If you have a life with Google email service, you already know what are their other services. I’ve been using Gmail for 4-5 years now. I still remember how I had my first Gmail account. Some people may don’t know about those past years. In those days it’s not easy to have a Gmail account like you having an account today by signing up with just one click. I’d seen one of my friend using gmail account. it was so professonal and I was wondering to make one for me. Then I knew I need an invitation from some one who already using Gmail. Anyhow I able to find a link from the web, so I got my first Gmail account. Okay, that’s about my experience with Gmail, now I’ll come to the topic. Let’s see how to configure your domain name with Google apps. So if you have your own domain then you can have a real cool email address with your domain name.

Example: yourname@yourdomain.com

If you don’t have a domain name, you can purchase a domain name from any domain registar. Price is depending on the registar, also you can purchase one when you’re signing up with Google Apps for US $ 10. Â (At the time I’m writing this article)

To sign up with Google Apps you have to go to the page http://www.google.com/a

If you’re going to setup a domain with your business, then you would need to pay some extra bucks for premium edition. But if that isn’t necessary that much, you can sign up with standard edition. Google is giving it for free.

Step 1

Google Apps Standard Edition sign up page http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html and click on “Get Started”

Or Direct link to the Google Apps Standard Edition sign up page http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new

I’ve already purchased a domain from godaddy.com. So I’m using my domain name, “mydomain.com” to sign up with Google Apps.

Step 2

Under “I want to use an existing domain name”, click on the option “Administrator: I own or control this domain”. Then on the text box type your domain name which you already have purchased. Click on “Get Started”.

Step 3

Fill the from with your details, and don’t forget to check the spellings twice of your email address you are providing in here. Also click on the check box “I understand that if I cannot alter DNS records for my domain, I may impact my organization’s ability to use Google Apps.” It is not necessary to fill “Organization Information”.

Click Next.

Step 4

Now you have to create “Administrator Account”. This is the main account in your domain and this account has full control of creating/deleting other user accounts for your domain. So I highly recommend to use strong password for this account.

Click on “I accept. Continue with setup” button.

Step 5

Now Google wants to know this domain is really belongs to you. So Google is giving 2 options for us. You can proof that domain is really belongs to you by uploading html file with the verification code which google is giving in this process, to your domain’s hosting folder or by creating a CNAME record in your domain DNS control panel. Creating CNAME record can take some time to propagate among server. So I’d like to choose first option.

Click Continue.

Step 6

Copy the verification code to a text file and save it as “googlehostedservice.html” and upload it to your domain’s hosting folder. When you click on http://yourdomain.com/googlehostedservice.html it should show the verification code.

Click “I’ve completed the steps above”

Verification code example: googleffffffffd128714c  (use your own code, okay!)

Step 7

If every thing is ok then you ll get the page “Google Apps set up guide”, you can go trough it and learn how to do basic operations or you can skip the setup guide. You can use the setup guide later, it appears on the top of your page until you close it.

Step 8

Now you have completed 90%, but most important thing haven’t done yet. you’ll see “Mail” isn’t active yet. How to activate it? To do this you have to make MX record settings on your domain’s DNS settings control panel. Before it you need to know google’s exchange server settings details. you can see those details by clicking on the “Activate mail” link. On Setup mail delivery page you can choose your registar. If your registar isn’t on the list you can contact your domain registar to get help. But if you have little knowlege about DNS control panel of your domain host’s then it won’t that difficult to create MX records. First thing you have to do is clear all MX records if there are any existing.

Here’s the MX records for Google exchange servers.

PriorityValue HostName Goes To Address (Mail Server) TTL Value

10 @ ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 1 week

20 @ ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 1 week

30 @ ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 1 week

40 @ ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 1 week

50 @ ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 1 week

My domain is registered with Godaddy, so I’ll show my DNS control panel and how to make MX records on it.

First I have log into my Godaddy account and I have selected the domain which I have used for Google Apps. Then I have logged to Total DNS control.

(My products >> Domains>> Domain Manager>> “Choose your domain”)

Delete those MX records and add new MX records of google exchange servers. To add new MX records click on “Add New MX Record” button.

Host > @

Goes To Address> ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.

(Don’t forget to include the period at the end)

Priority> 10

TTL> 1 week

Confirm box will appear, click ok on it. Then you will see “pending setup” state on MX records. It will take some minutes to apper on MX records. So you can add other 4 MX records as above. (Priority level and exchange server names must use as mention in google MX records setting details.)

Step 9

You have finished setting up new MX records for your domain, Now back to the Google Apps set up email delivery page, click on “I have completed these steps” button. Then you ll see “Updating” status on email area. This will take some time to complete. (up to 48 hours ) It took me just few minutes. So check it later, If you see “Active” status with Email service, BOOOOOOM! We have completed it successfully.

Step 10

After complete above 9 steps you should be able to send and recieve mails. In tis step I’m going to talk about how to add “SPF record” to your domain. You have to go back to DNS control panel of your domain. By adding SPF record we tells to others servers that these mails are actually coming from our domain. So our mails won’t show in receivers “Junk/Spam” folder.

SPF – Sender Policy Framework

Actually we can do that by adding TXT record on Dodaddy DNS control. Click on “Add New TXT Record” button. Use the following details.

TXT Name> @

TXT Value> v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all

TTL> 1 hour

That’s it! Now you have configured your domain with Google Apps. In the next article I hope to talk about how to create CNAME records for your mails/docs/calender etc to use with your domain name. example by using http://mail.yourdomain.com By default you can access your mail account by http://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com

Default link to manage your domain http://www.google.com/a/yourdomain.com

Default link to access your docs http://docs.google.com/a/yourdomain.com

Default link to access your calender http://calender.google.com/a/yourdomain.com

Default link to access your sites http://sites.google.com/a/yourdomain.com