Get your own domain email from Google
After getting to know a few webmasters around the blogosphere, I noticed a lot of them uses gmail, hotmail or yahoo for their domain email. There are a few them who asked me how to set up an email that looks like yourname@yourdomain.com, and whether it’s hard to set up one and will there be additional charge? Here are the answers to your question.
When you register your domain name, your domain package might include a couple of email account for your domain. But fortunately, Google is kind enough to offer you free email storage space and other additional services for your domain, it is officially known as “Google Apps for your domain”. The reason why I prefer to let Google to handle my email is because I simply got used to gmail. The interface of your email account will be like the ad-supported gmail you are familiar with. And you can’t question the speed and stability that Google has to offer. It is also really easy to set up an account too. The whole process took no more than half an hour (usually much faster). *Note: If you think managing another extra email account is troublesome, you are wrong. Google allows you to “link” two email accounts together. For example: You may still use your oldaccount@gmail.com and automatically receive email that is sent to yourname@yourdomain.com It is also possible for you to set your oldaccount@gmail.com to send email as yourname@yourdomain.com if you wished to.
To get started, point your browser to http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/editions.html then click on the “Get Started” button under the Standard Edition.
I will assume that you are the administrator of your domain, so on the next screen, just select that option and type in your domain name, click “Get Started” when you are done.
Step 2 of 3: Fill in your personal information on the next screen. If your blog or website is only manage by you, you may just put 5 or less under the “Number of users” field. After you are done, check the required checkbox which says “I understand that if I cannot alter DNS records for my domain, I may impact my organization’s ability to use”. You may skip the “Organization Information” information because it is not required for you to fill in. Hit “Continue” to get on to the next screen.
Step 3 of 3: You will setup your administrator account here. Simply choose a username and password for your admin account. It’s up to you if you want to receive tips and news from Google or to provide feedback to Google, check the checkbox if you are interested, then scroll down and accept the terms and condition.
Once you click on “I accept…”, Google will send you an email confirmation. You do not need to confirm from your email, you can do it on the next screen.
On the next screen, you will see your domain dashboard, but before you can really use them (you will notice the services listed below as “not active”), you need to verify your account first.
Click on the “Verify domain ownership” at the top of the page. You will have two ways of verifying your domain ownership, I suggest using the “Upload an HTML file” because that is easier. (But only choose this option if you have access to your FTP account because you would need to upload a file to your server). So, if you have a Blogger/Blogspot account that is hosted by Google, or you have a WordPress.com account that is hosted by WordPress, you will not have FTP access. In this case, select the “Change your CNAME record” option instead and skip the next few paragraphs, continue reading in the CNAME section. However, for WordPress based blog which is hosted by yourself (meaning that you have FTP access), you may choose the HTML upload method.
Upload an HTML file method:
Google will ask you to create a HTML verification file named googlehostedservice.html, copy the text specified below into it, and upload it to your domain. To do this, you may just use your notepad. Copy the string that Google generate for your domain (which looks like something like this: google8a2fff735ef801cd, do not copy mine because yours will be different from mine) and paste it into the text file. Click on File > Save As… For the Save as type, make sure you select All Files (*.*) and use googlehostedservice.html as your file name, click on save.
Now that you got your html file, you need to upload it to the root of your domain which is just under your public_html folder. Upload the html file you just created to that folder and then click on “Verify” when you are done. Google will claim that it may take up to 48 hours for the change but it usually takes only 10 minutes for the verifying process. After that, you are basically done, play around with the settings in the dashboard to tweak it to the way you like it. Enjoy~
Change your CNAME record method:
If you have a Blogger account or WordPress based blog that is hosted by WordPress, continue reading here. For the verification method, you should have chose the “Change your CNAME record” by now. For those of you who know how to create/change the CNAME record for your domain, you may just follow the simple instructions on screen and you are done. For those who don’t, check out Google’s guide to creating your CNAME record on this page http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=47283&topic=9196
Because each host has a slightly different ways of creating a CNAME record, it’s hard for me (or Google) to list them all out, but Google did provide us some “Specific instructions for popular domain hosts” which is listed on the link I provided before.
The specific instructions are available to these following domain hosts.
* GoDaddy.com * ix web hosting * 1and1 * EveryDNS.net * Lunarpages * Yahoo!SmallBusiness * No-IP * DNS Park * eNom * Network Solutions * MyDomain.com * Dreamhost * Domain Direct * gandi.net * eurodns.com * register.com * myhosting.com
If your domain hosts is not listed or you have a problem or question during any of the process, feel free to leave your comment here and I will get back to you.
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October 20th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Nice post. From the past 2 years I’m using google for al my domain email id’s.. It is simple and free
TechnoSamrat´s last blog post..Create Instant Private Network With Remobo for Windows and Mac OS X
October 20th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Yea. My domain hosting plan comes with email account but I still choose to let Google handle my emails. The huge storage space is great
and another thing I like about it is how the reply of each message is neatly organized under one another.
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Interesting guide.
My host provides multiply email boxes and web interface for them but I just created one address and forwarded to my personal box. Least trouble.
Rarst´s last blog post..Recovering Windows logon passwords with Ophcrack
October 24th, 2008 at 2:44 am
Yea. I have a lot of email account to manage too. So I combined mails from “similar account” and forward them to my one email account. For those of you who do not know how to have your mail auto forward to another account in email, simply go to the gmail “Settings”, Forwarding and POP/IMAP, and enable forwarding. Gmail will then ask you to verify your account in another email.
October 24th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
this is actually good. i have been thinking about it but my Gmail email has a lot of spams that i just got tired of dealing with.
does yahoo allow this too?
simplyjacy´s last blog post..Feeling Good and Looking Good
October 25th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
I thought most of Gmail’s spam will automatically go into your spam folder? doesn’t it? (Or do you mean that Gmail’s spam folder has a lot of spam? I know some of my other Gmail account is like that too)
Anyway, I don’t think yahoo offers email for your domain like Google does.
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:01 am
I really very liked this post. Can I copy it to my site?
Thank in advance.
Sincerely, Your Reader.