When you have paid a Web Hosting Provider for a Web Hosting Package (Website Space, Control Panel and so on) one of the first things to do after that, but before making your website live (uploading it), is to set up your Email Addresses. Typically info@???.com, sales@???.com, contactus@???.com and so on.

Begin by logging into your website's Control Panel and then find and click on the EMAIL ACCOUNTS link (Fig 1.0.), or ADD EMAIL ACCOUNT link, from within the MAIL link or heading (depending on your version of the CPanel). This will take you to the EMail Accounts Manager (Fig 1.1) where you can then set up an email address, amongst other things. In this example I will show you how to add (create/set up) your first email account (email address).

Fig 1.0  Click on the EMAIL ACCOUNTS (or ADD EMAIL ACCOUNTS) link to continue




Fig 1.1  Fill in the form and then click on the CREATE button to continue

The first thing to do when adding an email account is to type a new email address into the EMAIL section, which is split into an Edit Box for your email User Name and a Drop-Down Menu for your Domain Name. If you only have one domain name the drop-down menu will be fixed on that domain name but if you have more than one domain name the drop-down menu will be selectable of course. In the above example I typed john into the EMAIL edit box and left the domain name as websitecreationhelp.com because I want to use john@websitecreationhelp.com as my email address.

After the Email Address (User Name and Domain Name) everything is straight forward. Simply enter a, Strong, Password for your email address inside the PASSWORD edit box (i.e. pword_2009) and then enter a MegaBytes Quota (MB Limit) inside the QUOTA edit box for the email account before clicking on the CREATE button to continue. Do not entertain a Generated Password as they tend to give you a rubbish/junk password that you would easily forget in an instance.

Leaving the quota edit box empty or entering a value of zero megabytes usually means the email account will have no quota (it will be restricted by your web space limits only) whereas entering a value of 30 megabytes would give the email account a quota of 30 megabytes. On top of this, the quota normally takes presidence/priority over your other web space needs (i.e. it will be allocated/reserved regardless of being in-use) but the just said cannot be taken for granted - They are things that you may need to clarify with your particular web hosting company. For example. If you receive an email from your cpanel/web hosting provider stating that you are running out of web space at 400MB for example, when you know you have 500MB of web space, it could be because your email accounts combined quota is using/allocating/reserving that other 100MB of web space. This is something to bare in mind when buying a web hosting package.

Fig 1.2  The email account has been created - Click on the GO BACK link to continue




Fig 1.3  Click on the DELETE button to delete a particular email account (email address)

Once an email account has been created it is added to your list of email accounts (Fig 1.3 above). From there you can DELETE an email account, manage (change) its quota, change the password for its associated email address and automatically configure Outlook Express (and/or Microsoft Outlook) to work with that email address. You can also access an email account's email messages by clicking on the Globe/Envelope (Access Webmail) button, as opposed to typing your webmail's address into a web browser's address bar edit box (i.e. www.websitecreationhelp.com/webmail).

Fig 1.4  From this window you can configure email accounts to work with Outlook Express using a POP3 Server for example

I would not use the CONFIGURE MAIL CLIENT link to configure (set up) your email accounts, to work with Microsoft Outlook and/or Outlook Express, if I was you simply because your cpanel might not be up-to-date with the latest mail client (email retrieval software) settings (i.e. the settings of Windows Mail - Windows Vista mail client). You might also be using a different mail client (i.e. Mozilla Thunderbird or Windows Mail).

Fig 1.5  An example of email accounts

In Fig 1.5 above I have given all newly created email accounts a quota of 5MB, from their original/default of 250MB, because I would never need 250MB of web space possibly allocated for each email account. I do not intend to use these email accounts whereby someone sends me big photo files or big video files. And I would recommend you do the same - Start off with small quotas and then increase the quota of each email account as need be. You should find you only need one or two email accounts with big quotas.

All HTM, CSS, PHP and MySQL files in the websitecreationhelp.com folder and its sub-folders are (c) John White, 2010. All Rights Reserved.