So many times that users with outlook express loose their emails, so I have to recover their emails. If they got lucky, I can recover their emails. If they not, the emails is lost.

One user came to me because her outlook express can’t start. I tried to start it and wait for 1 hour, nothing happen. Form the task manager I can see that outlook express is working because the process use almost 100% of cpu resource.

The Outlook express simply can’t start. Usually when this kind of problem happen, I will boot up to safe mode and run outlook express. Most of the time that will solved the problem. But not this one. I already tried to boot to safe mode, run outlook express and wait for more then another 1 hours and nothing happen.

So I tried another way.

I create another identity in outlook express, and try to import messages from the original store folder. First, it start to import the messages but then it stop.

Curious, I start again. And again it stop.

So, I tried again, but now I import one folder at a time. One folder imported, another folder imported, and it stop when I tried to import the inbox folder.

Curious, I did it again and it gave me the same result.

So, the conclusion is the problem caused by the corrupted inbox folder. I moved the inbox folder to another folder then start outlook express, and it started fine. Outlook express will created a new inbox folder.

All I have to do next is to recover the inbox folder into many eml files, then copied them back to the new inbox folder. Solved.

So, I just wasted my full day of work just to fix one unreliable outlook express email client.

To become a good mail administrator you have to have a lot of patients. Really, based on my 12 years of experiences.

Don’t believe me?

This is my conversations with my users over the phone.

User : The server is down (it’s not a question).
Me : Which server?
User : (silent) That server.
Me : (guessing that will be the mail server) No, the server is not down.
User : But I can’t connect to the server.
Me : Is your friend that sit next to you can’t connect to server too?
User : (I can hear that he asking the question to his friend) No, he can connect to the server.
Me : So the problem is in your computer, not the server. What is your computer name so I can remotely access from here?
User : (long silent) My computer name is samsung.
Me : (confuse) Your computer name is samsung? (ping samsung, got reply time out).
User : Yes, it written here samsung.
Me : Written where?
User : Here in my monitor.
Me : (big smile in the face) No, it’s not your computer name, is the brand of your monitor.
User : (silent) How do I know my computer name?
Me : No, it’s Ok. What is your email address? (I can found out his computer name from the server)
User : (silent) You don’t know my email address?
Me : (can’t help it, now I’m laughing) Sorry, who is this again?

It’s not happen everyday, but some times this kind of conversations do happen.

Web hosting is going to be cheaper and cheaper everyday, for wordpress you can go for shared hosting.

Shared hosting is enough for most blogger, it’s capable to serve up to hundreds or even thousands of visitors a day. You can find shared hosting price range from $1 and up to $6 per month. More than that, just too expensive.

There are so many web hosting available, you need to choose the one that good enough to host your blog and of course that fit with your budget.

These are tips for you to choose the right web hosting. I hope these tips can help you to find one.

Research, research and research
Find as many reviews about web hosting as you can find, do the research and take your time. You can start research from these two forums.

1. http://www.webhostingtalk.com
2. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=98.

Read the forums carefully, it will help you to find the web hosting that right for you.
But don’t stop there, if you still have the times, do more research, and google is your friend.

Reputation
Choose web hosting only from reputable web hosting. Do not fall for cheap and brand new web hosting company, many of them are just hit and run type of web hosting. They start last month and will be gone in the next month. In the next two month they will create another web hosting company with different name.
Better choose a web hosting company that already in business for years with good reputations. Mostly they will cost you more, but your blog will be safe.

TOS - Terms of Services
Read the TOS carefully and understand it. There are so many restrictions in TOS that you need to know. You don’t want your blog being suspended or even terminated because you just broken their TOS.
As example, one of my blog suspended because it take too many cpu resources. I have to negotiate with the web hosting and redesign the blog.

Resources

Right now, there are so many web hosting that offers you unlimited space and unlimited bandwith. Please remind this, there is no such thing as unlimited resources. Any web hosting that offers unlimited space and unlimited bandwith only trying to tricks you.

