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 BarkMail
 Some general tips for using email
Email style
  • With the amount of spam circulating on internet it is important that your emails are not filtered out!  Think carefully about the subject and put words in it that will show that it is genuine. i.e. avoid things like "Hi", "free offer" or "you will be amazed by this!". Many offices bin all messages that are not clearly recognisable as not being spam. WWOOF gets around 600 spam emails a day, most of which get filtered out without being read. If you are contacting WWOOF always put the word "WWOOF" in the subject.
  • Don't send emails to long lists of people.  When you do this, you are exposing all your friends' emails to viruses and spam. If you have to send a message to more than one person, use the BCC (blind carbon copy) facility which keeps the email addresses hidden from view. If you are using Outlook Express and you can't see a BCC field, start to create your mesage, and select View / All Headers.
  • Try to move away as soon as possible from using free email systems such as Hotmail and Yahoo.  Such emails are more and more often blacklisted and fail due to filling up with spam. Get yourself a reliable, professionally-managed, spam- and virus-filtered email address. Keep your free email system going in parallel until your friends get the message.
  • Never respond to spam by asking to be removed from their mailing list.  All this does is confirm to the spam sender that your email address is valid and your spam problem will get worse.
  • If you have a website, don't put your email address on it.  Spiders roam the internet and pick these up, using them to generate spam. There are ways around having your address exposed on your website - get advice from a website designer.

Don't send or open attachments in any format that can act as a virus carrier.
Opening - Be VERY cautious about opening attachments. Many document types can have virus programs embedded in them, often without the person sending you the email being aware.

Only open attachments from people:

  • you know
  • who understand about viruses
  • and who you trust to use an up-to-date virus checker

    If you are in any doubt reply to their email asking them to send the information as "plain text".  Never under any circumstances open a WORD or EXE attachment directly.  Always use a viewer that disables any programs that may be hidden within. WORD documents can be opened with WordPad, which is a simple viewer.

    You should have virus checking software running on your computer.

    Sending  - Do not send file types that could contain viruses. Cut and paste text from documents into your email. WORD documents are a proprietary format that your recipient may not be able to read. You are also encouraging the stranglehold of Microsoft's dominance. If you have to send WORD documents, first save the document as (Save As) an RTF file.

    Don't send attachments at all until you have cleared with the recipients that they are ready to receive them.  Send a short message first and then detail exactly what you are sending. Many offices never open attachments.

    Pictures
    The file size of pictures taken on a digital camera can be very large, do not copy them unedited to a number of friends. Use a utility such as irfanview to reduce the file size before emailing or (better) save the pictures to your own web space and give friends the link.

    Address Book
    There are two ways to add people to your address book:

    The first, more straightforward way, is to click on the Add to contacts button as you look at emails in your InBox or SentItems folder

    Alternatively, use the Address Book menu option to add people to your address book.

    When you have composed a message you can then click on the TO button on the left hand side. This will allow you to select from the address book.

    After you have added someone to your address book, you can edit the entry and check the Favourite box and this will add the person to the Address Book menu. This way, when you compose a message, you can select the recipients directly from the Address Book menu.

    Sending and receiving emails using a program on your computer 
    One of the reasons for setting up barkmail was to allow wwoofers around the world (or away from home at any rate) to keep in touch from internet cafes or anywhere they could get access to the internet. This online method can be done from any browser by logging into mail.barkmail.com. All your received, sent and deleted mail is available where and when you want them.

    However the more usual offline method of using email is still available with barkmail. For this you will have a program such as Eudora or Outlook Express that receives and sends messages in batches and the filing is all done on your computer at home.

    Each application will have a slightly different way of setting up email accounts, here are examples for Outlook Express and Eudora. You will probably be able to extrapolate from these. For barkmail to work you need to set SMTP Authentication ON. In Outlook Express this defaults correctly - see the pictures.

    Alternatively you will be able to find a large amount of detailed information on the web site help page of the barkmail host. Go to their home page then Support->Knowledge Base and look for a key word anywhere in any of the articles. (Their pages use pop-up windows so you will have to allow them if you have XP Service Pack 2 installed!)

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