Web-based email system upgraded By Peter M. Abraham October 2003 We upgraded our Web-based email system the late afternoon of Monday, October 20, 2003. You can access our Web-based email system by going to http://66.187.148.121/horde/index.php or by going to [mail period your domain name] (such as http://mail.dynamicnet.net/) and selecting the Web-based email hyperlink. The upgrade involved setting up IMAP on our Parallels H-Sphere mail server. IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. It is a method of accessing electronic mail or bulletin board messages that are kept on a (possibly shared) mail server. In other words, it permits a "client" email program to access remote message stores as if they were local. For example, email stored on an IMAP server can be manipulated from a desktop computer at home, a workstation at the office, and a notebook computer while traveling, without the need to transfer messages or files back and forth between these computers. IMAP's ability to access messages (both new and saved) from more than one computer has become extremely important as reliance on electronic messaging and use of multiple computers increase.  This functionality cannot be taken for granted: the widely used Post Office Protocol (POP) works best when one has only a single computer, since it was designed to support "offline" message access, wherein messages are downloaded and then deleted from the mail server. This mode of access is not compatible with access from multiple computers since it tends to sprinkle messages across all of the computers used for mail access. Thus, unless all of those machines share a common file system, the offline mode of access that POP was designed to support effectively ties the user to one computer for message storage and manipulation. Most of you will probably find it best to work with POP3 (the way you have been using Web-based email if you've been using it at all). Those of you who want to be able to create folders within Web-based email, and keep your email on the server, can do so by selecting the IMAP server from the mail server drop down box. Please be advised that email that remains on the server counts towards your overall disk quota. Do you have questions about our Web-based email product?  Read the on-line manual. Please email support if you have any questions.