Interesting ways to use fastmail

[FredOnline]

Originally Posted by Berenburger

Yours missing.

It's nice to be able to put a face to a name, so I do occasionally check out the gallery.

For those that haven't posted a photo, I form in my imagination what they look like - and it's usually in the form of a character from Family Guy, as they range from benign to egomaniac!

[Bamb0]

Thanx BritTim ...... I tried to pull that up on the archive site but the earliest it has with that directory,its already gone

Would have been nice to see what it looked like originally.......

I think your doing a nice job though..........

[Grhm]

To steer the thread back on to its (ancient) topic...
Personally I make very considerable use of Fastmail's "website" functionality.
The photo gallery function is handy, but the thing I use most, and which really is a boon, is the ability to redirect any address on my domain to any external URL I choose.
Unfortunately, Fastmail have recently introduced a limit of just one hundred web addresses per user (that's 100 per user, not 100 per domain), which severely restricts the function's usefulness.

[somdcomputerguy]

Originally Posted by Grhm

Personally I make very considerable use of Fastmail's "website" functionality. The photo gallery function is handy, but the thing I use most, and which really is a boon, is the ability to redirect any address on my domain to any external URL I choose.

I have several subdomain.mydomain.com URLS. Some point to an external URL, some to a file or directory in my Fastmail account. I also have 'created' a couple email addresses that impersonate the real email address.

- Bruce

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by Grhm

To steer the thread back on to its (ancient) topic...
Personally I make very considerable use of Fastmail's "website" functionality.
The photo gallery function is handy, but the thing I use most, and which really is a boon, is the ability to redirect any address on my domain to any external URL I choose.
Unfortunately, Fastmail have recently introduced a limit of just one hundred web addresses per user (that's 100 per user, not 100 per domain), which severely restricts the function's usefulness.

That is a neat idea. Have you tried contacting support, explaining your use case and asking if the limit can be relaxed. I believe Fastmail does have a history of relaxing limits (normally if you are on the most expensive account level) where your requirement for a relaxed limit is reasonable.

[JamesHenderson]

Originally Posted by Grhm

To steer the thread back on to its (ancient) topic...
Personally I make very considerable use of Fastmail's "website" functionality.
The photo gallery function is handy, but the thing I use most, and which really is a boon, is the ability to redirect any address on my domain to any external URL I choose.
Unfortunately, Fastmail have recently introduced a limit of just one hundred web addresses per user (that's 100 per user, not 100 per domain), which severely restricts the function's usefulness.

I do this as well on one of my shorter personal domains so it's a bit like a url shortener but with easy-to-remember naming for URLs that I use often.

I do a similar thing with emails eg: I have one called [email protected], one for [email protected] and one for [email protected] point to my printer, Pushover.net and task-list addresses respectfully, but these easier to remember!

[Grhm]

Originally Posted by BritTim

That is a neat idea. Have you tried contacting support, explaining your use case and asking if the limit can be relaxed?

Yes. I went into quite a lot of detail about how exactly I use the website function and why I feel the need for more than 100 addresses.

The reply was:

Hi Graham,

Thank you very much for your patience on this and for the explanation!

This ticket has actually started off a lot of discussion here at FastMail; we actually have not had anyone hit these limits before. We can't raise limits for individual customers, unfortunately. Raising the limit for all customers may be possible, however it's not possible to raise it too much higher, and if we were to raise it at all, it would unfortunately only delay the inevitable for you, and you would eventually hit those limits as well. There would also be risks for other users using this system for malicious purposes if we were to raise the limit for all users.

The issue is that your use case is not something FastMail was designed for, so it may be preferable to find another service that can better serve these particular needs. A dedicated file sharing service like Dropbox might be a better option for sharing permanent links to files for your contacts. Similarly, it may be better to use a synced bookmarks solution for keeping your bookmarks across multiple devices rather than URL redirects. There are also many other services that would do a better job at URL shortening than us.

We are considering the potential for raising the limits on this, however unfortunately I can't promise anything here, nor can I promise a potential timeline. I am sorry for the difficulty this causes you, however if you would like any assistance in the meantime or have any questions about this, please feel free to update the ticket.

[BritTim]

I am surprised that Fastmail's design does not allow for customer specific limits, but otherwise Fastmail's response cannot be criticised, I think. They gave your request careful consideration. They acknowledge that what you want is reasonable, but say it is not something they anticipated, and they are unable to help. Unfortunate, but surely reasonable.

[Grhm]

Yes, I have no complaint. But it does beg the question, if my practical use of the website facility, and in particular the 'redirect' function, "is not something Fastmail was designed for", what exactly was that function designed for?

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by Grhm

Yes, I have no complaint. But it does beg the question, if my practical use of the website facility, and in particular the 'redirect' function, "is not something Fastmail was designed for", what exactly was that function designed for?

While I cannot answer that for sure, this is my guess. The Fastmail website support is very basic. Often we may create an extremely basic website based on Fastmail, but then decide we need something much more sophisticated, using another service. If we are using a custom domain, that is no problem. However, if we used a Fastmail alias, we will be using a different domain on the new service. The redirect function means that people are seamlessly sent to the new website implementation without needing to know it has moved.

[Grhm]

Yes, that is plausible.
But I can't see where the harm would be in allowing users to use the web-site facility in more generalised ways.