Weve recently started using a new email marketing tool. The company weve gone for allows us to use a dedicated domain to go with the account, but they require the domain to be set up in a particular way.

Now Id presumed that I could register the domains (I used UKReg) and then email the settings that needed to be implemented as they were more complex than the options available to me through the control panel.

I didnt hear back from UKReg so I just called them and was told they cant make the changes I want. The guy recommended a DNS service called ZoneEdit, which Im checking out although Im not sure if thatll do the job.

We have two domains to setup, heres what needs to be done for each:

Change the MX record - this should be straight forward, but they want it changed to a domain not an IP address.

SPF - not sure what this is, but apparently two text records need to be set up.

Domain Keys - couple of these, also not sure what they are.



Can anyone help clear this up in my mind.  :?  Is ZoneEdit the kind of thing I should be looking at to do this?

I used to use ZoneEdit.

It just adds "functionality" to your domain. Basically if the hosting company of your domain allow you to have only "5 subdomains" you can point the records at zoneedit, and theyll give you unlimited.

That kinda thing.

Does allow setting of mx records anyhows, but SPF and Domain keys... ive not heard of before.

Domain Keys:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys

QuoteDomainKeys is a method of e-mail authentication. Unlike some other methods, it offers almost end-to-end integrity from a signing to a verifying Mail Transfer Agent (MTA). In most cases the signing MTA acts on behalf of the sender, and the verifying MTA on behalf of the receiver.

SPF = Sender Policy Framework
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework

QuoteNormal SMTP allows any computer to send an e-mail claiming to be from anyone. Thus, its easy for spammers to send e-mail from forged addresses. This makes it difficult to trace back to where the spam truly comes from, and easy for spammers to hide their true identity in order to avoid responsibility. Many believe that the ability for anyone to forge sender addresses, a.k.a. Return-Paths, is a security flaw in modern SMTP, caused by an undesirable side-effect of the deprecation of source routes.

    Further information: Sender Rewriting Scheme (SRS)

SPF allows the owner of an Internet domain to use special format of DNS TXT records to specify which machines are authorized to transmit e-mail for that domain. For example, the owner of the example.org domain can designate which machines are authorized to send e-mail whose sender e-mail address ends with "@example.org". Receivers checking SPF can reject messages from unauthorized machines before receiving the body of the message. Thus, principles of operations are quite similar to those of DNSBL, except that SPF exploits the authority delegation scheme of the real Domain Name System.

The sender address is transmitted at the beginning of the SMTP dialog. If the server rejects the sender, the unauthorized client should send a Bounce message to that address. If the server accepts the sender, and subsequently also accepts the recipient(s) and the body of the message, it should insert a Return-Path header in the messages body in order to save the sender address. While the address in the Return-Path often matches other originator addresses in the mail header like "From:" or "Sender:" this is not necessarily the case, and SPF does not prevent forgeries of these other addresses.

So basically theyre designed to ensure integrity of an email.


Still not sure  where to set them up!