Thanks, Dallas, for taking the time to explain the limits more thoroughly then I have seen so far, and for sharing the reasoning and goals behind them.
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One key piece of information here is the limits are set per user so they can be adjusted if there is sufficient need for that. We're not trying to prevent you from running your website.
I, for one, am encouraged most by that statement. I'm choosing to read that to mean DH will work with us if legitimate mail needed to operate a site should run up against those general limits (assuming they have not already maxed out CPU usage before that happens - tongue in cheek bit there). That seems fair enough to me, especially if there is a mechanism to get it adjusted "quickly" when Oprah of Slashdot sends half the internet to one of my sites (Yea! Oh... sh*T! OH! S*(*&^%T!!!)
Some of us (lazy? and I *am* referring to myself here) should probably reconsider running numerous websites under our "master" (or any single) user. It was *so* convenient to do that, but the "by user" limits means it would make more sense to run *each site* as it's own user, in order to avoid running up against the email (and, I suppose, CPU!) limits.
Your sense of "fair play" is to be commended :
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We can't just block all AOL users from sending email through our servers, unfortunately, though it has definitely been considered.
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Now that is a great example of "taking the high road", or "being the bigger person" if I ever saw one, as AOL seems to have had no qualms about blocking email from entire DH servers frequently and repeatedly. I hope that "what goes around comes around" for DH with that "enlightened" attitude. You guys reallly do "rock", and deserve a little (lot!) more respect from some of these other providers for all that you do to keep spam from hitting them from DH.
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These limits are in place to safeguard our network as much as possible from being blocked by other email providers and also to protect your accounts from being hijacked and used to send spam.
Reasonable, and noble goals to be sure, and probably necessary to a greater degree now than a few years ago at DH, given the hugh influx of new users and their scripts. It is also worth mentioning that we are given *lots* of freedom to run scripts of many kinds and of greatly differing quality. I *think* I would rather have these kinds of "safeguards" in place, and be able to enjoy greater freedom to run what I want, then to be restricted to a "select handful of approved scripts", which I think would be the only reasonable alternative to such safeguards.
Maybe, if the support burden wasn't too great, as an alternative to the email limits, DH could "approve" a site's software and , in conjunction with some other "vetting" (such as length of time with DH, track record, etc.), selectively raise/remove limits *before* they get maxed out.
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It's much better for everyone involved for a hijacked account to only send out a few hundred spams instead of tens or hundreds of thousands.
I absolutely agree with that statement! No one can authoritatively state that their site/script "cannot be cracked". No slam intended at any of you "wizards" out there, but everyday brings a new threat. I ran a "safe" (and very popular around the net) php formmail script for almost a year without incident, as did many others, but the day came when the crackers found an way to exploit it, and I had to dump it. Better that DH limits the damage done in such a circumstance than have us all suffer the consequences when the thing breaks down.
Dallas, thanks again for taking the time to post. After reading your post, I'm not nearly as discouraged by the email limits as I was. I hate to add another bunch of users to DH, but it seems the way to go...Now, for a whole lot of re-configuring to make each of the sites I manage run as its own user...how will I ever keep all those users/passwords
straight ;-)?
--rlparker