in seconds. For example, a TTL of 7200 means the MX record will take two hours to update. The higher the TTL the less traffic load on the DNS.
Preference or Priority – The order in which mail is delivered to which server, etc. Servers that are sending should be the lowest preference number.
Data – the DNS information for your mail server: i.e. yourdomain.com.ns1.smtp.com

In Dedicated Server Hosting or actually in many forms of shared web hosting as well, oftentimes customers need to specify where and how email should be routed. MX Records do just that!

An MX record stands for Mail exchanger record and just specifies exactly how the email is routed using SMTP (or simple mail transfer protocol). Each MX record has a priority and host name – that way the entirety of the record for your domain name will point the servers to the right places.

In layman’s terms, all domains are assigned several DNS (domain name servers) records upon registration. These DNS settings allow you and others to locate the website online through the Internet. These DNS settings includes MX records. Each record points to a specific email server so that your email can be efficiently processed on that domain name.

Using cron jobs can save you time, money, and lots of headaches! But do you know what a cron job is and what it can do for you and your dedicated server hosting?

To start, you can impress your friends and tech-geeks alike by letting them know that ‘cron’ comes from the Greek word ‘chronos’, which means ‘time’. And in fact cron jobs manage things in a time-based banner – for example, every minutes, every hour, every day, etc.

Cron jobs are simply scheduling devices and work through SSH shell without you. In other words, once you set up a cron job, it will essentially perform its task in the background while you sip margaritas and watch the money roll in. Okay, maybe they won’t make you rich, but they will save you time and money by performing the same tasks you need to implement without costing you any trouble. Once you set them up once, they do what they’re told until told to stop.

By using cron jobs, you eliminate the middle-man. You can set tasks for your website like checking for new subscribers, deleting inactive website members, sending email newsletters and more. Especially for email marketing on a dedicated server, cron jobs can help manage the amount of emails sent per hour and eliminate the worry of getting blacklisted for normal email marketing and newsletter distribution.

Big businesses and even startups and web 2.0 networks all have one thing in common – they need to market their website audience and they need to do it well and without getting spam-blocked by the end-user.  There are actually several ways to avoid getting blacklisted, because unfortunately, even on a dedicated server, this can happen to you.

The first way to avoid getting blacklisted is to only market to customers or pre-sales clients who know they are entering into your mailing list and/or will need your product or service. Make sure you are using a mailing list client that has the option to include an unsubscribe link, as your marketing techniques are illegal otherwise. Also, if you have the ability to have customers opt or even double opt-in to receive the promotions and marketing materials, this would be a great idea.

Another thing to keep in mind is the number of emails you are marketing to. If you have a customer or marketing base that consists of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of email addresses, you’ll need to be especially careful. Sending out over 500 emails in one hour is the biggest concern of any dedicated server hosting customer, because not only can you get spam-blocked for sending out that many emails that quickly but your server might also get blacklisted by certain email providers like AOL and Yahoo, who are quick to act on spam-related issues.

A good way to keep the number of emails sent per hour down to a safe amount is through using cron jobs, which can be scheduled to send, for example, 5 emails per minute. If you have a customer base of 1500 recipients, that will only take 5 hours to complete. The best way you can handle this many emails is to talk to your dedicated web hosting provider upfront to see what their specific restrictions are for sending emails and marketing customers using mailing lists.

You may be wondering why we would be talking about “small business web hosting” on a dedicated server website. You may think to yourself, if you’re only a small business, why would you need such a big server, storage space, RAM, or bandwidth?

Well, our answer to you is that small businesses can be just as resource-intensive as fortune 100 corporations! It might surprise you to know that millions of small businesses are purchasing dedicated servers every day, because even if they appear to be a small business to some spheres, in their local or national markets, they play like the big boys.

Think, for example, about your local supermarket. Hundreds if not thousands of people shop there daily. Maybe the supermarket has a couple sister supermarkets placed around the county or nearby cities, or maybe it’s a chain supermarket but only for the Eastern, Western, or Midwestern United States. If they need a website, they are not going to be using shared web hosting – they are going to be sitting on a dedicated server, because those thousands of customers will be visiting their website to print directions, get contact information, request the newsletter, or search for deals and discounts.

Small businesses may be ‘small’ by nature, but they can eat up resources just like the big boys. Consider the following things as a small business owner:

* Do you have more than 100 employees?
* Do you require a custom Content Management System to be developed for your website management needs?
* Do you have more than 100 customers?
* Do you offer more than 50 products? Or if you offer services, do these services include web-based services like email, management, design, SEO, or logo creation?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you should consider dedicated server hosting.

Do you access your email primarily from a Yahoo or MSN webmail account but are too embarrassed to put that email address on a business card? There’s actually a secret workaround for this kind of instance, as most webmasters prefer answering their email via an environment that they are familiar with. Oftentimes, the webmail provided by your dedicated web host isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, or you just prefer the tools of Gmail or the link. So here’s a quick workaround!

Email Forwarding

If you access your MSN or Yahoo accounts more than your hosted email addresses, just set up email forwarding to send all messages received at anything@yourdomain.com to anything@yahoo/msn/gmail.com. It takes about 2 minutes to setup via cPanel or Plesk and is the best choice for new webmasters and dedicated experts alike.

Setting Up Hosted Accounts Via Gmail or Outlook

Gmail and Outlook are the popular choices for hosted email accounts, because you can actually send your emails from their interface, just by configuring a simple solution. You actually only need to provide Gmail with your username and password and it does the rest, after confirming you own that email by sending a test email to the address provided. Outlook is a bit more complicated, but you only need to setup the login details, ports (if necessary), and server information before you can start emailing away!

Accessing your email on a dedicated server just got incredibly easier.