You do not need unlimited web space for your blog, believe me, 1 GB web space is more than enough for most bloggers. That is why their offer unlimited space, because they know that you will not use it more than 1 GB for your blog.

If they offers you unlimited space or unlimited bandwith, read the TOS again, usually there are certain file types or certain services that not allowed.

Examples:
You have unlimited space but you can’t use it to save big files.
You have unlimited bandwith but you can’t stream videos.
So what the points?

Specially note about cpu resources.
Select your wordpress plugins carefully, you don’t want that because only one plugins your blog will eat up cpu resources and then your blog got suspended because your blog broken the TOS.

Fantastico
Most web hosting support fantastico, but to be safe make sure that your web host support it. It will make your life easier. You can upgrade your wordpress blog in only two clicks.

That are my tips to choose a good web hosting company for your blog, I hope that these tips will help you to find one.

Yes, is not easy to own your own blog, specially with wordpress. But that just a minor thing to pay, and in rewards you can own your own blog powered with the most powerfull and flexible blog software available.

If you not willing to take this kind of problems, you can just keep on blogging in blogger if you can live with so many limitations.

My choice of Dopod 900 because it upgradable, VGA display, Wifi, 3G and most important thing is qwerty keyboard. The first thing I did is upgraded the OS form Windows Mobile 5 to Windows Mobile 6.1. The upgrade process is easy enough for a newbie like me.

Dopod 900 is very big and heavy compare with others PDA phones. I will not use it as a mobile phone, and actually I will not consider it as a mobile phone at all. I consider it as a PDA with wireless capabilities. You still can use it as a phone if you want, but I recommended to use a handsfree, wired or bluetooth one.

My second choice is Dopod 838 Pro, also have the same features but with smaller QVGA display, but smaller than Dopod 900 and have 3.5G instead of 3G. The most advantage is that because Dopod 838 Pro smaller than Dopod 900, Dopod 838 Pro much more usable as an ordinary phone.

I choose Dopod 900 because of VGA display. With VGA display, it very pleasure to read email and surf the net. Many software doesn’t works nicely in VGA display, and what worst is that Dopod 900 doesn’t have extra four buttons like many other Windows Mobile PDA’s , so many games that required the extra four buttons will not run at all.

Because this gadget is designed as a wireless gadget, I bought a data plan for Dopod 900, unlimited data plan, so I can maximize the use of it.

Overall this gadget is a very useful gadget for me. I mostly use it to read and write emails and surf the net. I also use it to do routine check of the servers. I can do it remotely via ssh or vnc. Fortunately most log files are sent through email so it easier for me to check the status of the servers. If I need serious work, than I will switch to a notebook and use Dopod 900 as a 3G modem. I can do it all of it with my Nokia E61, but with Dopod 900 I can do it better with larger display.

With so many capabilities, I still keep my ordinary mobile phone. But that the trade of that I willing to take rather than to use it as a mobile phone.

• Domino Web Access
• Domino Web Access Lite
• Domino Web Access Ultra Lite

Big thanks to Gunawan’s blog who give me the news about the new web access ultra lite and how to enable it.

Domino Web Access
This is the standard web access. If your main internet browser is Internet Explorer and you have fast internet connection, than this kind of web access is the most suitable for you.
As normal Lotus Notes client, It give you more features, like preview and full access to your calendar.
I still having problem to access Domino Web Access via my Firefox 3.0.1, it still buggy. One big problem that I can’t attached any files to new email. I’m not sure if the problem is in Domino or Firefox, but I do hope that both parties can work together to solved this problem.

Domino Web Access Lite
As in the name, this web access is a liter web access version than the standard. If you have slow or medium internet connection maybe you can try this web access. It does not give you preview and full calendar functionality, but it will give you tabs for email and sidebar for calendaring.
You can easily change from full dwa to lite dwa from the right top menu.

Domino Web Access Ultra Lite
This is new since Lotus Domino 8.02, designed for mobile users with smartphone or pda. It designed to run on iphone but it run perfectly in my Opera Mini under my Nokia E61. But because of the landscape screen in Nokia E61 , the icons does not fit very well. It should fit well in any screen that in portrait mode.
As in Gunawan’s Blog you can try to access your Domino Web Access Ultra Lite via Google Chrome, but because Google Chrome is using some part of Opera engine, I think it should run in Opera browser too (it run in my Opera Mini).

