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Setting Up Google Apps For Your Domain
By SherryD | January 30, 2010
Topics: Google Info | 2 Comments »
Google apps provides your business with a one stop login, branded with your domain name, in which you are able to manage many of your communication needs.
From its interface, you are able to add multiple logins to use for interaction.
Interact with your customers by setting up a support email address they are able to contact. Interact with contractors you hire by giving them their own login and using the documents feature to share information and instructions.
Google docs allows you to upload files without having to convert those files into a Google doc format. This allows you to access, open and share these files with anyone you give permission to, from anywhere there is an Internet connection and browser available.
Prerequisites
Before you get started with the sign up process, there are a couple of items you will need to have already in place.
1) You will need to have purchased your domain name and have it ready to use in your hosting account’s cPanel interface.
2) You will need to have your index file or home page uploaded, even if it is not quite yet ready for public use.
Getting Set Up
Please note: that there is a bit of setup required here. You will need cPanel access for your domain in order to modify it’s MX records. The MX records determine how mail received on your domain will be handled.
Begin by opening a browser window to the Google Apps Sign Up Page
Select whether you are the Administrator of the domain or End-user/member of the domain. You really should be the owner of the domain with cPanel and ftp access if you are planning on doing this setup.
Enter your domain name.
Fill in the Google Apps Standard Edition form information.
Once the standard information page is completed, you wil be taken to a page on which you will choose the Username for the administrative account and the password that it will use. You will also be asked to accept Google’s terms and conditions for Google Apps Standard Edition. As with any contract, it is strongly suggested that you do read their policies before clicking on the agreement button. There is also the captcha to get past on this page.
On the next page, you will be asked to verify your ownership of your domain. You may either choose to upload an html file, or make a change to the CNAME record for your domain. Uploading a html file is by far the easiest of the two choices.
Here is the structure for a basic HTML file that can be created in Notepad.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN”>
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> googlehostedservice </TITLE>
<META NAME=”Keywords” CONTENT=”">
<META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=”">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
PLACE THE GOOGLE CODE HERE
</BODY>
</HTML>
When done, save the file under the name chosen by Google. In my case it was to be saved as googlehostedservice.html and upload the file to the root of your domain. The root of the domain will be where your index.html or home page is also located. Google will check for this file to verify that you do indeed have administrative rights for this domain.
Click on the button to proceed once this file has been uploaded. You will then be logged into your new Google Apps account.
Now we must activate email in Google Apps and this requires us to make changes in our hosting cPanel. The entries I will show you are for a Hostmonster hosting account, but can be used for other hosting accounts as well. Click Here for the set up document I followed.
Click on Activate email. This will take you to the settings page for the MX records that need to be added.
PLEASE NOTE: This page shows several MX server addresses using the same priority level. Your hosting account, as with mine, may only allow one entry per priority level.
Open a new browser window or tab so you don’t lose the Gmail window.
Login to your hosting cPanel
Find the MX Entry icon in the Mail section and open it.
You will want to take note of the current settings in case you ever wish to set these back.
For my new domain, the only MX entry was as follows:
Priority: 0
Destination: MyNewDomain.com
Actions: Edit or Delete
These setting tell Hostmonster to handle all incoming mail for mynewdomain.com with their mail server. For now, leave this as is and add the following entries. DO Not use priority 0 as this level belongs to the hosting provider’s mail server.
Priority: 1
Destination: ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
Priority: 5
Destination: ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
Priority: 10
Destination: ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
Priority: 15
Destination: ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM
Priority: 20
Destination: ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM
Priority: 25
Destination: ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM
Priority: 30
Destination: ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM
The priority determines which mail server will be used first. If that one is busy, the next in the list will be used.
When this is done, remove the original MX record for priority 0.
Return the main cPanel page.
Open the subdomains icon under the Domains section.
Create a subdomain called gmail.yourdomain.com in Hostmonster; make sure the domain you are setting up email for is showing. Click in the Document Root box and it will automatically fill in. Click on create to add. This may take a few minutes to process.
We must now redirect the gmail.yourdomain.com to the Google Apps address which is mail.google.com/a/domain.com.
Find the gmail.yourdomain.com that you have just created in the subdomains list.
Click on Manage Redirection
Remove the Http:// list in the box provided there, paste in mail.google.com/a/domain.com and save. When you are returned to the subdomain list, you will now see that your gmail subdomain is being redirected.
Note: This Redirection feature can also be used if you are replacing an old domain and you want the traffic for that domain to go to another domain. Simply add the full URL to the new domain.
That takes care of the changes needed in the Hostmonster cPanel, so we are able to close this tab or window at this time. Don’t forget to logout.
Go back to your Google Apps window where we had previously clicked on Activate email.
I do not change the SPF record, so that is something you will need to decide on your own.
Click on the “I have completed these steps” button. It may take up to 48 hours for the new settings to take effect, so check back to see if it now says active beside the Email icon. On average, I find it only takes 10 to 15 minutes before this shows as active.
At this point, you should log out and bookmark the login page for your domains Google Apps. It is a rather long link. Then log back in.
Click on Users and Groups to add additional users and emails to your account. I set up my support email user and account at this time. Use your own name and set the username to support. You have the option then of assigning a password or using the temporary password shown. I prefer to assign a password if it is an account I will be using personally. A temporary password is good for any accounts you set up for other people’s access.
Make sure you are recording this information as you go and email the instructions to the new user.
If this was an additional account you setup for your own use, logout and then login under the new username. The shortcut to the email login will be: http://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com. You will be asked to enter a captcha and accept Google’s Terms of Service as the new user. Click on Create my account. I am assuming a user who has been assigned a temporary password will be asked to create a new password at this point.
To make multiple accounts easier to manage, I now change some settings.
Click on Settings in the upper right of the screen.
Under General – Keyboard shortcuts – enable keyboard shortcuts and save changes. As you can see, there are many options available on this page.
Once this is saved, return to Settings and go to the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
Under forwarding, I will ask that any email received by this account be forwarded to my main domain account and a copy kept. Save changes. Now any mail received by this account will also be sent to the original admin account that was setup.
As an added item, I also forward any email received on the admin account to a general personal gmail account. This is the account that I check most frequently and with this setup I will know if any email arrived on the other accounts, so that I am able to respond if necessary in a timely manner.
To do this, log out and re-login under your admin email account. Go to Settings and enter your forwarding information.
Once Email shows as active in your Google Apps panel, test the new email addresses and redirection.
That’s it for now.
To Your Success,
SherryD
http://www.wbobr.com
P.S. If anyone has instructions for setting up Google Apps on other hosting providers, please feel free to email me and we will see what we can do about posting those instructions as well.
2 Responses to “Setting Up Google Apps For Your Domain”
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February 10th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Excellent article. With Google now allowing any type doc upload also, app can be a powerful file management solution for your site.
I came across this useful app tuts (not an affiliate link)
http://run-your-business.com/
Pretty useful!
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