Overview
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 into any address at blog.example.com since it doesn't exist. The mirror just forwards to the real email address.
A note about DNS
This 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.
Creating a Mail Mirror
- Navigate to the Custom MX page.
- 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.
- On the next page, scroll down to the 'Mail Mirror' section.
- From the dropdown, select the domain you want to Mirror mail for. This will be the domain that forwards email to the actual address. In the example above, any email sent to 'example.dreamhosters.com' will be forwarded to the corresponding address at 'example.com'.
- Click the button 'Mirror this domain's email addresses now!'. A success message displays notifying you that it will take a few hours for the DNS records to update online.
How it functions
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.
Remove a Mail Mirror
- Navigate to the Custom MX page.
- Click the Edit button to the right of the domain you want to remove the mirror from.
- The first section is titled 'Regular DreamHost Email'. Click the Make me regular now! button.
- This removes the mirror and sets the domain's email up to be fully hosted at DreamHost. You can then add an email address to the domain normally.
