I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Many people and small businesses still have email addresses provided by their ISP. e.g. yourbusiness@yourISP.com. Even small businesses and individuals can have branded email addresses (like you@yourdomain.com) and a simple web page at almost no cost.
But, as we tend to do in the technology industry, it is not easy for non tech people to set this up. Over the last few weeks I’ve set up a couple of friends and you can do it all online and relatively inexpensively. You will need to talk to someone with a few tech skills but here is a bit of a guide to get you going.
Step one is to chose and register your domain.
I use iServe, because they have free domain management services. That means that you can control where your email and website is hosted. The cost of a domain for one year is $38.
Once you have registered your domain you can use the iServe console application to manage all of your domain settings (also known as your zone file for the geeks). This lets the world know where your email server and web site.
The next step is select an email provider. I use Google GMail and with Google hosted domains you can have your own personalized email address.
To sign up for a free email account (that can be your branded email address) go to http://www.google.com/a/
Select Get Started and sign up for a Standard Edition account (which is free). If you are setting up for a friend you can use your existing Gmail credentials. Else you enter in your old email address and create a new account.
Set yourself up as the administrator (e.g. you@yourdomain.com), that will make it easy later if you want to set up other accounts for your family or team. (someoneelse@yourdomain.com)
The first step is to validate ownership of your domain. You do this by setting a CNAME record. This is where you need access to your domain records to configure your domain so that email gets sent to GMail. The instructions in GMail are clear if you are familiar with DNS. This is where it would be useful to use your geek.
The iServe console makes that straight forward to change settings if you are familiar with such things.
The next step is to set up the MX records for your domain. The GMail ‘Activate Email’ screen gives you a set of MX records to enter.
You can also create a nice url for access your mail. E.g. mail.yourdomain.com.
It may take a day or so for your domain information to cycle through.
Once complete you can also use Google Pages to create a simple website. You can create a simple website on the Pages site. Even better you can create a WordPress account and start blogging!
Let me know how you get on and share your tips. Personalised email addresses for all.
blog
I use my own personal address to help track down scumbags who sell my address as well.
As the administrator of my own domain name I get (essentially) an unlimited number of addresses, so when I post my email address to a site like this I would use drury@myaddress.co.nz. That way if I start getting spam at that address I know exactly who is to blame and I’ll come down there and whack you on the head with a shovel.
It works well - the company that I give my email address to has no comeback really if I ring up and say “Oy!” and I can quickly move to block all email coming from that company and any email coming to that particular email address.
Cheers
Paul
Nice Rod - good to see some information not being silo-ed but being put out there for everyone to enjoy!
The only other I would add is that you should use the email format firstname.lastname@somedomain.com. Why? Because lots of times your name is stripped from forwarded emails, napkins, someone telling another person an email address, etc. Having the first and last name in the email address gives the person more information about who the address actually belongs to.
I use Google Apps and am happy about it but mind you that they have a cap of 2Gigs per account for the mail and still you need to rely on a normal Google account for most of google services (like blogger for example), unfortunately.
Great write up on this complex procedure for non-techies. It’s gotta only be a few more days before someone releases the service
1. Choose domain name ( domainname.co.nz/.com/.org/.whatever)
2. Choose email address ( yourname@..)
3. Choose password
and you’ll have email and webspace. Fairly sticky products. Free or some charge. Big business for sure.
I did the same via Google Apps but for the domain I went through Google too. They had a deal with GoDaddy for .com domains for USD$10 a year. Registration was extremely easy and they took care of all technical configuration. Very easy and a great result.
“The iServe console makes that straight forward to change settings if you are familiar with such things.”
And for those of us without any geek ;-) How do we set the CNAME record for GMail in iServe?
Shane, are you in the console? Send me an email I can step you through it and then post the instructions.
I can’speak highly enough of google apps for e-mail, I use it personally and have setup small businesses with it as their primary e-mail, The weird thing is to convince them to use it; you have to say nothing will change (ie you still use MS outlook, POP your e-mail etc.), once they have it they end up using webmail most of the time. Now MS outlook rocks; and they drop it.
Have you seen Microsoft Office Live? It does all these steps for you … and for the basic package it is FREE!
With Microsoft Office Live Basics you get (for Free):
-Free domain name and Web hosting
-Easy-to-use Web site design tools
-500 MB of Web site storage space
-25 company-branded e-mail accounts
-Web site reports
-Search advertising tool with $50 credit*
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/officelive/FX101534261033.aspx
Try it out … it is great for people just getting started. You dont have to bother with all the Registration, DNS settings etc…
-CJ.
