What is Email?
I expect you to be smart enough to know this! But one thing
you might not know. The @ in an email is read as at, not alias! The
email billgates@microsoft.com is read as "Bill Gates AT
Microsoft DOT com".
Create Email Account Under Your New Domain Name
Most people have a Yahoo or Hotmail email account. I believe
you have one too. If you have registered a domain name and have
purchased a hosting account, you can now have a brand new email account
under your own domain name! What I mean is, when you purchase a hosting
account, email is always included! You always have the ability to create
email accounts after you buy a hosting account. But the number of email
accounts you can create depend on the hosting plan you selected. Some offer
only 1 email account while other such as LunarPages offer unlimited email
accounts!
If you have registered a domain name but have no intention
to make a website yet, you can still purchase a hosting account just for
email purposes. For example if you registered a domain name myfamily.com,
you can order a hosting account just for creating email accounts. For example, you can create
myself@myfamily.com,
mywife@myfamily.com, mykid@myfamily.com and mydog@myfamily.com
if you have trained your dog to check email. Since you don't have a website
yet, people will see a blank website or "under construction" page when they
log on to myfamily.com.
How Do I Send and Check My Email?
After you have created your new email accounts, there are 2
ways to manage your email. I will start with
1. Web Interface (Web-Based Email)
You can do you mailing (sending, checking, manage address
book ....) directly with your web browser. You fire up your favorite
web browser, say Internet Explorer and log on with your username and
password and you can start mailing. Yahoo Mail and Hotmail are good examples
of web-based email. You can check your email everywhere in the world as long
as you are connected to the internet.
The web interface is provided by your web host and they
indeed look a lot different than Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. There are a few
common interfaces. LunarPages is using
Horde and
SquirrelMail, while iPowerWeb
and Globat is using
@Mail. Using web interface is slow because you
need to continuously making connections with the mail server. Web interface also
have limited features. The better way to manage your email is by using an
...
2. Email Client (Email Software)
The most popular email clients are Outlook Express
and Eudora.
Outlook Express is free and come with Microsoft Windows so you probably
already have this in your computer. Eudora have both free and paid version.
Free version are supported by advertisement. I am a big fan of Eudora and
have been using it for more than 10 years.
To do your mailing with your email client. You simply
configure it by adding
1. Your Email Address
2. Your Username
3. Your Host SMTP Server, and
4. Your Host POP Server
After that, you can start you mailing immediately! The POP
server and SMTP server information are provided by your web host and is
always included in your welcome email. That's why your should always keep
your welcome email safe and NEVER delete it!
Cut it short, your POP server (Post Office Protocol)
play the role in receiving and storing your emails while SMTP server
(Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) in charge of sending out emails for you.
When someone send you an email, it is stored in the POP
server until you retrieve it. Once you retrieve it to your email client, it
will be deleted from the server. Your mail is now available in your
computer. You can read it, reply to it, forward to someone else or delete
it. You can also choose to keep the email on the server by configuring your
email client but usually you don't need to unless you want to retrieve your
emails to multiple computer (office and home; PC and laptop).
You might wonder why the word "Client" is used. If you are
dining in a restaurant, you are the "client" and the waitress is your "server".
The same thing happens in the internet where servers do the serving while clients are served. In the context
we are discussing so far, you email client is served by the email servers,
which are the POP server and SMTP server. Other examples of server client
relationship is website where we have a web server and a web client, which
is your
web browser. If you use chatting software like ICQ , AOL, Microsoft
messenger or Yahoo messenger, they are the clients and are served by their
respective chat servers.
Interchange between Client and Web
Interface
You can still check your email through the web interface
even most of the time you are using your email client. When you are
traveling, you can easily check for new emails as long as you are provided
with internet access. You can also send email through the web interface. Of
course, you can only check for new emails as old emails which has been
retrieved to your email client will not longer be available. Remember that
emails stay in the server until you retrieve them to your email client.
Through the web interface, you can only read the emails that are still in
the server.
Introducing IMAP
If you only use the web interface without
the email client, then you can have access to your email wherever you have
internet access. But if you use your email client, you might encounter a
problem if you want to access your email from multiple computers! Even
though you can retrieve the same emails to different computer, but each
computer will have their own mailbox. If you delete an email in mailbox
A, the same email will still be in mailbox B! If you save a reply draft in
mailbox B, you won't have the draft in mailbox A! You will not have this
problem if you are using the web interface all the time because it will be the
very same mailbox no matter which computer you use. I have mentioned that
emails stay in the server until you retrieve them to your email client. If
you do not retrieve, they are always in the server.
There are 2 protocols for email that
define how email should work on the internet. The one we have been
discussing so far is called POP (Post Office Protocol), which utilize
the POP server and SMTP server and has the "multiple mailboxes" problem.
Later, a new mail protocol is defined and it is called IMAP (Internet
Message Access Protocol). IMAP solved the "multiple mailboxes" problem
by keeping the mailbox in the server. This way, you will still be accessing
the same mailbox no matter which computer you are using. You can also enjoy
the features of email client on all the computers instead of using the
limited web interface.
Although IMAP has been around for some time,
it is still uncommon. The reason is accessing speed. Accessing a remote mailbox is
significant slower then accessing a mailbox locally. Just like using a web
interface, the email client will need to make a lot of connections to the
remote server. If you want to learn more about IMAP, you can visit
their website at
www.imap.org
Email Forwarder (Email Alias)
Instead of creating email accounts, you can also create email
forwarders with your hosting account. As the name suggest, any email received by an email forwarder
will be forwarded to another email address that your have configured. So
a forwarder is
not really an email account because it will not store your emails and it cannot
be used to send email. It just
redirect any email received to another email address. It is an alias to the
destination email address.
For example, you might already have a personal email account
where you are using all the time. After you register a new domain, you can
create a forwarder yournewemail@yournewdomain.com and configure it to
forward to your original email account. This way you don't need to check
your email from 2 different accounts but still be able to enjoy a new email
address!
You can configure an email address to be both an email account and a
forwarder. In this case, you can send mail and receive mail with this email
address, while at the same time all emails received will also be forwarded to another
email address.
To have more fun, you can set an email forwarder to
forward to more than 1 email address! For example, if you have a
forwarder sales@yourcompany.com,
you can set it to forward to you, your sales manager, your sales team, and
anyone who wants a copy!
Default Forward Address
What will happen if someone send an email to spiderman@yourdomain.com
which you have never created? You can choose to receive it by setting a
default forward address. All emails that are sent to any non existing email
address under your domain name will be forwarded to this address. It is also
called the catch-all address.
Auto-Responder
An auto-responder automatically reply a preset message to
the sender. This is fun and I bet you have seen this happens
multiple times. Have you ever sent an email to request customer support for
a product or service and immediately received a reply which inform you
that they have received your email and will reply to your promptly? That's an
auto-responder!
Another example would be if you are away for vacation and
will not be able to read your email for 1 week, you can setup an auto-responder
that will automatically reply an email to anyone who send you an email while you are away, telling them you will not be able to reply to their
emails from when to when. After you come back from your vacation, you can
simply remove the auto-responder.
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