Once you have acquired your web hosting package and set up your email addresses, via your control panel, your next step should be to create an email account using one of the following email clients (email softwares). Outlook Express (Windows XP), Windows Mail (Windows Vista) or Mozilla Thunderbird (makers of Firefox). Any of these email clients can manage one or more of your website email accounts for you, but they need to know the website email server details for each website email account you want them to manage. These details are made up of your Email Address, Password, POP3 and SMTP server/connection settings (which you can get from your control panel and web hosting provider). Once these details are available you can set up an email account using one of these email clients. In this example I am using Windows Mail to create an email account for john@websitecreationhelp.com but the same procedure will apply when/if I want to create an email account for info@websitecreationhelp.com for example.

You might be wondering at this point "Why use an email client such as Windows Mail when I can check my email by logging into my Webmail email client?". And this is true, but the whole point of Windows Mail for example is that it does not rely on a web browser and so does not inherit that web browser's problems (slow speed, pictures not showing correctly and so on). Windows Mail for example is faster at sending/receiving email, it allows you to manage more than one email account, it is not bound to X amount of storage space (because it uses your hard drive space instead), it allows you to import/export emails and email contacts and is generally better (feature-wise) than your Webmail based email client.

To launch windows mail either click on its Quick Launch icon (Fig 1.0) or double click on its Desktop icon (Fig 1.1). If there are no windows mail icons in these places launch windows mail from the START menu - Click on the START button, then on ALL PROGRAMS and then on Windows Mail (Fig 1.2).

Fig 1.0  The Quick Launch icon




Fig 1.1  The Desktop icon




Fig 1.2  The START >> ALL PROGRAMS menu-item

As soon as you launch windows mail the first window you will see is its copyright message window (Fig 1.3). A few seconds later the main window will appear (Fig 1.4).

Fig 1.3  The copyright message window



Fig 1.4  The main window

If you have more than one email client installed on your computer, such as Windows Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird, and windows mail is not the default (normal) email client to use the following message requester will appear when you start windows mail. To make windows mail the default email client, and to stop the message requester from appearing again, click on the YES button. Clicking on the NO button will allow you to use windows mail but next time around the message requester will appear again.

Fig 1.5  Click on YES to make Windows Mail the default (always used) email client

With windows mail launched (open) the next step is to click on its TOOLS menu and then select the ACCOUNTS menu-item (Fig 2.0). The Internet Accounts window will then appear (Fig 2.1).

Fig 2.0  Select the ACCOUNTS menu-item from the TOOLS menu



Fig 2.1  Click on the ADD button to create a Mail Account

When the Internet Accounts window is opened for the very first time it will be displaying one News (Newsgroup) Account and have two Directory Services hidden, all of which you can ignore. What is important here is that there are no Email Accounts available, simply because none have been created yet. Therefore I will now show you how to create an email account.

Begin by clicking on the ADD button (Fig 2.1 above) to open the Account Wizard. The first window of the Account Wizard (Fig 2.2 below) asks you to choose an Account Type to create - E-Mail Account, Newsgroup Account or Directory Service. The last two have nothing to do with setting up an email account, therefore leave E-MAIL ACCOUNT selected and just click on NEXT to continue.

Fig 2.2  Leave E-MAIL ACCOUNT selected and just click on NEXT to continue

After clicking on the NEXT button, above, the account wizard then asks you to type a Display Name into the DISPLAY NAME Edit Box (Fig 2.3 below). This is the name that people will see when you send them an email. Simply enter your display name into the edit box and then click on the NEXT button to continue.

Fig 2.3  Type your Display Name into the edit box

The next thing the account wizard asks you for is an Email Address, which needs to be typed into the E-MAIL ADDRESS edit box (Fig 2.4 below). As said above, this is a website email address you want Windows Mail to manage for you. In this example I am setting up an email account for john@websitecreationhelp.com and therefore need to enter john@websitecreationhelp.com into the E-MAIL ADDRESS edit box. When you have typed your email address into the edit box click on NEXT to continue.

