Scott Boms

Our May 2009 Back Catalogue

Looking Glass

In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Caroll wrote:

It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.

In a roundabout way I think that passage perfectly sums up the state of the web industry for me in 2009 and is a perfect lead-in to mention issue number 284 of A List Apart which features an article on the topic of Burnout by yours truly.

It was a challenging article to write simply because it was so deeply rooted in my own personal experiences and I hope readers take note and are interested in continuing the discussion further because, obvious or not, the web and design industries are intrinsically ripe for extreme cases of burnout.

My thanks to Carolyn Wood, Krista Stevens, Erin Kissane, Zeldman et al.

MSMTP and Virtual Hosts

Last year when I originally moved the Wishingline site and a handful of others over a shiny new slice at Slicehst one of the issues I ran into was handling outgoing mail from contact forms, Movable Type, etc. I’m no server admin and despite knowing enough to be dangerous, setting up a secure mail server that can handle multiple domains was definitely outside my comfort zone.

Thanks to Ethan, I discovered a gem of an open source project called MSMTP which was just what I needed; the exception being that I couldn’t figure out how to use it with multiple domains. Until last week that is.

Of course it’s really easy.

Installing and Configuring for Multiple Domains

MSMTP provides two ways you can configure the software using a simple and well-documented configuration file format. It’s all plain text so it’s easy to create, edit and back up.

Installing the Software

Installing MSMSTP requires the following packages which can be installed using the aptitude tool on Ubuntu. Installation on other *nixes may vary.


$ aptitude install msmtp msmtp-mta ca-certificates
Configuration

Once you have everything installed, you need to create a configuration file either in /etc/msmtprc or by creating a user-specific one in your user’s home directory. If you need mail services for more than one domain, I suggest using the global configuration option.

I’m going to assume you’re reasonably comfortable working in a Unix environment from here on out though if you know what you’re doing you can do all of this just as easily using ExpanDrive and TextMate without having to touch the Terminal.


$ sudo nano /etc/msmtprc

Once the nano editor has opened a new blank file for you, enter the following and replace the example configuration as needed. I’m including examples for two domains so you get the idea.


# Account: domain1.com
account         domain1
host            smtp.gmail.com
port            587
auto_from       off
auth            on
user            hello@domain1.com
password        PASSWORD
tls             on
tls_starttls    on
from            robot@domain1.com
maildomain      domain1.com
tls_trust_file  /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
logfile
syslog          LOG_MAIL

# Set a default account to use
account default : domain1

# Account: domain2.com
account         domain2
host            smtp.gmail.com
port            587
auto_from       off
auth            on
user            hello@domain2.com
password        PASSWORD
tls             on
tls_starttls    on
from            robot@domain2.com
maildomain      domain2.com
tls_trust_file  /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
logfile
syslog          LOG_MAIL

Repeat as necessary to add more domains. Save your changes by typing Control-O and pressing Enter. Then type Control-X to exit the editor.

Virtual Host Configuration

Assuming you’re using PHP with Apache as your web server, you can add the last two lines in the example below to each virtual host to specify which configuration account you’d like to use to send mail.


<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerAdmin webmaster@domain1.com
  ServerName domain1.com
  DocumentRoot /home/user/sites/domain1/
  DirectoryIndex index.html index.php

  # MSMTP configuration for this domain
  php_admin_value sendmail_path "/usr/bin/msmtp -a domain1 -t"
</VirtualHost>

Replace domain1 with the correct domain obviously. This should correspond to the account names specified in the /etc/msmtprc file.

Alternatively you need to instruct your middleware or framework to use MSMTP instead of Sendmail/Postfix to send mail and pass the same account parameter whenever called. Most have some form of configuration option to allow this.

That’s it.

Slab

If you thought slab serifs were hot a few months ago, then they must be on fire right now given the release this week of not one, but two smokin’ new families of slab serifs — Neutraface Slab from House Industries and Sentinel from Hoefler & Frere-Jones.

Font samples from Neutraface Slab by House Industries and Sentinel by Hoefler and Frere-Jones
Neutraface Slab by House Industries and Sentinel from Hoefler and Frere-Jones

If anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be burying my wallet in the back yard.

Choose Your Corner

I’ve been thinking a lot about this quote from Charles Eames for the last four or five days now because it speaks volumes about my current situation.

Choose your corner, pick away at it carefully, intensely and to the best of your ability and that way you might change the world.

Slate

After a few weeks of soul searching I’ve made the decision to permanently close Wishingline. I hinted at this being a real possibility in a couple previous entries, though my original intenion was to simply put the company on ice in the short term because I needed some distance and clarity to make an informed decision about what to do.

I’ve had a bit of time now and simply, for me, the right thing to do is completely wipe the slate clean.

Illustration by Hugh MacLeod at gapingvoid
Illustration by Hugh MacLeod (gapingvoid)

Over the years Wishingline’s become more than just me and as I hinted at, I don’t entirely recognize it anymore. Simply — circumstances change and people change. As a result companies change and adapt too.

As I suspect is true of most companies who’ve got a few years under their belt, they’ve had their fair share of great successes, a few crushing defeats and a handful of fits and starts, but looking back, and dispite some mistakes made along the way, I feel proud of what I’ve accomplished and for taking some big risks. I don’t feel like I’ve failed by any means — or I at least need to keep reminding myself of that.

It was a risk when I left a stable job and struck out on my own. It was a risk when I decided it was time to grow the company and move into the office space the company occupied until last week. It was a risk when I brought in not just one new fulltime employee, but two, especially over a fairly short time period. And of course (for various reasons) it’s a risk I’m taking now closing the door on Wishingline.

When all’s said and done though, it’s the right thing for me to do.

Uncertain Weather

What the future holds for me is still very much uncertain. I have a good idea what I don’t want to do, it’s now a question of what I do want to do. I haven’t eliminated the possibility of freelancing or something similar, but if so, the circumstances under which that happens will be very different based on everything I’ve experienced and learned. And if so, it’d be under a different banner; but who knows. I might not return to the freelance/small agency world at all.

If I haven’t been particularly active here, on Twitter or Flickr of late, it’s because I’ve been working on tying up loose ends and exploring possibilities, including what exactly to do with this site. Honestly I’ve been feeling like a bit like a lost puppy and still have some important questions to answer before I make the next big decision.

As much as I’m still pretty emotional about everything that’s happened this year, and though I’m closing one door, I’m opening another. This is an opportunity. I don’t think it’s too pie in the sky to say, but life is just too short to spend stuck in a rut, doing something that doesn’t make you truly happy or leaves you feeling like you’re not living up to your full potential. Carpe diem, as they say.

Change, Change, Change

Over the next little while I’ll be starting to dismantle the business side of the Wishingline site. I’m debating what to do about this notebook though and whether I should keep it up as-is, do some fancy redirects to move it up to the top of the domain, move it to an entirely new domain or… I don’t know. I haven’t sorted out what all the possible implications are of doing any of the above but whatever I end up deciding, I’ll do what I can to not break the internets.

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