Domino still support standard webmail for older internet browser or non standard internet browser (I can access webmail via Opera Mini).
For more security, it is wise to enable SSL encryption in your web server to prevent someone else hacking into your data, specially your username and password.

This is the error message

—– Transcript of session follows —– … while talking to
some.domain.com.:
>>> DATA
<<< 554 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]
blocked
using dnsbl-2.uceprotect.net; Net xxx.xxx.0.0/16 is UCEPROTECT-Level2 listed
because of 301 abusers. Your ISP xxx has to fix this. See:
httpx://www.uceprotect.net/rblcheck.php?ipr=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
554 5.0.0 Service unavailable
<<< 554 5.5.1 Error: no valid recipients

I heard about uceprotect before, how they block the entire ISP’s IP just because of some users of that ISP sending spam emails, but never though that will happen to me.

Normal rbl (dnsl) usually only block certain IP’s, but this uceprotect “smart” and “brave” enough to block the whole ISP’s IP range.

Simply said that I’m getting punished by uceprotect because somebody else spams. That is stupid.

I try so hard to make my IP’s clean, by removing viruses and make sure that no spam going outside through my mail servers. But my hard work is not enough, I still got blocked by uceprotect because somebody else spams.

Uceprotect in their website suggest that I should change ISP, that not that easy, and certainly not cheap.

So, I use a shortcut. I contact the admin of the domain that use uceprotect, and asked politely if it possible for them not to use uceprotect for emails from my domains. I gave them every information they need and explain my situations, and thankfully they agreed and approved my request.

Uceprotect may be want to be a good guy in spam fighter, but to me, uceprotect simply a bad guy.

For small pst files, the migration are flawless. Small pst is smaller than 5 GB. While for big pst files, there could be many problems.

I just encounter problem when trying to migrate about 20 GB pst file into lotus notes. It just crash with dump file that I can’t understand. I tried to split the pst file into several smaller pst files, and it really help in migration.

Do not try to compact pst files, I just spend more than 8 hours to compact 20 GB pst file, and it only reduced into 19 GB. Better create new pst file, and move the folders. It alot faster and compact.

One thing about the migration process, if only there is a verbose mode in nupgrade that will really help. Right now, there is only few information in the nupgrade console. Only when nupgrade found error, it will displayed in the console. So the switch like ‘nupgrade -v 3′ to display verbose mode will really help us to know what is going on in the process.

By the way, the 20 GB pst file is the result of imported from outlook express dbx files. And it took me about 8 hours to import them into outlook pst file.

Right now the time is 11:10 pm, and still running the migration.

I also uses at least three of their templates, and the one that I like is OpenNTF Mail Experience, which give me much features than the original mail template has.

Vince Schuurman - the one who manage OpenNTF Mail Experience project in OpenNTF - also create this script or plugins that can be embedded into any website, the idea is to promote OpenNTF to the internet, so many people will become aware of it presence.

This script or plugins, as default will show three random projects from OpenNTF in any website, and it only take 5 minutes to put it in any website.

So, let promote OpenNTF.

if you have any blogs, any websites, please put this script into your website and join to promote OpenNTF.

I use OpenNTF templates, at least this what I can do to support it.

For more information about the script, you can visit here.

For more information about OpenNTF, you can visit here.

This is my personal experience when trying to convert MS Outlook users to Lotus Notes users.

1. How to attach email in Lotus Notes?
This is the most annoying question, because Lotus Notes can’t attach email as attachment as MS Outlook does. Almost every MS Outlook users ask this same question. And if my answer is Lotus Notes can’t attach email as attachment, the next question or statement from them almost the same “why we have to use Lotus Notes?”. That is why this question for me is the most annoying question.

