Google Apps
I’ve finally decided to switch my mail server over to Google Apps. Since I have all of ‘1‘ user on my domain - I figure it should be now or never. Seeing how my last Google experience was FUBAR’ed, I figured this would be another annoyingly painful process.
Yet, to my amazement, it was quite simple.
After signing up my domain, the first thing I had to do was verify that I was the owner. The verification process consisted of uploading a unique html document to the root of my domain. Contained within the document was a unique key that identified to Googs that I was indeed the domain’s owner. After FTP’ing the html document, I went back to Google Apps and indicated that I was ready for the verification process. Once verified, I was allowed to move my mail servers over.
Since my email was hosted on Dreamhost, in order to prevent an interruption in email service, the first thing I did was to create the exact same accounts I had on Dreamhost over on Google’s servers. That way, when my mail servers were finally switched over, all emails in transit would still be delivered to the right inbox.
To actually change my mail servers, I had to edit my Dreamhost MX record to point to Google App’s mail server. Googs even provided Dreamhost specific instructions to accomplish this task.
Nice.
After changing the MX record, I configured each account to allow POP access. Since I’m a Thunderbird user, I followed these instructions. After configuring Thunderbird, I clicked on ‘Get All Mail‘ and…
Voila!
On a difficulty scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most difficult, I’d rate this process of moving your domain over to Google Apps a 3. Not only that, but there were quite a number of other features like enabling Google Calendar, Google Start Page, and Google Talk for my domain.
Good job Googs!
