This forum is run by the people who maintain hMailServer, and it is moderated lightly. The rules below exist for one reason: a thread here is read far more often by the person who finds it in three years than by the person who answered it today.
1. Ask in the open, once
Support questions go in Support — general problems in General discussions, COM and scripting in Scripting, filtering in Anti-spam and SpamAssassin, anything you want changed in Feature requests. Post a question in one place, give it a title that names the symptom rather than the emotion, and do not send it to a member of staff privately as well; a private answer helps exactly one person and cannot be corrected later.
2. Post enough for someone to check your work
A useful first post carries the full version including the build stamp, the platform, the database, how the install got there, and a log excerpt with the timestamps left in. There is a ready-made template on Posting a support request. The round trip spent asking which version you are on is the main reason threads take a week instead of an evening.
3. Redact before you paste
Logs, configuration files and message headers routinely contain credentials — an SMTP session log includes the AUTH exchange, and hMailServer.ini holds more than you remember. Anything posted here is public and indexed. We will edit a post on request, but we cannot unpublish it, so treat anything you have already pasted as compromised and rotate it.
4. Use code formatting for anything a person would type
File paths, setting names, log lines, Sieve scripts and PowerShell go in backticks or a fenced block. A screenshot of text cannot be searched, quoted or copied, and the next person with your problem will find the thread by searching for the exact error string.
5. Reproducible bugs go to GitLab
The forum is where you work out whether a thing is a bug; the issue tracker is where it is fixed. If a thread reaches a reproduction, open an issue and link it both ways so the thread ends with an answer rather than a shrug. Check the release notes first — a fair number of reports are already fixed in a release nobody has installed yet.
6. Security problems are not posted here
If you believe you have found a vulnerability, do not open a thread and do not open a public issue. Email [email protected] with the version, the platform and enough detail to reproduce it. We will acknowledge it, tell you which release is carrying the fix, and credit you in the release notes unless you would rather we did not.
7. Assume competence, and answer or do not
Everyone here is running their own mail server, which is not a beginner activity, so no reply needs to begin by asking whether the service is started. No abuse, no pile-ons, no demanding that someone justify their architecture before you answer the question they asked. A one-line answer with a link into the right documentation chapter is a complete answer; read the manual on its own is not.
8. Commercial posts, and the one rule about them
You may say that you sell hosting, consultancy or migrations, provided you disclose it and the answer stands on its own without buying anything. No answer on this forum — ours included — is ever gated behind a support plan. Standalone advertising threads, referral links and signature spam are removed. Our own managed services get one link in the footer and one in the menu, and that is the whole of it.
9. What moderation does and does not do
We edit posts for formatting and for redaction, move topics into the right category, merge duplicates, and lock a thread once it has stopped being about the question. We do not delete a thread because it is unflattering: an open defect gets documented, not buried, and you will find us doing that on the product pages as well. If you think a moderation decision was wrong, message @chris or email [email protected] — say which post and why, and you will get a reason back.
These rules sit alongside the terms and conditions, the privacy policy and the cookie policy. They will change as the forum finds its edges; material changes will be posted in Announcements.