In order to be in a position to change it, you must have your own domain name. You may shell out money and acquire a domain name with a .com, .org, or .info TLD. However, if you are planning to use the email id for your personal use, then there are the options of free domain names. Although there are a plethora of free domain name providers with a wide variety of esoteric TLD, like .co.nr, .tk, .biz.ly etc, you must, without a second thought, stay away from these. You need to register with a domain name provider that also allows you to add entries of DNS Nameservers (discussed later). Currently there exists two such domain name providers - co.cc and uni.cc. Of these, we shall use the co.cc domain name. There are two reasons for this - a .co.cc sounds not so much like a free domain name and it also has explicitly mentioned the support to the use of .co.cc domain names for Google Apps services. Using a uni.cc domain name is fraught with risks. Though it is an older domain name provider compared to co.cc, one of its Terms of Agreement is that you must insert a certain code, that enables it to ping, ensuring that the domain name that is registered with it is being used. If it finds that it is unable to ping the domain name, it assumes that you are no longer using the domain name and could reallocate the domain name to someone else. so any email account created with this id will cease to exist, or even worse, if another person sets up his email account with that domain name, all your emails would be forwarded to that person. If you have a website that uses a .uni.cc domain name, then there is no problem since you could add the code to the page and safely use the email account you create with it. However if you are using the domain name only for creating an email account, then it will be a problem.
Once this is completed your job is done. Log out.
One stage successfully completed. Just two more to go.
2.) DNS Nameserver service
A Name server is a link between your domain name and host. It will direct any queries for your site or account to the respective locations where your mail account is hosted. Name server services can be paid for or free. For our purpose we shall use one of the free services - the one provided by everyDNS. Again registering to use their service is a complete no-brainer and I leave it up to you to figure out the easy procedure to register. Once registered, log into the account. On the left hand side you shall see a column. In that column there is a section titled Webhop Domains:. In that section there is a category titled Add new domain (basic). Type in the domain name you registered at co.cc and click on the button >>(basic)
Once this is done, you shall see the entry of your domain name at the top of the same left column. Click on it.
You will now be take to the page where all the records/entries related to that domain would be shown. Since you are yet to add any records of your own, you will see 2 dummy entries - one A-record entry and another CNAME entry.
Delete the A-record entry. You may not be allowed to delete the CNAME entry since it is expected that a domain name must have some entry in the Nameserver. It should be no cause of worry since we will be able to delete it easily as soon as we add our own entries to the domain name. In order to be able to associate the domain name with the email account in Google Apps, you must add 1 CNAME record entry and 7 MX record entries to the domain. In order to do this, you should locate the section titled Add a record. It should not be difficult to find at all since it is situated just below the Current Records section. We shall first add the CNAME record entry. Just enter the information as shown in the picture and then click on the Add record button.
You will now see that the added CNAME record is now seen in the Current Records table. You may now delete the dummy CNAME entry from earlier. We shall now add the MX record entries related to the email account in Google Apps. The procedure to be followed is similar. Against the available categories, add the following entries and then click on the Add Record button.
Full Qualified Domain Name = shubhspace.co.cc
Record Value = ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
If MX Record, MX value = 1
The complete list of Record entries that needs to be added are tabulated below.
You may use any other word instead of mail as the Fully Qualified Domain Name in the CNAME record entry. If you do so, then please note this down, as we would be needing this when we configure our Google apps account in the next stage. Once you have finished adding all the above mentioned entries, your completed Current Records table would look something like this.
(Please note that these settings are for your Google Apps account for which we shall sign up in the next stage. No harm would be done if you make these settings even before you have registered for the service)
In order to avoid confusion, I have blanked out entries not related to this particular tutorial. With this you have successfully completed the configuration of the DNS settings of your email id. In order to notify your domain registrar (in our case, co.cc) of theses settings we had already added the entries of EveryDNS’s Nameservers - ns1.everydns.net; ns2.everydns.net; ns3.everydns.net; ns4.everydns.net
Two stages successfully completed. Just one more stage to go.
Note: co.cc has now started offering its own Nameservers for adding CNAME, MX and A-record entries. However it being a new service that they are offering, its stability and security is still quite unknown. Moreover it is also a good practise not to club domain registration with DNS service together, in order to avoid any hassles at a later date. So I advise you to use the DNS service provided by everyDNS, which is now an old, stable and reputed free DNS service provider.
3.) A Google Apps account
Google Apps is essentially a set of services, bunched together, and offered to any enterprise who would need these services for the functioning and collaborative tasks of its employees. The services include a Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Talk, Gmail etc.
