Hello all,
First, let me thank all of you that will be taking the time to read this and hopefully provide me with some insight.
Secondly, please forgive my lack of knowledge of the subject. I am trying to self teach as I currently cannot afford to go to school. But enough about that, lets get on to my question.
I have the following software installed on a machine at home:
- Microsoft Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition
- Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Developer
- PHP 5.3.6
- PHPBB 3.0.8
I also have a registered domain name of millergaming.net through register.com, of which I have a single E-mail address from. On the machine at home, I have installed the Web Server (IIS) role and also the SMTP feature. everything is up to date as far as patches / updates go.
Now what I am wanting to accomplish is this - I am currently running a forum on my machine at home, but am having some difficulty setting up SMTP properly. My first question I suppose should be is - Is this all I need to have and host any E-Mail address that I want ending in @millergaming.net? I currently have the board set up to use the register.com SMTP server, but unfortunately, that gives everyone that gets E-Mail from the board my personal address. My ideal situation would be to be able to use an E-Mail address such as forums@millergaming.net or the like. Preferably it would be either an invalid E-Mail address, or at least an unmonitored one.
Now for an ethical concern, I am not wanting to send out loads and loads of spam with a spoofed E-Mail address, but when the forums send out notifications such as a user having a new private message, I do not want tons of E-mail for those that just hit reply to clutter up my mailbox. The boards themselves are supposed to be able to send E-Mail with somehting called mail() function, which I believe is a PHP thing, but not sure.
I have seen references to the Microsoft Exchange Server, but to be honest, I do not have that kind of money for a personal project. So I was wondering if what I listed above was enough to basically host my own E-mail addresses using the @millergaming.net extension. I have spoken to the register.com people, and explained what I was trying to do, but they said that they do not support relays. I have no idea what that means, but basically he said that what I was wanting to accomplish could not be done. In looking through the options in my CP from register.com, I noticed an area that I could edit MX and DNS records. Is this something that I can use to help me accomplish my goals? At most, I should need only about 20 E-Mail addresses.
So, I hope I haven't sounded too much like an idiot, as I am trying my best to understand. So if there is any advice you would be happy to give, it would be appreciated beyond measure. If you need any clarification on anything, or more information, please do not hesitate to tell me, and I can provide you with anything that I either know how to get to, or can reasearch how to get to, and will gladly report back.
Thanks in advance,
Pherix