Name: John Angel

Sysop of: The Meditative Mind

Mail: grasshopper@dragonflymoon.org

BBS: telnet: telnet://oneness-bbs.dragonflymoon.org

Location: Fitchburg, WI

Callsign: AC9RE

I was a SYSOP in the late 80's early 90's running Red Ryder Host BBS software and named the BBS “Ghost Ryder” not based off of the Marvel Comics. I ran it for a short time when I lived in Memphis, TN. In the early 90's I also started getting interested in Amateur Radio and today I hold my Extra Class license. But back then I only held a Technician - No Code license. I participated largely in the W4BS Radio Club. Worked VHF alot! After the internet and time killed off my BBS I focused more on Amateur radio. I started getting nostalgic and wondered if there were any BBSes left in the world and then I found that they do on telnet! I started dabbling with it again and found that the small community within the confines of your own BBS was nice and cozy. No “accidentally” posting a message to the entire internet. Unless you intentionally wanted to. It was nice to see some BBSes still humming along and with a user base.

In order to prevent one's emails from being labeled as SPAM, or worse, rejected. More and more Servers are starting to reject email that is not being secured to prove that it has come from a reliable source and not some spammer. This page will walk through the steps of securing your email server.

Note: This page assumes one owns a domain name and that domain name is the name to be used for one's BBS. If one uses synchro.net for emailing purposes, this will not apply in that case.

1. Find a Dynamic Domain Server (DDNS) provider
   1. There are many out there. There are even some free ones that will give at least one address which is all that is needed
   2. This provider should provide directions on this initial setup
2. Setup an “A” record with whatever name is appropriate
   1. This name won't be visible and serves as just a target for one's owned domain name to point to
3. Next step is to setup records on the owned Domain Name

1. Log into one's provider of the domain name
2. Create an “A” record for the owned domain name
3. Create a “CNAME” record with the host name as one's BBS name or something else if prefered (i.e. this will be the address of one's BBS)
   1. This should point to the address created in the DDNS provider
4. Create another “CNAME” record with the host name as 'mail' or some name that signifies it will be the name of the SMTP address
   1. This should also point to the address created in the DDNS provider
5. Create a “MX” record and the host name should be the “@” symbol
   1. This should point to the 'CNAME' in step 4
6. Next is to setup the “TXT” records that make the email being served more secure

1. Still logged into one's provider of the owned domain name, create a “TXT” record (i.e. This will be the SPF record)
   1. The host name should be the “@” symbol
   2. The TXT Value will contain the information that will state which domain names and IPs are OK if email comes from one of those. One will want to include all possible URL/IP addresses that could serve up email. This part takes a little more effort to get the text right. Thankfully there are free tools available on the internet that will generate the SPF text for you. These are a couple of those sites.
      1. https://www.spfwizard.net/
      2. https://www.dmarcanalyzer.com/spf/spf-record-generator/ (shows how to create an SPF record manually)
2. Create another “TXT” record (i.e. This will be the DMARC record)