How to manually add an SPF record via WHM
One of our clients reported that their emails from their Google Apps email account on their site were going into the spam folders of their contact's inbox. When we investigated this problem, we noticed that the SPF records for their domain were not set correctly.
What is an SPF record?
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a DNS text record which specifies which mail server can send the email on behalf of their domain.
If their domain does not have a SPF record, the recipient(s) cannot determine whether this mail was sent from an authorized or reparable mail server. In turn, most email accounts will often mark such emails as spam and allow the emails to arrive in the receiver's spam folder. In order to fix and avoid this problem in the future, we had to add an SPF record for their domain
For example.
If our domain uses Yahoo for sending mail, then we have to create a SPF record which identifies the Yahoo server as our authenticated mail-server. This will result in all mails except the ones from Yahoo to be marked as spam.
In order to preform this task and configure an SPF record for your domain; perform the following steps:
- Login to your WHM.
- Select the edit zone from the side menu.
- Select domain name from drop-down list.
- Edit the txt file to:
v=spf1 +a +mx +ip4:177.123.123.123 include:_spf.google.com ~all"
// + qualifier stands for accept mail or allowed to send.
// a - indicates the A record of domains
// +mx +ip4:177.197.123.69 - allow mails from this domain.
// include:_spf.google.com - allow mails from google apps server
// ~all - accept all mails, mark mail not sent from the authorized mail server as spam.From there, test your SPF records by visiting this site.