Exporting message to rtf file works for some users, but not for others. For me, exporting emails into rtf file, is not the same with attached the emails it self, because emails contains headers and attachment(s) that can’t be handle by rtf file.

But there is a work a round.

There is another mail template from http://www.openntf.org that have many features. One of the feature is to be able to forward emails as attachments. So far the template is works great for me, and I will give it to my users who need it.

You can download the OpenNTF Mail Experience in here. You need to register first, but it only take less than 5 minutes.

2. How to automatically added email addresses into contacts.
While this can be done by Lotus Notes 8 standard edition, Lotus Notes 8 basic edition can’t do it - as far as I know.

For me personally, the features in MS Outlook is annoying features, personally - I have to disable it.

Why, because I want to take control of my contacts, and keep it clean as possible. Only add email addresses if I want it too, not automatically. I don’t know why people like the feature. More than often that I see people have double or triple records for the same contact in MS Outlook. They can live with that, but not me.

And again, I have to promote the same template from http://www.openntf.org, because it have the feature to add not only add the sender, but also the recipients to the contacts. This will save a lot of time for Lotus Notes 8 basic edition.

3. How to change the default font, style in Lotus Notes?
MS Outlook is easy to customize, specially if the use MS Word as their mail editor, and now they want to customize Lotus Notes the same way they customize MS Outlook.
My simple answer is that they can use text properties to change the font, style etc, but they can’t change the default font.

4. Have more than 64 columns.
One bad habits of MS Outlook users is copy paste table from excel file to the body of the email. While this is work for another MS Outlook users, but (they should know that) not every body use MS Outlook.

Lotus Notes having problem since the design of Lotus Notes, that Lotus Notes documents doesn’t support any table that have more that 64 columns in it. So, simply Lotus Notes can’t open emails if inside the emails contains a table that have more than 64 columns, the way around to solve this is to open the email via web.

5. How to put attachments in top of the emails?
This is the last question they ask. In MS Outlook they can see attachments in top of their emails, make them easier to look. In Lotus Notes, attachments are put in the bottom of the email, so user need to scroll down the email until they can find the attachments.

I agree this is annoying, but if all users using Lotus Notes, we can put attachment the way we want and the recipients can see the way we put the attachments.

But, than again, not everybody using Lotus Notes.

My summary is that MS Outlook and Lotus Notes have different strength and weakness, while MS Outlook is easy to use and customized, Lotus Notes is very stable and power full mail client and much more. Personally I think that without custom applications, Lotus Notes will lose it appeal.

One thing that I learn about this is changing another mail server to Lotus Domino is easy, changing another mail clients to Lotus Notes is easy, but changing people habits is very difficult, specially if the already using MS Outlook for years.

Note, that I hate HTML mail, not every body using HTML mail clients. There are some people still using mutt as they mail client.

The hardware is IBM Xseries 3650 with 2 internal scsi harddisks and with external storage that can handle up to 12 scsi harddisks.

The plan is, the two internal scsi harddisks will be configured as raid 1 and become C drive, where OS Windows Server 2003 and Lotus Domino 8 program files installed.

The external storage will become Lotus Domino 8 data files and else (transaction log etc).

Unfortunately, the external storage is not available yet, I must wait for another week. So while waiting for external storage, I installed Lotus Domino 8 program and data files in c drive. If the external storage arrived, I will configured some of harddisks as raid 5 and format it as D drive. Than I can simply move the Lotus Domino data from C drive into the D drive, and adjust the notes.ini manually.

I did this too many times without a problem.

But not with Lotus Domino 8.

After I moved the data and adjust notes.ini, I tried to start the Lotus Domino service, and I got this following error.

“An error occurred during license use management initialization. Ensure that you are running Domino with a valid license file.”

Curious I press enter and it show up another line of error.

So I killed Lotus Domino server and re-check the notes.ini, nothing is wrong.

Try to start the service again, and again I got the same error.

Restarted the server, still got the same error.

Start to ask Google.

After few modifications in keywords, i found it in IBM support here.

The solution is simple enough, reinstall Lotus Domino Server.

At least they not telling me to reinstall the OS too. :).