Common hosting questions, for those using my hosting service, can be answered here.

Email: How to set up your email account on your computer

Your hosting account has an auto-setup “wizard,” that works for most people using Windows, and now some Mac users too. If it doesn’t work for you, there’s a manual setup that’s really not too hard to do, and instructions are below.

First, the auto-setup:

1. Log in to your hosting control panel (http://yourdomain.com/cpanel), using your ID and PASSWORD to log in. If you need these, ask. Once in, you’ll see a series of icons for various function, and you’ll want the first one in the series, the “Mail” icon.
2. After clicking Mail, choose the 3rd link down, “Add/Remove/Manage Accounts”
3. From here, you’ll see a list of active accounts. Ignore the 1st one, the default account, and look for the one you want to use, such as “yourname@yourdomain.com”.
4. Each email account is on its own row, and to the far left of each row is a “Configure Outlook” link. Click that.
5. There are several “auto-configure” options here. Choose one that applies to you, and unless you know otherwise, choose POP3 over IMAP.
6. Follow the on-screen instructions, and you’ll be underway.
7. Then open your email program of choice (such as Outlook Express), and your new email account should be part of the program now for you to send and receive email as “yourname@yourdomain.com”. If you have other accounts already set up in Outlook Express, and they’re not properly configured, you will get error messages that you’ll have to solve. Or you could delete that other account, it’s up to you.

Option 2: Manual Setup

This will detail how to setup your email account in Outlook 2003. It may also be applicable to other versions and email programs, such as Entourage and Mail on the Mac, but various fields and options may vary.

By way of example we will use the domain ‘test.com’

1. Open Outlook
2. Click ‘Tools and then E-mail Accounts’
3. Select ‘Add a new e-mail account’ and click ‘Next’
4. Select ‘POP3’ and click ‘Next’
5. Fill in the following boxes:
   • Your Name = User’s Full Name
   • E-mail Address = username@test.com
   • Incoming mail = test.com
   • Outgoing mail = test.com
   • User Name = username@test.com
   • Password = Your assigned password
   • Check to remember the password
6. Click the ‘More Settings’ button
   • On the ‘general tab’ enter YOUR_ORGANIZATION as the organization
   • On the ‘outgoing server’ tab check the box next to ‘My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication’ (you may need to uncheck this box - try both) and then select ‘Use same settings as my incoming mail server’
   • Click ‘OK’, ‘Next’ and then ‘Finish’
   • Click ‘Tools and then E-mail Accounts’ again
   • Select ‘View or change existing e-mail accounts’ and click ‘Next’
   • Highlight the account you just created and click the ‘Set as Default’ button
   • Click ‘Finish’

Other Tutorials:

One of these days, I’ll add series of Flash-based tutorials on how to use various aspects of your web hosting tool. It’s easy, it’s powerful, and it’s available to all my hosting customers.