TIP OF THE MONTH: How to set up an e-mail account for your new, Wilmington Design-created website.

July 27, 2009

Having an e-mail address with your own website's domain name is great (i.e. you@yourwebsite.com). It looks more official and helps your business appear more professional. If you’re not familiar with how to setup your own e-mail account, here are easy steps to follow:

Using a Mail Client for E-mail

If you have a mail client like Outlook, you can take advantage of the many features that a browser-based e-mail account can't: Email Filters, Anti-Spam protection, Anti-virus Protection, Mailing Lists Manager, etc.

1. Open Outlook (We're using Outlook 2007 version below)
2. Go to the TOOLS menu and select ACCOUNT SETTINGS, you will see:

3. Select NEW, to add a new account.
4. Select Microsoft Exchange, POP3, IMAP or HTTP. Click NEXT.

5. Most of your information is entered on the next screen. Under the YOUR NAME field, enter your full name as you would like it to appear on messages that you send out.

6. Under the E-MAIL ADDRESS field, enter your full e-mail address, which you had asked the WDC team to create for you (example: amanda@mywebsite.com).

7. Type in the password that was given to you by the WDC team. Click NEXT. You can always go back later to edit the password.

8. Outlook will search for your server settings automatically and establish a network connection. If it can't find the server settings, you can manually set them by clicking the "Manually configure server settings..." check box. Click NEXT. If manually configuring, select Internet E-mail. Click NEXT.

9. Enter the following settings: Incoming mail server, type "mail." followed by your domain name (example: mail.mywebsite.com); Outgoing mail server (SMTP) – type in your ISP's outgoing mail server. Your SMTP host is generally "mail." followed by your domain name (example: mail.mywebsite.com).

10. Under the USER NAME field enter your full e-mail address (example: amanda@mywebsite.com). You can then click Test Account Settings to make sure you don't have any errors. If it all checks out, click NEXT, and then FINISH.

11. Close all Outlook windows and restart Outlook for the changes to take effect. Have someone send you a test e-mail to make sure you are able to receive and send e-mails.

Using a web browser for e-mail

You don't need to have Outlook to access your e-mail. All you need is an internet connection and a web browser, like Internet Explorer, Safari, Google Chrome or Firefox. Navigate to: www.yourwebsite.com/webmail, type in your User Name and Password (given to you by the WDC team), and choose any one of the 3 ways to view your mail (either Horde, SquirrelMail, or Round Cube). Here, you can compose and read your mail, organize your address book, or schedule a meeting on the calendar. And there's always the Help button in case you get lost.