Tips for configuring your email programs.

Because of recent spam troubles, many email providers have strict filters in place that may be blocking our mailings from getting to you, even though you have subscribed and confirmed that you wish to receive them. If you filled out any of our surveys, but did not receive our welcome email within 24 hours, then your provider may be blocking it from you or filtering it out of your inbox. Below are some steps you can take to "whitelist" us and allow our mailings to come through these filters.

In all areas, replace "[at]" with the @ symbol.

Road Runner (Tampa Bay):

Recently, Road Runner added a junk mail filter to their webmail. Since many of their users choose to retrieve their email via 3rd party programs such as Microsoft Outlook, many of you may not have been aware of the change. If you have stopped receiving emails from us, it is most likely because they are being filtered out of your inbox. The easiest way to avoid this in the future is to set up a filter:

1. Login in to your account at http://webmail.tampabay.rr.com
2. Click on the "Settings" icon near the top of the window
3. If it is not already selected, click on "Messages" along the side of the next page
4. Click on the "Message Filters" link in the Mail Management section of the settings screen
5. Click on "New Filter"
6. In the next screen, give the filter a name ("Silverthorn" or something of the sort), check the box next to "Place messages in Inbox" under the Actions heading. (If you have other mailboxes set up that you would rather direct our emails to, feel free to selcet that instead of the inbox)
7. In the right-hand portion of the screen, leave the settings as they are and type "news[at]silverthornclub.net" into the box beside "From contains." This will tell Road Runner to deliver all emails from us directly to your inbox (or whichever box you choose) rather than diverting them to the junk mail folder.
8. Click OK

Another option, if you would rather not let Road Runner decide what mail is junk and what isn't, is to change the junk mail settings as a whole:

1. Log in to your account and go to the Settings menu as described above
2. Click on the "Junk Mail" link in the Mail Management section of the settings screen
3. Change the filtering action from "place the email in the Junkmail folder" to whichever option you would prefer, other than "delete the email." Either of the first two options should keep the email going to your inbox as it had before.

For those of you who use Webmail to view your email, and are having trouble seeing images and links, do the following:

1. Log in to your account and go to the Settings menu as described above
2. Click on the "Privacy" link in the Mail Management section of the settings screen
3. Select "Do not block external images when viewing HTML messages" and click OK. This will stop Webmail from blocking these parts of your emails in the future.

AOL:

You will need to add our "From address", "news[at]silverthornclub.net", to your AOL address book:

1. Click the Mail menu and select AOL Address Book.
2. Wait for the "AOL Address Book" window to pop up, then click the Add button.
3. Wait for the "AOL Address Card for New Contact" window to load.
4. Once loaded, put "news[at]silverthornclub.net" into the "Other Email" field.
5. Make our From address the "Primary Email" address by checking the associated check box.
6. Click the Save button.

An alternate method: send a message to "news[at]silverthornclub.net," which will add us to your "People I Know" list. Use "AOL user" as the subject and leave the body blank, so we know not to reply to it. Also, if you are already a subscriber and aren't receiving any of our email, check your Spam folder. If there are any emails in there from us, open the email and click the "This Is Not Spam" button.


MSN and Hotmail

You will need to add our From address, "news[at]silverthornclub.net", to your Hotmail MSN Safe List:

1. Open your Hotmail MSN mailbox and click "Options" (upper right hand corner).
2. Click the "Junk Email Protection" link (top of page).
3. Select the "Safe List" link (2nd from bottom).
4. Copy and paste "news[at]silverthornclub.net" into the dialog box titled "Type an address or domain."
5. Click the "Add" button next to the dialog box.

If you are already a subscriber, but our email is not getting through, make sure that the email is not being sent to your Hotmail/MSN Junk Email folder. If our email is there, open the email and click the Not Junk button. Next, check to see if the email's address (as listed above) is in your Blocked Senders list. If you see our address on this list, select it and click the Remove button.


Yahoo

You will need to set up a filter to redirect our email into your inbox:

1. Open your Yahoo mailbox and click on Mail Options (upper right hand corner).
2. Select Filters (bottom left corner).
3. Click the Yahoo Add link on the Filters page.
4. Update the "From header:" rule with the following 2 pieces of information: "contains" and "news[at]silverthornclub.net". This essentially allows the mail server to identify our email based on the email From address.
5. Click the Choose Folder pull down menu and select inbox.
6. Select the Yahoo Add Filter button.

If you are already a subscriber, but our email is not getting through, check if the email is in your Yahoo Bulk Folder. If our email is there, open our email and click the Not Spam button. Next, check to see if the email's address is in your "Blocked Addresses" list. If you see the above address on this list, select it and click the Remove Block button.

Google Mail

You will need to add our From address, "news[at]silverthornclub.net", to your Google Gmail Contacts List:

1. Click Contacts along the left side of any Google Gmail page.
2. Click Add Contact.
3. Add our From address as described above into the primary email address dialog box.
4. Click Save.

If you are already a subscriber, but our email isn't getting through, make sure that the email has not been mistakenly marked as Spam in your Gmail:

1. Click Spam along the left side of any Google Gmail page.
2. Check mark the box next to our email.
3. Click Not Spam button along the top.

Outlook 2003

You will need to add our From address, "news[at]silverthornclub.net", to your Outlook Safe Senders list:

1. On the Outlook Tools menu, click Options.
2. On the Outlook Preferences tab, click Junk Email.
3. On the Outlook Safe Senders tab, click Add.
4. In the Outlook Add address, type in our address as listed above and click OK.

For currecnt subscribers: If the Junk Email Filter accidentally catches our email, you can simply add our From address to the Safe Senders list, and no future email from us will be inspected by the filter.

Other providers

If you are not using any of the above email providers, but are not receiving our mailings, there is probably a similar type of setting that you can change to allow our mails through. Check their FAQs or user documentation, or let us know and we will try to help you through it.