Mail Mirror overview

Overview

The following explains what Mail Mirroring is and how to use it on your domain.

Background

What is Mail Mirroring?

Mail Mirroring is a quick way to create forwards for an entire domain. This is also known as an alias.

For example, if you have 10 email addresses set up at example.com, you could create a mail mirror at blog.example.com. If you then send an email to any of those 10 addresses at blog.example.com (such as user@blog.example.com), they are automatically forwarded to the corresponding email at example.com (user@example.com).

Please note that you cannot log in to any address at blog.example.com since it doesn't exist. The mirror just forwards to the real email address.

Example of Mail Mirroring

If you've set up a Mail Mirror for blog.example.com that mirrors example.com, the mirror will work in the following way:

• Mail sent to a blog.example.com (mirrored) address will be forwarded to the (real) example.com address. For example, an email to user@blog.example.com will be viewable at user@example.com.

A note about DNS

The Mail Mirroring feature can only be used if example.com is using DreamHost to host its mail. If example.com is using Anti-spam filtering at DreamHost, you must also enable it for blog.example.com as well.

How to configure a Mail Mirror

The following sections describe how to create and remove a Mail Mirror.

Creating a Mail Mirror

1. Navigate to the Custom MX page.
2. Click the Edit button to the right of the domain you want to create a mirror for. This domain will probably not have any email addresses created. You're going to use this domain to Mirror the domain that already has email set up.
3. Scroll down to the Mail Mirror section on the next page.
4. Select the domain you want to mirror mail from the dropdown. This will be the domain that forwards email to the actual address. For example, any email sent to example.dreamhosters.com will be forwarded to the corresponding address at example.com.
5. Click the Mirror this domain's email addresses now! button. A success message displays, notifying you that the DNS records will take a few hours to update online.

Removing a Mail Mirror

1. Navigate to the Custom MX page.
2. Click the Edit button to the right of the domain you want to remove the mirror from.
3. Click the Make me regular now! button in the Regular DreamHost Email section. This removes the mirror and sets up the domain's email to be fully hosted at DreamHost.
4. Add an email address to the domain normally.

See also

• Email client configuration overview
• Create an autoresponder
• Modifying an email address