Fig 2.4  Type your Email Address into the E-MAIL ADDRESS edit box

The next set of information you are asked for is your website's email server information. More specifically its POP3 (Incoming/Receiving) and SMTP (Outgoing/Sending) Server details. These details should have been emailed to you when you ordered your web hosting package, but should also be found on your web hosting provider's website or in your control panel. These details are required so that windows mail can send/receive email to/from your web hosting provider's server, which in turn are sent/retrieved to/from an Email folder inside your web space; And more precisely so that you can send email as yourname@yourwebsite.com and not as yourname@broadbandcompany.com. Once you have the server details type them into their respective edit boxes, below, and then click on the NEXT button to continue.

POP3 is the server (web hosting provider's computer) used to receive your email and SMTP is the server (web hosting provider's computer) used to send your email. Normally you use the same server (i.e. mail.yourwebsite.com) to send and receive your email, because your contract is with the same web hosting provider, but in some cases your broadband provider and/or your web hosting provider do not allow you to send email as yourname@yourwebsite.com. One reason for this is because they first need to authenticate your email account details to make sure it is you and not a piece of malicious software that is sending email via their servers. For example. Some broadband providers sent out your email as FROM: yourname@broadbandcompany.com instead of FROM: yourname@yourwebsite.com. You can set up authentication (explained later) using windows mail but in some cases you might have to phone your broadband provider and/or your web hosting provider for further, settings, information. For this example though just leave the OUTGOING SERVER REQUIRES AUTHENTICATION option unticked.

Fig 2.5  Type your web hosting provider's POP3 and SMTP server details into the respective edit boxes

After entering your web hosting provider's POP3 and SMTP server details and clicking on NEXT (Fig 2.5 above), the account wizard then asks you for your email User Name & Password (Fig 2.6 below). The User Name, also known as the Account Name, is either your full email address (i.e john@websitecreationhelp.com) or just its user name (i.e. john), depending on your web hosting provider's requirement. The Password will be the password you set up with this email address via your control panel. In this example I have used the user name john@websitecreationhelp.com.

If you want to type in your password each time you send/receive email untick the option REMEMBER PASSWORD and leave the PASSWORD edit box empty. This is good for security reasons because your password needs to be hand typed into the PASSWORD edit box whereas putting a tick next to the REMEMBER PASSWORD option means your password is fetched from a password file, stored on your computer, before it is entered into the PASSWORD edit box by windows mail. Therefore the password file is a danger, only good for hackers.

Once you have entered your user name, and password if need be, click on the NEXT button to continue.

Fig 2.6  Type your email address User Name, and Password if need be, into their respective edit boxes

Always keep the documentation that was sent to you by your web hosting provider, as it normally contains POP3 Server, SMTP Server, User Name and Password details amongst other things. These details come in handy when your computer needs reinstalling or when you want to set up an email account with the same details on more than one computer (so that you can check the same email from Home and Work for example).

At this stage you have almost finished, but before you click on the FINISH button below you should put a tick next to the DO NOT DOWNLOAD MY E-MAIL AT THIS TIME option first. The reason for doing this is because below you will still modify this newly created email account. Therefore you do not want to check if you have any email, associated with this email account, at this time because you have not finished modifying it.

Fig 2.7  Click on FINISH to close the Account Wizard....



Fig 2.8  ....and therefore complete the creation of this E-Mail Account.

With the Internet Accounts window still open (Fig 2.8 above) you might want/need to modify some of the email account details further by adding Authentication to it for example, perhaps for the reasons explained above (Paragraph two, after Fig 2.4 above), or by changing the POP3/SMTP Ports (socket/channel numbers). Some email will not pass through Port 25 for example because it is used by spammers/junk mailers, so you might need to use Port 26 for example.

To modify an existing email account first select it and then click on the PROPERTIES button to continue (Fig 3.0 below). This will bring up the Properties window for that email account (Fig 3.1).

Fig 3.0  Select an Email Account and then click on the PROPERTIES button to continue



Fig 3.1  The Properties window for email account john@websitecreationhelp.com

The properties window is split up into miniature windows called TABs, which are basically sub-windows. They are used in cases whereby the settings/information to be displayed on the main window would make that main window too long/big. So the settings/information are split up into categories and then each category is displayed inside its own TAB (window).

The first TAB of the properties window is the General TAB. The first piece of information you can change on this TAB is the name to identify the Servers. For example. I could change mail.websitecreationhelp.com to Contact John, by typing Contact John into the edit box. This will not change the POP3 and SMTP server names set up in Fig 2.5 above, as the name inside this edit box is really referring to the name of this email account and not the actual server names.

