The art of shifting responsibility in web hosting [VI. -1]

I told you the last time here I will bring you my own tutorial on how to set up your domain to use Google Apps for email services and point your domain hosting to your web host. Well, now it’s the time to tell you exactly what you need to do

Pre-requisities

Before I even start the tutorial I need to make sure we are at the same starting point. To do anything described in this tutorial you will need to have these things and you need to know where they are:

1. You need to own a domain name
   • Without a second level domain name there is no chance anything from this tutorial might work
2. You need to go to your domain name registrar and find whether they allow you full DNS management
3. If they do allow full DNS management then find the “DNS control panel” or something similar where you are able to set-up [configure] your DNS records
4. If they do not allow you full DNS management and only function as a registrar then you can use one of the free DNS options or a paid DNS hosting option. These are described in the first three parts of this series [click]

That’s pretty everything you will need.

There are two possible scenarious here:

1. You host your web site on a  VPS or dedicated and you want to get rid of some of the server services to make your life easier.
2. You host your web site on a shared hosting plan [at this stage I am only able to give you Cpanel instructions, but it is similar to other control panels you just need to understand the concept...]

Step by step to less worries

I will brake down this whole tutorial into three main parts. The first one will be on the Google set-up process and than I will cover both – the VPS way of doing things and the Cpanel way of performing this process. They differ in some ways and are not absolutely identical, but the concept stays the same. you just do some things different while on a Cpanel

1. Google Apps set-up

The first thing we will do in this tutorial is to visit Google Apps registration web site. You will need to regsiter for the service before you will be able to use it. It is a very easy and quick process. The default web site for Google Apps is located at this link google.com/a/. Don’t forget it is the default landing page, but not the one we will use to register. The registration page can be found under APPS EDITIONS and we will choose the STANDARD or click on this link.

Click on the get started icon and you will be taken to the actual registration screen. Here you are able to choose from two options, but as we are the owner of this domain we will choose the first one labeled “Administrator: I own or control this domain”

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You will be asked to fill out your personal information and you can still read the Term of Use at the bottom of the page [but you will be able to do so on the next screen as well...]. Than hit CONTINUE and on the next screen you are asked for the Administrator’s user name and password. Choose them carefully and do not use something easy to guess At this stage you are required to read the Terms of Use and agree with them.

After accepting and filing in the required info you need to proof it is really your web page. There are two otpions provided and you can choose either of them. The thoery behind the whole process is that you need to verify you own the domain and are able to manage the DNS settings.

I have choosen the Change CNAME option as it is easier and faster for my case right now, but you can choose the “Upload html” option as well. I think, that at this point Google’s How to and FAQ’s are good enough and do not need to be repeated here. Just read them and you should be OK.

I will add step-by-step pictures to my flickr account pretty soon and hopefully add them here as well as a standalone article.

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