What do you do with a domain name after you get one?

[Robert]

Hello, Windows XP folks.

I now have a dial-up line which is where I get my e-mail and also high-speed
cable. Rather than closing the dial-up and giving everybody the e-mail for
the cable and then maybe a year or two from now if I get a DSL line (not
currently available where I live) I'd have to tell everybody all over again
I though I would purchase a domain name and have one permanent e-mail
address independant of the service provider. But how do you go about
attaching ysuch a domain to your internet service? How does that work?

Robert

 

[Don Schmidt]

If you are referring to the email address associated with your domain name,
it's like any other email address, you tell people what it is. In order to
send and receive mail with it you need to add it to your accounts on your
computer or you won't be able to send or receive mail.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I now have a dial-up line which is where I get my e-mail and also
high-speed cable. Rather than closing the dial-up and giving
everybody the e-mail for the cable and then maybe a year or two
from now if I get a DSL line (not currently available where I live)
I'd have to tell everybody all over again I though I would purchase
a domain name and have one permanent e-mail address independant of
the service provider. But how do you go about attaching ysuch a
domain to your internet service? How does that work?

Use GMAIL.
You'll be happier.

You could - if you like - buy a domain name and use a service like
ZoneEdit.com to set forwarding addresses to the gmail account (or
whatever...)

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hello, Windows XP folks.

I now have a dial-up line which is where I get my e-mail and also
high-speed cable. Rather than closing the dial-up and giving
everybody the e-mail for the cable and then maybe a year or two from
now if I get a DSL line (not currently available where I live) I'd
have to tell everybody all over again I though I would purchase a
domain name

You can do that, for example at a place like godaddy.com, or any of the
several other choices. It's not expensive, but it's not necessary either
(see below) .

and have one permanent e-mail address independant of the
service provider.

But you don't need to do that to accomplish it. There are lots of free
services, such as gmail, that will give you a permenent E-mail address. As
far as I'm concerned, the reason to buy your own domain is not just to get a
permanent address, but to get one that is your name or something that
reflects you. For example, I might like to be (e-mail address removed) if blake.org
were not already taken).

But how do you go about attaching ysuch a domain
to your internet service? How does that work?

You don't. You simply configure your E-mail client to get and send mail from
that account instead of (or in addition to--most E-mail clients permit
multiple accounts) the one your ISP provides.

I have my E-mail client (Outlook 2007) set up to get mail from three
different accounts: the one my ISP provides, a gmail account, and the
permanent one I mainly use (for the same reason you want a permanent
address).

 

[Mike Hollywood]

If you're on dialup, I recommend you look at fastmail.fm

I've used many dialup email clients over the years, and fastmail.fm
really is the best and the fastest I've found. They have different versions
that
cost money, but the free one is extremely fast by dial up standards.
The limitation, unlike Gmail, is you only get to have 10 megs of
space for free so I tell all of my contacts to only email there with
real communication. All forwards, photos, jokes, mp3's, video
clips, etc., I request be sent to my gmail account. The reason
for that is that i only access my gmail acct when i have
access to a broadband connection and therefore I don't waste
a lot of time downloading junk on dialup.

But you say you have a broadband connection as well, so you
could have them send the junk there and forget about gmail.
You can access www.fastmail.fm from your broadband
connection, too, and you see for yoursell how speedy it is.

I think fastmail.fm has a switch where you can forward
the incoming mail elsewhere, so you could have stuff
sent there to your boardband address. The dialup
email you have now, probably offers that feature, too.

mike

 

[Shenan Stanley]

If you're on dialup, I recommend you look at fastmail.fm

I've used many dialup email clients over the years, and fastmail.fm
really is the best and the fastest I've found. They have different
versions that
cost money, but the free one is extremely fast by dial up standards.
The limitation, unlike Gmail, is you only get to have 10 megs of
space for free so I tell all of my contacts to only email there with
real communication. All forwards, photos, jokes, mp3's, video
clips, etc., I request be sent to my gmail account. The reason
for that is that i only access my gmail acct when i have
access to a broadband connection and therefore I don't waste
a lot of time downloading junk on dialup.

But you say you have a broadband connection as well, so you
could have them send the junk there and forget about gmail.
You can access www.fastmail.fm from your broadband
connection, too, and you see for yoursell how speedy it is.

I think fastmail.fm has a switch where you can forward
the incoming mail elsewhere, so you could have stuff
sent there to your boardband address. The dialup
email you have now, probably offers that feature, too.

I hate to say it but I do not see how one email server would be any faster
than another (unless the bandwidth the server has out is more limited than
the bandwidth you have coming in... Which - in Google/GMAIL's case is
undoubtedly not true for the majority of people on the planet - I cannot
imagine how much bandwisth Google dedicates to its services.)

In other words - as long as fastmail.fm and/or gmail.com have outgoing
bandwidth greater than yours - usually many many many times greater to allow
for many users at once - then you are the bottleneck... Not the mail server.

Now the protocol you choose to get your email from the server with and what
you do with it as you get it/after you get it may be an issue.

 

[Poprivet]

Hello, Windows XP folks.

I now have a dial-up line which is where I get my e-mail and also
high-speed cable. Rather than closing the dial-up and giving
everybody the e-mail for the cable and then maybe a year or two from
now if I get a DSL line (not currently available where I live) I'd
have to tell everybody all over again I though I would purchase a
domain name and have one permanent e-mail address independant of the
service provider. But how do you go about attaching ysuch a domain
to your internet service? How does that work?
Robert

The responses I see so far are OK, albeit a little cryptic, and useful
solutions. However, I have another idea to pass by you.
The "other" email addresses you want to get you want to be reasonably
permanent - that's easy.
Would you like to also play with a website? You can get a pretty cheap
website from www.NetFirms.com that also includes e-mail addresses. They
even have a freebie version which can be upgraded to the paid version later
on if you wish. You already have your domain name you indicated, so all you
need is the web space.
Point is, you can create/modify/delete e-mail address almost anyplace you
can rent/use server space at.
I don't recall the details, I think the freebie at Netfirms offers only 1
email address, the Basic pkg at $4/mo 10 addresses, and the other more
expensive packages get into gazillions of aliases, etc., possibilities.

I'm only discussing Netfirms.com because that's where I have three sites
parked, one of them my own. There are several other sources, too, also with
a freebie website/email setup. Ymmv, but AFAIK it's the lowest priced
reputable place I found when I chose them.

Have fun,

Pop`