Setting Up a Secure Connection from Your Websites Email Server to Mozilla Thunderbird

For those who may not already know, Mozilla Thunderbird is a software for sending and receiving emails from an external email address on a desktop, laptop, notebook computer or other internet enabled device that can install computer software. For example Mozilla Thunderbird can connect to an email address or multiple email addresses on a business or personal website or even multiple websites. Thunderbird has some similarities to Microsoft outlook, but it is in my opinion far better.

A Must Have on Your Webhosting or Server in Regards to Mozilla Thunderbird

First things first, you will need to make sure your web hosting account has access to either a shared SSL certificate or otherwise you will need to get a dedicated IP address and an SSL certificate. Your webhosts support should be able to help you rig this all up together otherwise they are not a good webhosts. There are many competitive places where an SSL certificate can be purchased on the web, sometimes the webhost can provide a non shared personal SSL certificate for an extra fee on the hosting, but a shared one is just fine anyhow for Mozilla Thunderbird, this should always be free. Another note on SSL certificates is they need to be renewed yearly just like a domain name does, a shared SSL certificate with your webhost will be renewed by the webhost themself, so you will not need to do anything obviously.

Is a Secure Connection Worthwhile

Most definitely, ignorance is not bliss, without a secure connection your emails can be listened to and read by hackers without any problem at all for those with the know how. Who knows what sensitive information may be sent in your emails that you do not want others to see, right!

So Lets Get Started and Download Mozilla Thunderbird

First things first if you have not done so already, you will need to download Mozilla Thunderbird Click Here for Mozilla Thunderbird website and download (will open in a new browser tab or window). Note that Mozilla Thunderbird is a totally free open source project available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

First Steps After Installation

Ok, now hopefully you have run and installed Mozilla Thunderbird on your computer. Lets get people communicating with us securely through our websites email address or even multiple email addresses using your websites domain name.

So now lets make a new mail account in Mozilla Thunderbird.

First go to 'File' in the menu, go to new and then choose 'Mail Account' from the sub menu.

Now you will be asked to enter your name, that is your name as you would like to come up in your emails when you send or respond to emails.

Under your name you will enter the email address you setting up with Mozilla Thunderbird.

Then the password for that email address. You or whoever set up your website would have set the password for this email address in your web hosting's administration console (Cpanel,Plesk or Webhosts Own Interface) or on your web server.

You will likely want Mozilla Thunderbird to remember your password, so make sure the remember password check box is selected as you can see in the picture above. Having the password remembered is good for the reason that you can just double click on Mozilla Thunderbird to launch it and then it will automatically login and check if you have new emails and notify you of such.

After you entered your name, email address and password, Mozilla Thunderbird will automatically start finding incoming and outgoing connections as shown in the picture above with green circular dots if found or red if there is an error.

If all went well. Click where the blue arrow is shown down the bottom left of the picture on the same in your Mozilla Thunderbird and click on manual setup.

After clicking on manual set up, you can locate your new email address you are integrating, in your left column, then go directly below it and click on server settings as shown above.

Now select the connection security drop down options as show in the picture above and choose SSL/TLS. Mozilla Thunderbird will change the port to 993 for the secure connection automatically as will be shown in the top right as in the picture above.

Another note on the above //\\

When SSL/TLS is chosen, 'Authentication method' shown directly underneath 'Connection  security' (Obscured in the picture above by the drop down list) will be set to normal password automatically, I leave it set to normal password, believing SSL encrypts everything anyhow. If you have a difference of opinion regarding Mozilla Thunderbird regarding encryption, please contact me (Josh) and let me know.

Once you have set to SSL/TLS make sure to click ok down the bottom right of this account settings pop up panel that you set to SSL/TLS in. Now hit  create account and you should be done and ready to use Mozilla Thunderbird. Oh and along the way making your account, you may get a notice come up as shown in the picture below, if this happens just click confirm security exception.

Also note that the all of the account settings shown above can changed at any time by going to 'Edit' in Mozilla Thunderbird's main top menu, going to the bottom of the drop down that will appear and selecting 'properties'. You will then have all the account settings available to you for any email address in your Mozilla Thunderbird software.

If you see the above come up while in the process of setting up, just click confirm security exception down the bottom of it... Also you definitely do want the permanently store this security exception checkbox ticked at the bottom of it.

Other tips on using Mozilla Thunderbird

Ok, first tip will be a real easy one, if you want to delete a whole lot of messaged at once, just drag your mouse over the message at the same time holding down your shift key and then hit delete. The emails with standard Mozilla Thunderbird settings will be sent to the Mozilla Thunderbird trash bin seen if you expand the folders etc under the email address or addresses shown in the left of Mozilla Thunderbird when you click on the small left triangular arrow next to the email address. Remember to delete the emails also in the trash bin to delete them from your web server not just from Thunderbird on your local computer. if you want to change these settings read the heading lower down which is titled 'Finding Your Actual Account Settings In Mozilla Thunderbird.'.

