Hello everybody!
After looking on search engines, I have seen that it's possible to make a system that help unexperienced users to configure their mail servers by simply putting their email address and password (in Outlook, per exemple).
In fact, the software takes a look into the DNS records of the mail adress domain and check that there is a file called "autoconfig.xml", then, after reading this following file, the software copies the requested servers names and ports and validate the mail configuration without any manual technical config.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<clientConfig version="1.1">
<emailProvider id="hbis.fr">
<domain>hbis.fr</domain>
<displayName>mail server</displayName>
<displayShortName>mail server</displayShortName>
<incomingServer type="imap">
<hostname>mail.hbis.fr</hostname>
<port>143</port>
<socketType>STARTTLS</socketType>
<username>%EMAILADDRESS%</username>
<authentication>password-cleartext</authentication>
</incomingServer>
<incomingServer type="pop3">
<hostname>mail.hbis.fr</hostname>
<port>995</port>
<socketType>SSL</socketType>
<authentication>password-cleartext</authentication>
<username>%EMAILADDRESS%</username>
</incomingServer>
<outgoingServer type="smtp">
<hostname>mail.hbis.fr</hostname>
<port>587</port>
<socketType>STARTTLS</socketType>
<authentication>password-cleartext</authentication>
<username>%EMAILADDRESS%</username>
</outgoingServer>
</emailProvider>
</clientConfig>
Source: https://blog.hbis.fr/2012/11/05/thunderbird-autoconfig/ (
in French!)
After 2 years using ISPConfig, I managed to migrate all the websites, DNS, mails and other stuffs to CentOS Web Panel (because there is less to do than in ISPConfig and some functions are awesome). So I wonder if it is possible to make an addon like this stuff for ISPConfig:
https://github.com/cfoellmann/ISPC-resources/tree/master/guides/autodiscoverSo, we can add this kind of addon and make sure our clients will no longer have to call any assistance for setting up their emails :-)
What do you think about this idea? I just found it and it looks nice!