Adding nili.ca #158
Adding nili.ca #158
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babolivier
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babolivier
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Hey @coldad, and thanks for your PR!
Are you affiliated with Nili in any way? From their website it looks like they're fairly open to third-party email clients using their service, so I'm wondering if they'd consider hosting their own autoconfig file, which would be preferred over a new ISPDB entry. See https://github.com/thunderbird/autoconfig/wiki/The-ISP-database#what-goes-into-ispdb for details on why we prefer self-hosted autoconfig files over ISPDB entries and documentation around self-hosting.
If you're not affiliated with them or don't have a contact within their team, I'm happy to try to get in touch with them to see what can be done and how we can help 🙂
| <webMail> | ||
| <loginPage url="https://webmail.nili.ca/"/> | ||
| </webMail> |
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As mentioned in #96, we're looking into getting rid of the webMail section as it doesn't really bring much real-life value. I don't think we should include it in new configurations.
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Dear @babolivier, Thank you for looking to this.
Nili already hosts their own autoconfig file, but many of their customers face issues accessing it through certain ISPs, which has led to a noticeable number of support requests.
Originally, the Nili team explored creating a branded email app, and forking current apps seemed like the most natural choice; Thunderbird has long been their users’ top recommendation for the past 12 years. Instead, I suggested listing their autoconfig in the ISPDB and officially promoting Thunderbird as the recommended Nili email client for both desktop and mobile. This approach would save their team from maintaining a fork while strengthening Thunderbird’s presence among Nili users.
That said, I’m completely open to other approaches or ideas to share with their team if there’s a preferred path forward.
Sincerely,
Nick
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Self-hosted autoconfig files should provide the same level of support for configuration auto-discovery as ISPDB - in fact, Thunderbird prioritises configurations hosted by service providers over those described in ISPDB.
I've looked a bit more into this, and it looks like there's a Cloudflare configuration issue here. https://autoconfig.nili.ca/mail/config-v1.1.xml (one of the URLs Thunderbird attempts to reach) redirects to https://jar.nili.ca/mail/config-v1.1.xml, but it looks like the whole jar.nili.ca domain is behind a Cloudflare frontend. As a result, Thunderbird is hit with a Cloudflare captcha that it cannot solve, and it's unable to retrieve the configuration.
Would the Nili team be open to disabling this protection specifically for the path /mail/config-v1.1.xml, so automated software such as Thunderbird's (and other supporting clients') auto-discovery feature can query it? Feel free to loop me (brendan [at] thunderbird.net) into any conversation I can help with 🙂
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Hi @coldad, is there any news on this? Would you like me to reach out to Nili to get the ball rolling?
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Hey @babolivier ,
how do you check the error?
Would you please attempt again and see if tha resolved?
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Hi @coldad, I initially noticed it by going to https://autoconfig.nili.ca/mail/config-v1.1.xml, and noticing that I'm served by a Cloudflare captcha (which might not show for everyone). You can also verify this by running curl -L https://autoconfig.nili.ca/mail/config-v1.1.xml (-L tells cURL to follow redirects) and seeing that it serves Cloudflare's HTML, not the XML file that's hosted at that address.
I've just checked it now, it still seems to be happening.
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