Filtering

For years, I have filtered my email into different categories — mailing lists, system administration, email forwards, and so on. Thus far, I have always done so on the client side, in my email client. Since switching to IMAP email a number of years ago, the big question became how to standardize those rules across different computers I might use during a given day.

.Mac (now MobileMe) paved the way, back in 2004 when I first signed up for it, by offering a convenient way to synchronize quite a few system settings, including filter rules. It worked great for keeping things humming along on my laptop and desktop. However with the advent of lighter clients such as the iPhone, a crack appeared in my system — the iPhone doesn't do filtering. Nor would my email be filtered if I viewed it in webmail. The situation has become more apparent since I started using an iPad, which, like the iPhone, lacks rules support.

All that said, I have finally broken down and tried server side filter rules. My main rules are now being applied on my server as messages come in. CPanel makes such filtering remarkably easy to setup. So far, so good.

Please let me know if you send me anything and do not receive a reply, however!