Virtual Domain Manager

VDM is the system used to control mail accounts and domains. Most operations require that you have a valid ID and password.

There are two types of object in the system: domains and accounts. All accounts are contained in domains, so the account for someone who receives mail as joe@example.org will be found inside the example.org domain.

Mail Addresses and Mail Boxes

It is important to be aware of the difference between a mail address and a mail box. Addresses are strings of text, like "joe@example.org" but mailboxes are places to store messages. Just as a letterbox on a house can receive mail for many people, so a mailbox can receive mail for many addresses.

For convenience, VDM allows you to attach one address to every mailbox when it is created. If more addresses are needed they should be specified later. See below for more detail on how to do this.

Domains

In a mail address, the domain is the part after the "@" symbol. Many people can have mail addresses in a domain. VDM administrators can create new mail domains, but they will not start to receive mail from other machines until the Internet DNS (Domain Name System) has been updated to show that this system is handling mail for the domain.

VDM allows mail to be forwarded from one domain to another. A choice of mechanisms is available:

• Mail sent to an individual address such as joe@example.org can be forwarded to one or more different mail addresses.
• Mail sent to all addresses in the domain can be forwarded to one or more different mail addresses. This can be useful where the domain is owned by an individual or a small group who share a single mailbox.
• Mail sent to all addresses in the domain can be forwarded to another domain with the left-hand-side of the address unchanged. This is useful where an organisation has several domain names and wants identical mail addresses in each of them.

Accounts

VDM accounts can be used in several ways. They can represent people who receive mail on the system, mail aliases, or administrators.

The most common use is for an account to be associated with a person. In this case, it will record the name of the person, the ID and password that they use to access their mailbox, and their main mail address.

Another common use for VDM accounts is to represent mail aliases. In this case, the account will record the address that mail is addressed to and also the address that it will be forwarded on to.

About searching

All the search boxes in VDM can do two types of search. Normally they search for an exact match, so the search string that you type must match every letter of the thing you are searching for (though case differences are ignored). However, if you use the "*" character in the search, it acts as a wildcard, matching zero or more characters. This allows for simple substring searching, e.g.:

The Navigation Bar

The title bar at the top of each page contains a navigation bar with links to the VDM home page, to the help system, and also to pages for logging in and logging out.

The Help system

The Help option is context-sensitive: each page links to its own Help page.