Email of your Very Own
(for $10 or less a year)
A lot of companies offer lifetime email addresses (such as pobox.com). These services give you one email address, which you can then forward to your actual email address. This way, when you change your internet service provider (ISP), you don’t have to tell everyone what your new email address is, just update the forwarding (such as from Mindspring to Roadrunner). These services typically cost $15-$20 a year. However, you can do the same thing on your own, for less, with your own personalized domain. And while they charge per email address, once you have your own domain, you can set it up for as many people as you like.
It’s actually fairly simple. First, you’re going to need to find a domain name you like. Next, you are going to need to register it with a registrar. Finally, you’re going to have to set up email aliasing so that mail sent to <you@yourdomain.com> actually ends up going to the correct place.
There are now lots of options for Top Level domains (TLDs) (such as .com, .net, .org, etc). Historically, .com was businesses, .net was an internet service provider, and .org was organizations. Some TLDs are restricted (such as .gov, and .edu), but most can be used by anyone. (.com tends to be preferred, simply because it’s easier for most people to remember.)
Sometimes the hardest thing is finding a cool domain name that no one else is using. To find out whether someone is using a particular domain, you need to do a Whois search. You can do this from http://www.internic.org/whois.html. Simply type in the domain name you’re thinking of (such as yourdomain.com) and you’ll get back a response of whether that name is in use, and if so the contact information for who holds the registration for that domain (the registrar). If it comes back with no result, you’ve got a winner.
Once you’ve found a domain name, you’re going to need to register it with a registrar. While there used to be only one registrar, it’s now been opened up and there are many registrars (for a fairly complete list see http://www.internic.net/alpha.html). All of the different registrars offer different features and solutions, at varying rates. (These features also typically include hosting your very own website, but that’s not the topic of this tutorial.)
For purposes of this tutorial, we’re going to use http://www.Godaddy.com as the registrar.
Go to their web site, and search for your newly selected domain name. Presuming that earlier you found a domain name not in use, it should come back from the search as available (even if it didn’t, the search engine will make multiple suggestions). Select the domain name(s) that you want, and select “Smart Registration”.
Create a new account, and select how long your domain registration should be for.
When you register for a domain, you’re going to have to provide contact information. Many registrars now offer private registration, where the information available to the public lists only the company. This used to be because spammers harvested email addresses from these lists. These days the registrars have made that significantly harder to do, so it’s typically not worth the $10 or so a year, but it is an option.
GoDaddy, like most of the registrars, offers a plethora of features. For purposes of this tutorial, you don’t want any of them. On the Godaddy site currently, you’re going to want to select “Using my free options”, and proceed to Checkout.
Congratulations, you’re now the owner of your very own domain. Of course, it doesn’t DO anything yet, but you’re more than halfway done!
Updating Contact Information
Once you have a domain of your very own, you have to fill out contact information, so that in case there are problems, you can be contacted.
The Registrant is the person who physically has possession of the lease, and therefore the rights to make any changes to it. This is a very important entry. The registrant is the only one typically who can fix problems when all else fails and is the person who “owns” the domain.
The Technical, Administrative, and Billing Contact are, not surprisingly, used for what they sound like. While they CAN all be the same person, it’s usually a good idea to list at least two, in case there are issues and they need to reach someone and are having problems. In particular, it’s a good idea to not use your new personalized domain email address as the contact, since if there ARE problems, they’re unlikely to be able to email you.
You need to remember to update this information whenever it changes. That information being incorrect can void your lease.
Setting up DNS
The Internet is a big place, filled with names and numbers. Every computer on the Internet is located by an IP address (a string of numbers, such as 192.168.2.104). However, people don’t remember long strings of numbers well, so there’s a Domain Naming System (DNS) that maps those numbers to an easy to remember name. While that’s an in-depth discussion all on its own, what you need to know is that DNS has to work for email sent to you to find its way home.
Most registrars charge for DNS services. Godaddy offers DNS, and with it a number of services (some free, some not). However, I don’t like their interfaces. There are several places on-line that offer DNS for free, zoneedit.com being the most prominent. We’ll use zoneedit.com for the rest of this discussion.
Go to the http://www.zoneedit.com website, and sign up for a free account. They will email you account information. Once that email arrives, go back to the zoneedit site and log in.
Step 1: Add your new domain (yourdomain.com). Once that’s done, you’ll get a page with information about who your domain name servers (DNS) are (There will be a primary and secondary.). Write that down.
Step 2: Go back to the GoDaddy site, log in, and change the DNS servers to the information provided by ZoneEdit. That information will take a while to update across the Internet, but while that’s happening you can finish up.
Back to the ZoneEdit web site. Log in, and the new domain (zone) will be available for setup. Select it.
There are now a LOT of options, but for the moment we’re worried about only one – mail forwarding. Select Mail Forwards.
Type in the email address you want to use with your new domain, and the email address you currently use with your ISP. You’re all set. All mail sent to you@yourdomain.com will automatically be delivered to you@yourISP.com.
Note: If you set forwarding up for *@yourdomain.com, then ALL mail sent to your domain will get forwarded to you at you@yourISP.com. You can use the two options in conjunction, so that mail will be forwarded to specific people if listed, and forward everything else to the address specified with the wild card (“*”)
In an extension to that, you can actually hand out context-appropriate email addresses, so you can tell from who the mail is addressed to where they got the email address from. Examples would be google@yourdomain.com, amazon@yourdomain.com, etc. In this manner you can see that if you’re getting spam addressed to ebay@yourdomain.com, then the spammer picked up your address from or on ebay. If you’re using the wild card, you won’t have to actually go back and enter them all each time you hand out a new email address.
Because you own the domain, this also means you can set up as many specific forwards as you want. So, for example, husband@yourdomain.com forwards to husband@nc.rr.com, and wife@yourdomain.com will actually forward to wife@aol.com
Okay, so now for the test. Open up your mail program, and send yourself mail. Does it show up?
Troubleshooting:
Okay, so you’re all set. People send mail to you specifically@yourdomain.com, or even to anything@yourdomain.com, and you get the mail. However, when you respond it still sets your reply-to to the email address used by your ISP. So when you reply to people, and THEY hit reply, they end up responding to your actual ISP email address.
You will either need to change your “From:” setting every time you reply (and not every mail program will let you), or set your mail program up to change the field for you.
If you use Eudora, this is REALLY simple.
Step 1: Open Eudora, and select “Personalities”. Right-click the Dominant personality, and select Properties. Change the return address to your new address.
Step 2: Select Tools > Filters. Create a new filter for all incoming mail. Select <Any Header>, and make the action Make Personality – Dominant. Now all incoming mail will be changed so that the reply address is your new personal one.
Enjoy!
Internet Service Provider (ISP) - a company that provides individuals access to the Internet. Examples would be RoadRunner and Mindspring.
Registrar - keeps records of the contact information for a domain and submits the technical information to a central directory known as the "registry." This registry provides other computers on the Internet the information necessary to send you e-mail or to find your web site.
Whois – a search of the registry of domain names for ownership
Email aliasing - (see email forwarding)
Email forwarding – Where email sent to one address gets rerouted to another address.
Domain Name Services (DNS) the mapping of domain names to specific computer addresses (IP addresses).
Top Level domains (TLDs) – see http://www.icann.org/tlds/ and http://www.internic.net/faqs/new-tlds.html
Domain registration – when you register a domain name, you actually don’t “own” it. You’re leasing the rights to use that name. When that time expires, you’ll have to renew your lease, or the domain name will go up for grabs again. Many registrars offer discounts for extended registration.