I’d like to start off by saying that I am not much of a web/domain kind of guy. I know a lot about technology and websites (I think) but not so much about what goes on in the background, so when I started off doing this, I wasn’t really sure about what needed to be done.
Microsoft Office Live is a service, by Microsoft, which allows users to make their own business oriented website, to help accomplish their goal of letting every business have a storefront on the web. Get more information from the Wikipedia page here.
Google Apps for your Domain is a service, by Google, which similarly to Office Live, allows users to get their own domain and manage a simple website, easily, without the need of knowing HTML or other website coding languages. It lets you use your own domain name with the Gmail service, Google Calendar and Google Docs, and lets you edit your webpages with Google Page Creator. It’s really simple and easy-to-use, and extremely useful at the same time.
Microsoft’s Part
I have had an account with Microsoft Office Live since around March 2006. I used their service to get my own domain name (because it was free, so I said why not) and use it for email and maybe a simple ‘about me’ website. Office Live uses, you guessed it, Office Live Mail to handle your email, which is basically Live Hotmail, with a different name, and your own domain name. I hate Hotmail. It has such an annoying and slow and cluttered interface, that whenever I want to check my mail, I get pissed off. Also, I wasn’t able to edit my page through Ubuntu (which is all I have right now) so I didn’t really have an option, unless I wanted to leave an ugly page that I made a long time ago up there.
I had to take my domain name away from Microsoft. I read here that I would need to cancel my Office Live account if I even wanted to touch my domain, so that’s what I did. I contacted Office Live and told them that I want the code that I need to access my domain and I want to cancel. I got the code after about a day and went in Melbourne IT’s website (Microsoft’s registrar) and was able to get control of my account. My ‘control panel’ on the site said that my domain was registered and wouldn’t expire until March 2008, which was good news, because I didn’t want to have to transfer the domain or deal with paying, for something that I wasn’t even sure would work. So now that I have control of my domain, what next?
Hosting
From this point, I wasn’t really sure what I had to do. I looked on multiple websites, including Google’s own instructions, and found out that I had to edit the DNS settings and add CNAMEs and many other abbreviations. I contacted Melbourne IT and asked them how I can edit the DNS settings, and they said I would have to sign up with a DNS control service thingy-majigy. That was bad news to me. I assumed that I would have to pay for that, and I didn’t really want to. I looked around and found out that I could use a free service called EveryDNS.net to control my DNS settings and add all of the CNAME and MX records that I needed to add, in order for my domain to be confirmed with Google. I was able to forward my ‘Name Server Settings’ from Melbourne IT to EveryDNS.net and have everything forwarded and organized with Google.
The Finale
After setting up the many different CNAME and MX records needed for Google (through EveryDNS) I was able to have my domain name verified, and begin to use all of the services. I can access a start page (start.mydomain.com), my Gmail-style email (mail.mydomain.com), Google Docs & Spreadsheets (docs.mydomain.com) and Google Calendar (calendar.mydomain.com). I also have the option to put my own logo in place of the Google logo in all of these pages. I use Google Pages to create my web pages, though it might be a little bit to basic for most people.
I love Google Apps, and it really saved me from the devils at Hotmail and Microsoft’s control. I love Microsoft, but for me, Office Live was just a way for me to get a free domain. Yay for free-ness!