Well now a question that may arise is that how is GAppsFYD different from a normal Google account using which you can make use of all these sevices. The answer lies in the term ’Your Domain’ in the name of the service. You can associate your own domain name with these services and hence any individual using these services [with your permission] will be doing it as part of services provided by your company. For example if you have a domain name example.com, then using Google Apps, you can create email accounts for your employees which would read user1@example.com, user2@example.com etc, where user1 or user2 could be replaced by a name of your choice. Thus you may create up to 100 such accounts using GappsFYD. So if you running a small company employing up to 100 people and need to provide them with services email accounts or planner calendars, you could make use of this service.
Although you may do a lot of things with Google Apps, this post will look only at the emailing feature of this service. Google Apps is available in three different versions - Standard Edition, Premier Edition andEducation Edition. Of these, you may register and use the Standard Edition and Education Edition forfree. We shall be making use of the Standard edition for creating our own unique email id.
Registering for the Standard edition of the service is a complete no-brainer. This is your start page. You start by entering the domain name with which you want to associate Google Apps. Then click on the Get Started button.
The next page that opens up you will have to enter some details, none of which need be authentic, except for the valid email id part. This because if something goes wrong with your account at a later date, then your contact with them would be through the email id you have entered here. So fill up the form and once you have done that, click on the button that says Continue.
You will now be taken to a page where you will be asked to enter the username of the Administrator. When you enter the Google Apps account under the Administrator account, you will have complete control over all the settings in Google Apps. If you so desire, then you may make your Administrator account as the email id of your choice. However I suggest that you create your choice of email id later as a user account and not set it as your Administrator account. For now we will create a simple Administrator account. You may give it any username. I chose the username
admin, ie,
admin@shubhspace.co.cc would be the username and email id of the Administrator (ie, you, or your alter ego
). Once you have completed filling up the form, click on the button that says
I accept. Continue with set up>.
Once this is completed correctly, you will be taken to your Google Apps control panel as an Administrator. On first arriving at the control panel, it would look something like this.
(Click on the image to view a larger size picture)
The main services are shown, but not activated. You will have to activate them. Since we are interested in the email component of the service, we shall take a look at it. Once you successfully activate your email account, activation of the other services, if you so desire, can be performed in a similar manner. But before that you must perform a task that is known as Verify domain ownership. Once this is done the services would be activated automatically. One of the methods of verifying domain ownership is by updating your domain records to point your domain to Google’s servers providing the Google Apps service. But we have already done that!!!!. So all you will have to do now is log out, wait for a few hours (An estimate on the safe side) and then log back in. (In the meantime you will receive an email in the address provided by you while registering). When you log back in your dashboard will now look like this. All the services have now been activated.
(Click on the image to view a larger size picture)
Now that your services are activated, you may create a new user with the unique email id that you wanted for yourself. Click on the link that says Create new users. In the new page that opens up, enter the Name (the one which people will see when they receive a mail from you) and the username of your choice. Assign the account a password right now by clicking on the Set password link below. You may use the same passwords you had used for the admin account, but you will still have to type it out. Then click the Create new user button. With this your own unique email id will be created. Rejoice!!!!!.
Never underestimate the extent to human stupidity. You give them your email id -mailme@shubhspace.co.cc and they, in all their wisdom assume it to be maleme@shubhspace.co.cc . So any important mail they send you at the email id maleme@shubhspace.co.cc could be expected never to reach you ever. Google, in anticipation of such erros, comes to your rescue with a cool nifty feature calledCatch-all Address. Click on the link titled email on the dashboard. Select the Forward the email tooption and type in the id you have created or yourself and then Save the changes. Simple!!!!. From now on anybody trying to send you an email will only have to get the domain name correctly (shubhspace.co.cc, in my case). They may take the liberty of mistyping your username (to the left of the ’@’ symbol) and still reach you.
So now if you wish to check your mail you would have to open the sitehttp://mail.google.com/a/shubhspace.co.cc. It is quite a long url to remember. In order to shorten your url, Google allows you to create a subdomain that will open up your email login page. In order to do this, click on the Email link on the dashboard. The page that opens up will have a section called Web address. Clicking on it will open a page that will let you specify the subdomain you desire. In your case it must be thesame name that you had entered while updating your domain records in EverDNS control panel. Once done click on the Continue button.
It will then ask you to add a CNAME value to your domain records. We had already done that in stage 2. So you may just click the button labeled I’ve completed these steps.
With this you too have successfully completed all the steps needed to create your own unique email id. To log into your newly created email id just open your login site (mail.shubhspace.co.cc, in my case). Type in your username and password and you will enter your email account to send and receive emails through your one of a kind email id.
I have only talked about the email service of Google Apps. It, in fact, has a plethora of features available that you can make use of to great effects. Explore them and use them to know more about them. If you have any doubt or query regarding this post, please feel free to get in touch with me, either through the Comments or through email listed above, which, by the way was laso created using Google Apps.
Godspeed
References
If you would like to know more about Google apps then you may read a nice article that has appeared on lifehacker.
