Tonight on October 23rd, 2023, we installed updates to our forums software on https://forums.sonic.net/. In addition to the forum and backend software upgrades, our forum style (appearance) also got minor updates.
The default style for all forum accounts was set to the new theme as part of the upgrade. If you wish to change back to the forum default, go to the user control panel and change your board style to prosilver at https://forums.sonic.net/ucp.php?i=174.
Today on August 22, 2022, we added a default SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record to every customer domain name that has Sonic DNS hosting and email hosted with Sonic.
On August 15th, we emailed everyone who would be impacted by this change. The email subject was “Important information about your Sonic domain email hosting” and included a list of domain names that would be updated.
If you did not receive the email or do not have domain email and DNS hosting with Sonic, this notification does not apply to you.
If you received the above notification email and did not opt out or add an SPF record before today, the following SPF record was added to your domain:
"v=spf1 include:mail.sonic.net ~all"
For more information, please see our help document SPF and Sonic. To learn more about SPF, see Sender Policy Framework on Wikipedia.
We made this change to fight spam & phishing and to help ensure reliable email delivery for our domain email customers. SPF tells other email providers that Sonic is authorized to send email on behalf of these hosted domain names.
We’re investigating DNSSEC failures for the comcast.net and comcast.com domains which are causing delays and errors for inbound and outbound mail due to inability to resolve Comcast domain names. We have mitigation in place now to prevent issues.
Any messages that may have failed to deliver should be re-sent and will now succeed.
– System Operations
Tonight at 11:59 PM the Sonic Member Tools (https://members.sonic.net/) will be unavailable for a brief period of time while software upgrades are installed.
The maintenance window is 1 hour, but we expect no more than 20 minutes of down time. During this time, functions such as bill pay, Graymail management, and voice tools will be unavailable.
Update: Maintenance completed at 12:15 AM with no down time.
-System Operations
We will be performing updates and maintenance to the Sonic Member Tools at https://members.sonic.net tonight at 11 PM.
Maintenance is expected to last 30 minutes to 1 hour during which time access to the various member services such as bill payment, Graymail, and voice tools accessed through members.sonic.net will be unavailable.
– System Operations
Tonight (Wednesday, November 8th) at 11:59 PM, Webmail (https://webmail.sonic.net) will be unavailable for a brief time while we install a minor version upgrade.
Maintenance is expected to last 15 to 30 minutes. No other mail services are affected, and you can use our Webmail Beta application to check your mail during the maintenance.
UPDATE: 12:14 AM. Maintenance complete.
On Monday, August 21st at midnight, Sonic will be upgrading it’s Webmail platform. The upgrade is expected to take no more than 1 hour, during which time Webmail will be unavailable. Our beta platform will be available as a backup and other mail services will not be affected.
The upgrade includes numerous improvements, including improved performance opening folders and reading messages. If you are a frequent Webmail user, there are some impacting changes to be aware of.
Please see our forum post at https://forums.sonic.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4791 for detailed information regarding the update if you use Webmail. You can also post questions, comments, or suggestions there or by emailing support@sonic.net.
The default layout has changed to be more functional on larger screens, including widescreen layouts. If you prefer to keep the current 2-column layout, refer to the forum post above for instructions on changing the settings.
In order to bring new features, support for Internet Explorer 9 and below will be dropped! If you use Webmail with IE 9 or below, it will no longer function properly. This change only affect users on Windows XP or Windows Vista. You can continue to use Webmail on XP or Vista by downloading Mozilla Firefox or an older version of Google Chrome. However, if you still use Internet Explorer 9 or below, consider upgrading as these versions are no longer safe to use and makes your computer more vulnerable to viruses and other threats.
We would encourage you to try the new version at https://webmail-beta.sonic.net prior to the upgrade to familiarize yourself with the changes and let us know if you encounter any problems using the new platform, have questions, or would like to provide feedback or suggestions.
– Sonic System Operations