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Installing Autoresponders

E-mail Autoresponders
An easy way to distribute information about your company to your potential clientele is to set up an autoresponder. An autoresponder is an e-mail alias which executes an autoreply executable that responds to a mail message sent to an address on your site. The autoreply executable in turn replies to the sender with a message containing the contents of a specified file. The contents of the response can include such useful information as a FAQ, marketing plan, or product listing.

A presentation of the installation and configuration of E-mail Autoresponders is given below.

Installing the Autoreply Executable
To install the autoreply executable, telnet or SSH to your Virtual Server and perform the following steps:

  1. Make your home directory the current working directory, type "cd" at your telnet prompt and then hit the return key.
  2. Copy the "autoreply" executable from "/usr/local/contrib" into your "~/usr/bin" directory, type the following:

    cp /usr/local/contrib/autoreply ~/usr/bin

  3. Make sure the "autoreply" program has execute privileges, type:

    chmod 775 ~/usr/bin/autoreply

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Manually Creating E-mail Autoresponders
Creating an e-mail autoresponder manually is not hard at all, follow these step-by-step procedures.

To manually create an autoresponder you will need to edit the "~/etc/aliases" file on your Virtual Server. Telnet to your Virtual Server and open the "aliases" file in your favorite file editor. The e-mail autoresponder alias has the general form:

alias: ADDR, "|/usr/bin/autoreply -f NAME -m MESSAGE -a alias"

The "alias" represents the name of your e-mail alias, you will want to change this to be the name of your e-mail autoresponder. For example, you may want to set up an autoresponder for "info", therefore you would want to change the two occurrences of "alias" for "info".

The "ADDR" specifies other e-mail addresses in the autoresponder alias, indicating that mail sent to the address should also be sent to the list of mail address(es). Without specifiying other e-mail addresses, the mail from the customer will not be seen.

The "-f" allows you to change what address will be listed in the "From:" field in the message the customer receives from the autoresponder. For example, if you specified "webmaster" as the value of "NAME" in the line above, the "From:" field will have the value "webmaster@your_domain_name".

The "-m" allows you to specify a file that contains the message the customer receives from the autoresponder. If no message is specified, the autoresponder will send back the contents of the ".autoreply" file in your Virtual Server home directory. For example, if you would like the contents of the file located at "~/etc/message" returned to the sender, you would specify "/etc/message" as the value of "MESSAGE" in the line above.

An example of a typical autoresponder e-mail alias is shown below:

info: sales, "|/usr/bin/autoreply -f sales -m /etc/messages/FAQ -a info"

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Customizing Message Headers
You can set message headers such as "Reply-To:" and "Subject:" in the autoresponse by including the headers on the first lines of the message file. The headers must be separated from the rest of the message body by a blank line. For example, if you wanted to set the "Subject:" header of an autoresponse your message file may look like the following: 

    Subject: Your Information Request
    
    Thank you for your interest in our company.  We appreciate your
    consideration and ....
    .
    . [the rest of the message body]
    .
    .

You can include any number of other headers such as "Reply-To:", just be certain to separate the headers from the body of the message with a blank line.

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Last Updated: 11 June, 2000  · Email support web site errors to webmaster@we-host.com

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