[realprogrammers hosting] Moving to Google Apps (For Your Domain)

[Paul Makepeace]

Hi folks,

This is an email about migrating mail hosting to improve reliability and,
optionally add features to your hosting facility. It is essential, if you
receive or send email through the service, to read this as you will need to
take action this week , albeit in most cases fairly trivial action taking
fifteen minutes max, likely less. For those not using the email here in any
form can ignore this. If you only use mailing lists, please drop me a line.
In these cases no action's needed besides an RSVP.

Over the last three or so months the realprogrammers.com hosting service has
been much less reliable than it has in years past. Specifically recently the
service has been so overwhelmed by spammers people have not been able to
send mail themselves. This email is an effort to address that while at the
same time providing some, in my opinion, rather good new features, and at no
cost.

The most immediately pressing issue is the volume of spam the server is
having to deal with. Classifying and filtering spam is a CPU intensive
operation and thus sensitive to spam "attacks". Processing this junk mail is
interfering with webservice and other facilities such as DNS. It turns out
it's possible to outsource the mail service to an organisation dedicated to
dealing with it, for free. This is in my opinion the most effective solution
and also frees up my time to providing better support to your existing
applications.

Google Apps, aka Gmail For Your Domain

Google recently launched a product that allows you to use Gmail for your own
domain. Thus instead of username at gmail.com you can have the exact same
experience but with username at yourdomain.com. In addition to that you can set
up accounts for other users, aliases (e.g. sales@), and group emails ( e.g.
family@). As well as the email Google have integrated a sophisticated
calendar application and an open-format chat client into the browser. There
is even a webpage creator product. But back to the email. It's not even a
requirement to use the Gmail interface: POP and SMTP, over SSL, are standard
as well as facilities to auto-forward email to other accounts. Google have
added a twist here where it's possible to forward based on criteria you set
too, e.g. alerts to your mobile phone.

Gmail is searchable just like the web, and fast too. There's spam and virus
checking.

Google provide all these features for no charge. Once you're set up you're
under complete control of your domain without any need to consult me for
adding or removing accounts, forwards, etc.

What needs to happen

I have already migrated about half the domains here to Apps so the process
is reasonably smooth. It should take you no more than about ten minutes from
start to finish, and that includes a little time to explore the features. At
the minimum it requires signing up at Google Apps, setting up the accounts,
and reconfiguring your mail client. I also need an email reply to
acknowledge you have read this - I'm happy to help out and clarify anything
here.

At any stage feel free to consult the Gmail Help Center
:https://mail.google.com/support <https://mail.google.com/support>

1. Sign up

The start is http://www.google.com/a You will need a Google Account. If you
use Gmail or Google Earth for example you will have one. If not, you can
sign up right there.

As many of you know I now work for Google, and have a particularly intimate
knowledge of Gmail being one of a small team of engineers that provides
production support.

2. Fill in organisation details

This is all fairly straightforward. Be careful to type the domain name
accurately! Estimate the number of actual user accounts here. Actual user
versus forwards etc.

3. Pick an admin account

This could be either 'admin' or your main username. In my experience the
main username is a little easier, if you want to fiddle with settings it
saves logging in and out. They've engineered it such that managing the
domain and your own inbox are safely separated so there's little chance of
accidental damage.

4. Largely ignore the "set up your services"

There is a whole section on proving the domain is yours. You do not need to
take any of these actions.

5. Create user accounts

For each human user create an account. Have each person log in with the
temporary details and set their account up (some tips below). No mail is yet
going to the domain although there is a test-google-a.com test email address
if you like.

6. Configure POP and forwarding

I personally find the Gmail interface better than any mail client but your
mileage may vary or you may want to retain the status quo and transition in
over a period of time. Under Settings (top right) explore the Forwarding and
POP tab. There is help on configuring your POP account
here.<https://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic55>
https://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic55


7. All set! Make it live!

When you're all ready let me know and I will switch the DNS ("1
ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.", etc) and then you can enable the services by clicking
on the button that acknowledges the DNS changes have taken place. Unlike a
lot of DNS adjustments I have configured it to take only five minutes for
the effect. You will be live almost immediately.

Some tips

There are quite a collection of features under the Settings tab. I
personally like having Snippets, Keyboard Shortcuts, and Personal Indicators
on. Under the Accounts tab you can different "From" addresses, e.g. a work
and a personal email. They don't even need to be of the same domain(!) You
may well prefer the "Reply from the same address the message was sent to."
setting when using different From addresses.

Some people used to the "bucketing" approach of Folders in e.g. Outlook may
find labels a little different. Labels are like tags - an email can have any
number of them, effectively removing any need for hierarchical folders and
side-stepping the confusion about which folder to put something in (or,
horrors, copying it). Labels can be added and removed independently, and by
using filters applied automatically. You can have the filter "file away" an
email under a label by using the "Skip Inbox" option when you're creating or
editing the filter.

My top tip for arranging labels is putting a number on them for example "1.
family", "2. beer", "3. work"

Conclusion

I hope this is all clear - please email or call (number on request if you
don't have it already) to discuss. Don't forget there is also heaps of info
at the help site <https://mail.google.com/support>.

Thanks for your patience so far, and I hope you like how it turns out!

Paul
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