Services We Offer

Web Filtering

As a stipulation of the Child Information Protection Act, all organizations receiving e-rate assistance for internet access must have a web filter in place to stop minors from viewing detrimental websites accidentally. We provide the Secure Computing Bess filter to all MSLN members.

Member sites by default have a minimum filter turned on (configured to block pornography, criminal skills, drugs, gambling, and proxy bypassers), however access and customization of the filter is then given over to the site's TC who is solely responsible for what is blocked and not blocked, including the above categories. All requests for websites to be unblocked or blocked must be passed on to the person controlling the filter: your site's TC. If you do not know who this is we would be happy to give you their contact information. MSLN will not touch a filter without the express permission of the TC requesting assistance.

The Secure Computing filter gives your TC an extremely granular control over what gets blocked and allowed, including creating time-based filtering and custom lists of individual sites to be blocked or allowed. To learn more about how to use the filter, please read our detailed filter guide on the support page.

Email

The University of Maine provides email access to all MSLN members. This includes access to email through either Webmail, POP3, or IMAP, as well as spam filtering.

Schools and libraries may also set up and manage their own e-mail servers. The choice to maintain a local server allows schools and libraries to act on their preferences for a particular e-mail system. If an e-mail system is already in place, its use may be continued if the system can support Internet mail. Since the management of e-mail is local, decisions on who gets an id and when the account should be terminated are made and executed locally.

For support help and documentation about email, go to the email support section.

Web Hosting

MSLN provides FREE web hosting to member sites as part of the MSLN service. We also provide PHP and MySQL access for web developers. There are currently no disk space limitations for websites. If the need to limit space arises we will deal with it on an individual basis.

We would like to see every MSLN site get at least a basic website online that lets people know some essential information like your location name, physical address and hours of operation, and contact information (phone, email, etc).

Domain Name Hosting

If you get your email or have a website through MSLN you may have dreamed of having an email address like myself@myschool.org rather than myself@myschool.mydistrict.k12.me.us. If you register your own domain name it is possible to take advantage of existing MSLN hosted services like e-mail and web space. Our only requirement is that it may not be a commercial (.com) domain. To find out how to set this up, visit the Domain Hosting Guide.

For support help concerning web and domain hosting, go to the web and domain support section.

Usenet

Member sites are provided with a free Usenet or Netnews feed. It is one of the most active Internet applications, distributing as many as 150,000 articles to over 7,000 discussion topics daily.

Anyone at your site can use Usenet once you have installed a client onto the local machines or on a local server. You can choose to provide read-only access to Netnews or allow posting as well. If you allow posting at your site, anyone with an e-mail id will be able to post.

You can learn more about usenet by reading the Usenet Guide.