My $0.02:
Using GoDaddy for domain registration (even now that they are no longer running the aforementioned google promotion) makes this process really easy. The registration is about the same amount for a year ($40ish), and there is a one-click “Transfer my MX records to Google” button. Plus GoDaddy have a great set of hosting tools and options in case you ever want to set up a site. And as any of you who listen to the Cranky Geeks podcast will know - GoDaddy also has great marketing.
All sorted!! For those newbies (like me) you need to have the domain hosted once registered!
Thanks for your help Rod and the offer of more :-)
Yep, Office Live is excellent for this - takes about 10 minutes to get everything sorted out.
I picked up a .com name there recently that I thought would have been long gone… (luck, I guess).
can’speak highly enough of google apps for e-mail, I use it personally and have setup small businesses with it as their primary e-mail, The weird thing is to convince them to use it; you have to say nothing will change (ie you still use MS outlook, POP your e-mail etc.), once they have it they end up using webmail most of the time. Now MS outlook rocks; and they drop it.
Is Office Live available for NZ residents? Maybe I’m missing something here …
Thanks a lot for this - very informative.
I’ve just purchased a domain through Google/GoDaddy, and signed up to Google Apps standard edition.
Could anyone point me to some info on how to link this domain and the associated email addresses to Outlook? For someone not especially techie.
Thanks a lot.
Rod,
Great email for those non techies out there … what is the answer if you already have a domain and a website, but want to do the gmail app with domain? Will this impact the current website hosting? Thx n adv.
Hi Paul, you can mix and match. To do that you need control of your DNS rcords. Suggest transferring to iServe or a similar service and then you can manage it all yourself.
Paul, all domain names have various properties such as these below -
The A record controls the website, the MX record controls where the email goes. You need to redirect both of these to specific IP addresses.
On the A record if your domain was fred.co.nz make sure you put in an A record for both http://www.fred.co.nz and fred.co.nz (use same IP). This way it will handle redirection to your website if people type http://www.fred.co.nz and also when they type fred.co.nz. You have to setup the webserver end as well to handle this.
WWW is a sub domain, the most common one. Other sub domains could be news.fred.co.nz or whatever you choose.
Hope this helps. As Rod said, you need access to your DNS information where it is hosted. You can also if you are the name holder as for it to be moved.
If I purchase a domain name from GoDaddy, but through Google Apps, do I use the Google information to link it to Outlook, or the GoDaddy information? Thanks a lot.
The Google information. Setting your DNS records at GoDaddy directs your mail to Google. To pull email from Gmail into Outlook follow the Google instructions.
Brilliant. Thanks a lot. Never realised it was so easy to have a quality branded email address.
I have been provided this same service by an Australian company TagAlong Mail ( http://www.tagalongmail.com.au ) They registered my domain name and setup the email in 24 hours. Really friendly people, even called to check that I was comfortable with the webmail and to see if I had any questions.
Much better than my old Bigpond email address!
Hi Rod,
I am in the same predicament as Shane, back in July.
How do I set the CNAME record for Gmail in Iserve?
Hope you can help, thanks, Jeff.
Hi Rod, Our small business has its domain name, website and emails with discountdomains but we need more email addresses than the 10 they allow. I have been searching for way for us to get and am wondering if your article is a solution to this. I am not a techy and can only just follow it but can’t tell if you are talking about providing 1 email account or many.
Yes, GMail for Domains will allow you lots of email addresses.
Carol, I run a small IT consultancy that helps small businesses get up and running with Google Apps for your Domain. Contact me if you’d like some assistance.
http://www.protemp.co.nz/email/
Hey Carol, this might help: http://www.pefa.co.nz
Hey Rod
Are you able to forward the instructions you sent to shane re: setting up the new CNAME with iServe
Cheers
Graeme
This is a nice one: http://www.yourmailid.com. I registered a domain name and use it for my personal ID. Other people can use this domain too for their personal ID’s. The cool thing is that I get rewarded for the use of other people!
Rod
Like Graeme, Jeff and Shane before me - I have the same problem of having signed up for iserve (which I recommend) and then unsuccessfully trying to configure it to work with C Names, DNS and Nameserver (which I dont recommend).
Google Aps has some suggestions but none seem to work with Iserve. Any hints or tips on how to make this work?