Renaming makes sense when you have multiple email accounts using the same server names. For example. I would not want to use mail.websitecreationhelp.com(default), mail.websitecreationhelp.com(1) and mail.websitecreationhelp.com(2) as the e-mail account names because this might become confusing. It would be much better to rename them Home, Business and Private for example so that I could distinguish between them.

Fig 3.2  Type the name you want to use for this email account into the first edit box

The second piece of information you can change is the Reply Address (Fig 3.3 below), which is the email address you want people to reply to when they receive an email from you. The REPLY ADDRESS edit box is normally empty, which means you want your reply email address to be the same as your normal (send) email address, but you can insert a reply email address if you want to. In this example. If I leave the Reply Address edit box empty and send you an email it will be from (sent by) john@websitecreationhelp.com and if you were to reply to that email the reply email address would also be john@websitecreationhelp.com. However. If I had used info@websitecreationhelp.com as the reply email address, by inserting info@websitecreationhelp.com into the Reply Address edit box beforehand, you would of replied to info@websitecreationhelp.com. You could manually change my reply email address to info@websitecreationhelp.com yourself of course before replying to my email but this is only if you know I have two email addresses for example.

Fig 3.3  Insert an alternative Reply E-Mail Address into the REPLY ADDRESS Edit Box, if need be.

Regardless if you have modified any information in the General TAB or not click on the Servers TAB to continue - Click on the actual word Servers, as shown below. I would definitely modify the name for the Servers (Fig 3.2 above) before continuing though, if I were you.

Fig 3.4  Click on the Servers TAB to continue



Fig 3.5  The Servers TAB (window)

The only setting you need to change on the Servers TAB is the MY SERVER REQUIRES AUTHENTICATION setting, which you should put a tick next to only if your SMTP (Outgoing) Server requires authentication. If it does not require authentication, leave the MY SERVER REQUIRES AUTHENTICATION setting unticked.

Fig 3.6  Put a tick next to the MY SERVER REQUIRES AUTHENTICATION setting, if your Server requires you to.

When you put a tick next to the MY SERVER REQUIRES AUTHENTICATION setting the SETTINGS button becomes available (above). If you want your outgoing email to be authenticated (authorized) using the same settings (User Name & Password) as your POP3 (Incoming) Server there is no need to click on the SETTINGS button. Otherwise, if you want to use different settings (User Name & Password) to authenticate (authorize) your outgoing email, click on the SETTINGS button to bring up the Outgoing Mail Server window.

Fig 3.7  The Outgoing Mail Server window

When the Outgoing Mail Server window appears for the very first time the USE SAME SETTINGS AS MY INCOMING MAIL SERVER setting is the default setting. To authenticate (authorize) your outgoing email using a different User Name & Password you need to change the default setting to LOG ON USING, by clicking on its radio (circle) button. Once this is done, you then have to enter the user name & password you would like to use as the authenticating user name & password into their appropriate edit boxes. You may need to put your broadband user name and password for example.

Fig 3.8  Enter your authorization User Name & Password into their appropriate edit boxes

In the above example I have used john@websitecreationhelp.com as the authorizing User Name, which means every time I send an email through the mail.websitecreationhelp.com smtp server, to reach someone@somewhere.com for example, the smtp server first checks who is authorized to do so. In this example john@websitecreationhelp.com is authorized to send an email through the smtp server (as john@websitecreationhelp.com).

The above is pretty straight forward. However. If I am told to set up the smtp server setting as mail.broadbandcompany.com for example it means any email I send through mail.websitecreationhelp.com must first be authenticated (authorised) by my ISP's (Internet Service Provider's/Broadband's) Server. This is not unusual but it is not good either. Some ISP servers ignore your website email account user name and require that your broadband email account user name be used instead. In other words. Some ISP servers might allow a john@websitecreationhelp.com email to pass directly through them whereas other ISP servers might want john@broadbandcompany.com to be the authorising user name before they allow john@websitecreationhelp.com email to pass through them. So they are controlling the emails you send. Hence why you should pick an ISP who will allow your website email account emails to pass directly through to your website smtp server.