Account Settings Panel

All the set up stuff, including making email accounts in Mozilla Thunderbird and removing email accounts from Mozilla Thunderbird, happens in the account settings pop up panel. This panel can be found when you first start Mozilla Thunderbird before you check emails under 'View settings for this account' right in the middle of the page on Mozilla Thunderbird or else at any time by going to your drop down menus at the very top left of Mozilla Thunderbird and choosing 'Tools' from the menu bar, which can be seen just above the small icon picture of the address book. Then click on the 'Tools' drop down menu and go down to the bottom of drop down and choose 'Account settings' which is second from the bottom from the list of options in the 'Tools' menu drop down.

Adding a New Email Account in Mozilla Thunderbird

1. Go to the account settings panel (How to get there is written in paragraph above).
2. Now go to the very bottom left of the panel and you will find a drop down box that is titled 'Account actions', click on it and choose 'Add mail account' from the drop down.
3. You will now get another pop up panel come up from Mozilla Thunderbird, just like the one you got when you added your initial first email address to Mozilla Thunderbird.
4. Now go through the steps as you may have already followed from the top of this page on how to setup your account securely.

How to Remove an Email Account from Mozilla Thunderbird

1. Go to the account settings panel.
2. Click on the name of the email account you want to remove in the list on the left hand side of the account settings panel. It will now be highlighted blue.
3. At the very bottom of the list of emails addresses etc mentioned above, go to the 'Account actions' drop down box, choose 'Remove account'.
4. If your computer gives you a pop up message, hit ok and the email account you choose will be removed from Mozilla Thunderbird. Please note that the removed email address is only removed from Mozilla Thunderbird and not from your web server.

Changing and Getting to Know Account Settings in Mozilla Thunderbird... You May Want to Take Note Here As This is Where You Can Set a Signature for Your Email

If you do not already know how to get to your Mozilla Thunderbird account settings panel, then read under the heading 'Account Settings Panel' shown three headings above and you will find out how.

Now how do you go changing settings on an email account you have already set up? Quite easily, in the left of the account settings you will see an email address or a list of email addresses, depending on how many email addresses you have added to Mozilla Thunderbird.

If you look at the to the left of your written email address or list of them, you will see a very small angled down facing triangle (arrow). Click on the arrow shown to the left of email address for which you want to edit settings on and you will see you can show or hide a sub menu of related settings to your email address in question. Notes on those settings are below:

• Although not a sub menu option, when you click on the name of the email address you want to change settings for, you will be shown in the area of the account settings panel to the right, options for things like changing your name if you made a mistake and also writing a signature for your email address (you can choose to write your signature in HTML if you tick the box above the text input area for HTML) or you can attach an image for your email signature, if you are going to have a signature. Which is probably a good idea for businesses, so you can put your domain name, phone number and email for clients or potential clients to see.
• Server Settings: This is where you should have set your email address to be served through SSL for security reasons. You can also set other things, like checking for new messages when Mozilla Thunderbird is started, how often you want Mozilla Thunderbird to check for new messages and you can also set whether to send deleted messages to the Mozilla Thunderbird trash folder or to delete them from your server immediately. You can also set Mozilla Thunderbird to empty the trash folder upon exiting Mozilla Thunderbird.
• Copies and Folders: You can do thins here like put in Cc and Bcc email addresses and a whole lot of other settings. I usually do not need to change or set anything here myself.
• Composition and Addressing: The standard settings here are messages will be composed in HTML (I would suggest always leaving that ticked). Whether you want the original message quoted when replying to an email. Whether you want a signature included in replies. Addressing, when looking up address, the normal setting is 'Use my global LDAP server preference for this account', no point touching that unless you know what you are doing.
• Junk Settings: Here it tells you that if you want Mozilla Thunderbird to have a better chance at identifying junk emails, you will need to hit the junk toolbar button on Mozilla Thunderbird when you click on a junk email.
• Synchronisation and Storage: Here is already checked as a standard setting to keep messaged for the email account on your local computer. You will also see disc space settings, where you synchronise messages by age and choose a certain kB limit on message downloads. Also here you can have Mozilla Thunderbird automatically delete messages over a certain number of days old, the standard setting is no messaged will be deleted, meaning you will need to do it manually.
• Return Receipts: here you can tinker with return receipt settings if you know what you are doing. I can't see myself touching this.
• Security: I wouldn't go tinkering with things here unless you know what you are doing and there should not be any need for the general user to do so.

There Are a Whole Lot of Other Tools and Things in Mozilla Thunderbird

Which you can find and tinker with should you choose to do so by choosing the drop down menus in the very top left of Mozilla Thunderbird... : )   Enjoy!

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