a few suggestions

[visitor]

Hi
I have a few suggestions which I'm sure wouldn’t take much to implement, and would benefit all, including HostGator.

1, Provide a "delete all" incoming email, unless there a match with a white list.

2, Fix the problem with nonexistent.php 404 errors.

1/ A lot of people set up email addresses for personal use for friends, and provide a @hotmail.com for everyone else. A lot of people set up email to receive payments, for example paypal.

There isn’t anything available in cpanel to combat problem spam, even Spam assassin and box trapper don’t provide a solution. I've seen it in old cpanels, but cant remember much about it. > NUL

In other words all incoming email is deleted, unless it matches someone in your white list..

2/ I came across this by accident, if someone calls up a HTML page that does not exist, your custom 404.shtml page is displayed.

However if someone calls up a PHP page that does not exist, then the normal white page is shown.

I've read if your custom error pages are too small, IE will take the liberty of serving its own proprietary web page, 500 bytes I believe, I've also read that I.E settings "Show friendly HTTP errors" should be switched off, no use at all because millions use default settings.

I don’t know why, but if you call up a nonexistent.php page its passed to the php interpreter without checks.

The only way I could fix this was to set this up

.htaccess

Rewritecond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_URI} !-f
RewriteRule .php$ /404.php

ErrorDocument 400 /400.shtml
ErrorDocument 401 /401.shtml
ErrorDocument 404 /404.php
ErrorDocument 500 /500.shtml

Notice the 404 error

Now anyone calling up a nonexistent.php page will bring up the custom 404 error page

Just two niggle complaints with a otherwise very good system...

[GatorEricS]

1. This is possible through BoxTrapper. Edit your Boxtrapper whitelist to allow everyone through you wish to receive. Others will be trapped. You can manually add addresses such as @paypal.com, etc, to the white list. Combine this with Spam Assassin, and the overly zealous spammers that actually take the time to respond to a boxtrapper message, will get zapped by SA.

You can also experiment with the filters setting under cPanel -> Mail -> Filters. This may do what you're looking for.

2. Unfortunately, yes, this is a function of the php system. That's a pretty good way around it, though, mind if I steal that for my code archives?

[visitor]

1/ no I have it set up, and spammers use fake email addresses, so I get lots of bounced emails instead, which is just as bad as getting the spam in the first place.

> spam email > box trapper reply > bounce reply > box trapper reply and so on

2, yes perhaps add it somewhere so we dont have to edit our files