Recent Changes to SmartSpace July 2010

SmartSpace has undergone some major changes in recent weeks, all designed to improve the performance, reliability and scaling of the system.

Up until now, SmartSpace has resided on a development server which, unfortunately, was not possible to upgrade to the level which was necessary for the performance we envisaged. Now, the scripts which generate all SmartSpace web pages are typically running about ten times faster than previously. We apologise for any inconvenience caused by the server change over.

Whilst this does not mean a lot in terms of actual page download times, the system can now cope with a far greater amount of traffic, meaning web viewing in peak times will be similar to low load times.

Important Changes To Note

Changes to Administration Pages

There has been a significant change in the directory structure of the Control Panel and Membership/Customer manager. Thousands of links have been altered to reflect the structural changes made

If you have bookmarks or favourites saved for links to these back-end pages, they may not work as expected or you may be redirected to the correct page.

Please adjust your booksmarks or favourites to ensure that they go directly to the correct pages, as the redirects will be taken away in a few weeks.

If you only use the menu to navigate, you should not have any problems in managing your website.

If you see a redirect page when using the menus to manage your website, or a button to save or update a form,  please advise SmartSpace immediately so that the bug can be fixed ASAP

• Take note of the link you clicked
• Also note the page from which you came and the page you were going to.
• More often than not, the  bug can be fixed within minutes

Please note,  that if you see a redirect page after updating or saving information in a form, your changes will not be saved - contact SmartSpace immediately

Bulk Email

Significant changes to how the Bulk Email system works have been largely completed. The main difference is that soon, anyone who uses the Bulk Email system will need to use their own outgoing mailserver settings to send bulk emails.

As the volume of bulk mail from the SmartSapce webserver increases, the chances of the server being blacklisted as a spammer also increases. By channelling your own bulk email through your own mailserver, it keeps the level of emails sent at a reasonable level.

• SmartSpace now also sends these emails out on a scheduled basis, so that thousands of emails cannot be sent in  a matter of moments, which can cause problems with servers and increases the liklihood of being labelled a spammer.
• Your emails are now placed in a queue which is processed every ten minutes, sending a limited number of emails each time. Your emails should not take more than about an hour to be sent at this time.
• Once you put these Bulk Emails in the queue, you do not need to be connected to the internet for the emails to be sent.
• You can view the progress of your Bulk Email by logging in and going to Control Panel > Manage Group Emails > (select the email subject and click)

What You Need To Do

1. Get your outgoing mailserver address and password, usually provided to you by your internet service provider(isp)
2. Login to your website and navigate to Control Panel > Trader Set Up > Email (From the preferences selections)
   • Insert your mailserver address eg smtp.myisp.com.au
   • Insert your username which is sometimes the email address provided to you by your isp.
3. You can also make other selections to customise the way your Bulk Emails are sent
   • Using a different "From" email address to the one recorded in your trader record
   • Insert a custom footer at the end of every bulk email you send
   • Send emails in Plain Text or HTML format
   • (these changes have been previously advised)
4. Please note that when you send emails in HTML format, you must insert links into the email using the link tool which appears when you create your HTML email.
5. When sending in plain text format, you only need to place the link on a separate line for email programs to read it as a hyperlink
6. After July 31st 2010, you will not be able to send bulk emails unless you have your outgoing webserver details entered
   
7. The emails which are generated by the SmartSpace system for contacts and advice on a range of matters will continue to be sent by the SmartSpace mailserver
8. Please contact me if you need further information on sending bulk emails or making these new settings

Webmail

For all those who have an email addresses with SmartSpace and access it via the internet, you should now access your webmail using the following address.

webmail.yourdomainname.com  - where yourdomainname.com is your actual domain name. Use your email and email password to access your email.

• There are some extra tools you can now use to change email settings if you wish.
• You can have the mail interface bypass these extra settings if you wish by selecting "Enable Autoload" from the pre mail selections
• If you change your password in this area, you need to change the settings in your Global Account Details where these settings are stored for timely access by you and SmartSpace staff if required
• Please note that if your email is being redirected to another email address, no email will ever be available by the SmartSpace webmail system