If you haven’t heard of Google Apps now it’s the time to hear about it, because you can benefit A LOT from it. Especially because the services are high quality and absolutely FREE(paid plans are also available).

By setting up Google Apps for your domain you and your website users can benefit from Google Mail(you@yourdomain.com), Google Chat, Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Sites.

To get a more in-depth view of Google Apps watch the Google Apps quick tour:

Now that you got convinced that Google Apps is a good thing for you, here are the simple steps on how to setup Google Apps on your domain from cPanel:

Step 1: In the Mail box click on the MX Entry Button

Step 2: Once your at the MX entry Maintenance a Change MX entry box will be shown in the middle of the page. If you have more than one domain on your cpanel account select the one for which you want to setup Google Apps and use the following values(usually you can add 3 values) If you can add fewer make sure you add the one with the lowest value, because that has the highest priority:

PRIORITY: 1  TO: ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM

PRIORITY: 5  TO: ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM

PRIORITY: 10  TO: ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM

Step 3: Once you’ve set the MX entries head over to the Google APPS Standard Edition Sign-up there select “Administrator: I own or control this domain”, enter your domain name(ex: folty.com) and head over to the next step.

Step 4: On the next page you will have to fill in some personal details and the Number of users. Fill in CORRECT personal details and set the Number of users to 500.

Step 5: Time to setup your Administrator account! set the desired username@yourdomain.com and password. Also tick the newsletter subscription and feedback boxes, they might come in handy one day.

Step 6: That’s it, Google Apps is setup for your domain, there’s only one more step to complete: The domain verification process.

The easiest way to verify your domain is to create a generated .html file and upload it to the root of your domain(the html file name and content is auto-generated and unique for each domain).

Step 7: Domain ownership will be verified within a few minutes and now you have full access to all the cool services that Google Apps offers you!

By default Google Mail isn’t active, so take a few seconds and activate it. You’ve already done the MX entry changes so just click “I Have completed these steps” and you’re good to go.

Updating some services like Chat and Email may take a few minutes so be patient.

Step 8: Now that all services are running its time to have fun in the Google Apps control panel!

- The User Accounts button will allow you to easily add more users and mail them their login details and instructions.

- At Domain Settings you can set General preferences(like enabling new features,control panel,etc), Domain Aliases and of course Appearance(where you can upload your own logo and set display options)

- At Advanced Tools you can create/update accounts in bulk by uploading a csv(comma separated value) file.

- The Service Settings button and dropdown menu will allow you to customize all the service’s features.

That’s it folks! You’ve just learned how to setup Google Aps on your domain and how to customise it, good luck!

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