So to clarify the above said. Your email first goes through your ISP's (or internet cafe's) smtp server, regardless, because they control your broadband connection. They may or may not want authentication of email passing through their smtp server, but if they do they may prefer you to use your broadband email account user name as the authoriser. And the same applies to your web hosting provider's smtp server. So you could have two smtp servers requiring authentication, one smtp server requiring authentication or no smtp servers requiring authentication. User Name authentication is common but there are other smtp settings (and POP3 settings) that also validate who can send/receive email.

When you have typed in the authorizing user name & password into their appropriate edit boxes (Fig 3.8 above) click on the OK button to take you back to the Servers TAB. From there, click on the Connection TAB.

Fig 3.9  The Connection TAB (window)

Clicking on the Connection TAB allows you to change the ISP connection used with Windows Mail and more specifically the connection used to connect to the smtp server associated with a certain email account. Changing this setting also changes the default (normal) connection for Internet Explorer and all your other software in general, unless that software has been set up to use a specific ISP connection as well.

If you have a Dial-Up (P.A.Y.G) connection put a tick next to the ALWAYS CONNECT TO THIS ACCOUNT USING setting. This acts as a security feature because it means only your Dial-Up connection will be used with Windows Mail and not a fake Dial-Up connection that might of been downloaded/installed by a malicious piece of software for example. In normal circumstances though you would leave this setting unticked so that you can use the default connection, which was set up with your Dial-Up or Broadband CD for example.

When you have finished editing your email account click on the APPLY button to apply your changes and then click on the OK button to return to the Internet Accounts window (below). The Security window and Advanced window settings should be left alone, although they are briefly explained below.

Fig 3.10  Click on the CLOSE button to finish

When you come back to the Internet Accounts window you will notice it now has an E-Mail account displayed at the top of the accounts list, named after the E-Mail account name you gave it in Fig 3.2 above. In this example it is named Contact John and is the Default email account, because it is the only email account. When there are other email accounts you can select which one you want as the default email account.

Under normal circumstances the Security TAB settings are left alone. Even if you contact your ISP for advice on setting up an email account they should never ask you to change the security settings unless your Windows has become corrupt or you are requiring a non-default setup (which is very rare in normal circumstances).

Fig 4.0  The normal (default) Security settings

The Advanced TAB settings (below), under normal circumstances, should be left alone. However. If you contact your ISP for advice on setting up an email account they may ask you to change some of the advanced settings for new security reasons. Normally the THIS SERVER REQUIRES A SECURE CONNECTION (SSL) settings. They may ask you to tick one or both of them and enter specific Port (socket/channel) numbers for them. The SMTP port number is normally set to 25, but 26 or 465 of late due to spam/junk mail. And the POP3 port number is normally set to 110, but for security reasons of late can be set to 995.

Fig 4.1  The normal (default) Advanced settings

One of the settings you might be interested in setting is the LEAVE A COPY OF MESSAGES ON SERVER. Putting a tick next to this setting (Fig 4.2 below) means you want to be able to download your emails but at the same time leave a copy of those emails on your web hosting provider's, email, server (i.e. mail.websitecreationhelp.com). This is good if you have two computers as it means both computers can download a copy. With no tick next to LEAVE A COPY OF MESSAGES ON SERVER only one computer can download the emails before they are deleted from the, email, server.

Fig 4.2  Tick LEAVE A COPY OF MESSAGES ON SERVER to leave a copy of your emails on your website's email server

There are two sub-settings to the LEAVE A COPY OF MESSAGES ON SERVER setting. The first one, REMOVE FROM SERVER AFTER ? DAY(S), will delete your emails from your web hosting provider's, email, server after the specified number of days. This setting allows you to keep your emails on your web hosting provider's, email, server for much longer. The second sub-setting, REMOVE FROM SERVER WHEN DELETED FROM 'DELETED ITEMS', means a specific email will be deleted from your web hosting provider's, email, server only when it is deleted by you or windows mail from the Deleted Items folder in windows mail. Both of these settings make it possible to work on your windows mail copy of emails while keeping a safe copy on your web hosting provider's, email, server. The downside is that your emails are stored within your web space, inside a dedicated email folder, so building 1,000 emails for example may require more web space. The advantage though is that your emails are automatically safe (backed up).

When you have finished editing the Security and/or Advanced settings click on the APPLY button to apply your changes and then click on the OK button to return to the Internet Accounts window (Fig 3.10 above).

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