Email/webhosting

lordFSA

I have registered my domain with 123 and am looking around for a cheapish hosting company.

Mainly for emails, but I might set up a small personal website for my own ego.

Any recommendations? I'm currently eyeing up the Bronze package offered by Relic Hosting...

esuhl

If you just want to use your domain for email (for now), then you don't need to pay for hosting. You can use a free service such as GMX (or any email provider who allows POP3 or IMAP access).

• Register your domain (e.g. mydomain.co.uk).
• Sign up for a free email account (e.g. [EMAIL="user123@gmx.co.uk"]user123@gmx.co.uk[/EMAIL]).
• In your domain settings, set up forwarding so emails sent to [EMAIL="whatever@mydomain.co.uk"]whatever@mydomain.co.uk[/EMAIL] are forwarded to [EMAIL="user123@gmx.co.uk"]user123@gmx.co.uk[/EMAIL]).
• Install an email client (e.g. Thunderbird).
• Set the email client to collect mail from [EMAIL="user123@gmx.co.uk"]user123@gmx.co.uk[/EMAIL], but set the "from" field for replies and new messages to [EMAIL="whatever@mydomain.co.uk"]whatever@mydomain.co.uk[/EMAIL].

That way, any mails sent to [EMAIL="whatever@mydomain.co.uk"]whatever@mydomain.co.uk[/EMAIL] will be sent to your GMX account. Any emails you send from your PC will appear to be from [EMAIL="whatever@mydomain.co.uk"]whatever@mydomain.co.uk[/EMAIL]. Only you know about the GMX account.

That works for me, anyway.

Once I had email up and running, I found a web host for the actual website I wanted to create.

Uxb

?Vidahost for a hosting package

lordFSA

Oh wow, I did not know about that free option for emails. Thanks very much, I will look into it!

lordFSA

Okay, I've got as far as setting up mail forward on 123-reg, setting up a gmx account, configuring gmx IMAP on my tablet and setting up a new identity.

Mail sent from another account to [EMAIL="whatever@mydomain.co.uk"]whatever@mydomain.co.uk[/EMAIL] goes through to the gmx account.

Mail sent from [EMAIL="user123@gmx.co.uk"]user123@gmx.co.uk[/EMAIL] using the [EMAIL="whatever@mydomain.co.uk"]whatever@mydomain.co.uk[/EMAIL] identity returns a 'Negative SMTP reply: 550' error, saying that the sending address is not allowed.

Am I overlooking something relatively simple?


Edit: I've resolved it for now by setting up a new gmail acc. While setting the new identity on my mail client didnt work (emails were still being sent as whatever@gmail.com), setting it up on gmail's html interface did.

esuhl

lordFSA wrote: »

Mail sent from [EMAIL="user123@gmx.co.uk"]user123@gmx.co.uk[/EMAIL] using the [EMAIL="whatever@mydomain.co.uk"]whatever@mydomain.co.uk[/EMAIL] identity returns a 'Negative SMTP reply: 550' error, saying that the sending address is not allowed.

Am I overlooking something relatively simple?

Edit: I've resolved it for now by setting up a new gmail acc. While setting the new identity on my mail client didnt work (emails were still being sent as [EMAIL="whatever@gmail.com"]whatever@gmail.com[/EMAIL]), setting it up on gmail's html interface did.

Ahh... SMTP is used for sending email. Usually you'd use your ISP's SMTP server, but GMX has its own that you could use instead. Anyway, for security reasons, GMX won't allow you to change the "from" field to anything that doesn't match the GMX account that you're using... and some ISPs will need you to register the email addresses that you want to be able to send from (to deter spammers).

Anyway, glad you got it sorted with GMail... :-) And saved a few quid on email hosting! :money:

lordFSA

esuhl,

credit goes to you for pointing out that such a thing could be possible! :beer: