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HelpNet News No. 8, October 2001 ********NEXT HELPNET MEETING******** WHEN: 12:00 - 1:30,
Thursday, October 18 (Bring Your Lunch) ******************************** IN THIS ISSUE:
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The rest of that newsletter looked at items #1 and #3, getting connected and Web site hosting. In this newsletter, we'll finish up the list by dealing with domain names and E-mail. DOMAIN NAMES - YOUR INTERNET IDENTITY You don't need a domain name to have a Web presence. Many ISP's will give you some Web space as part of your basic Internet access account. For instance, our family's account with Midmaine gives us Internet access and 4 "@midmaine.com" E-mail addresses. It also gives us 5 Mb of Web space. However, the address is ugly - http://home.midmaine.com/~jfalk. I sometimes use this space to make files available for download which are too big to easily send as E-mail attachments, but that's all I do with it. I don't really care about this personal Web space's address, but Pine Tree Folk School needed a clearer identity. To have an address that is easier to remember and has something to do with your organization, you can register a domain name. Domain registration provides a way for a name (www.yournamehere.org) to be associated with a unique Internet address -- in this case, the address of your Web site. Domain registration is so inexpensive now ($35/year or less) that I recommend it for any organization that is at all serious about having an Internet presence. To get a domain name, you have to deal with a domain "registrar." Until a couple of years ago, Network Solutions, Inc. had a monopoly as the only registrar, but now there is a considerable amount of competition. I have had good experiences using Register.com, which has an easy to use Web-based registration and configuration process. I began using Register.com because of multiple customer service problems with Network Solutions. Network Solutions is now part of Verisign, and I have the impression that they have cleaned up their act since I my troubles with them. Register.com charges in the neighborhood of $35/year to register a domain. There are other registrars which advertise much lower rates -- some offer free registration as part of a Web site hosting package. Be careful that you don't sacrifice reliability, support or security to save a few dollars. For instance, I recently found a shocking lack of security for user names and passwords at NamesDirect.com. When you set up a Web hosting account the Web hosting service will help you configure the domain name registration information to point to your Web site. E-MAIL - WHO CAN PROVIDE YOU WITH ACCOUNTS? Once you have a way to get connected to the Internet, you have choices about how to mange your E-mail needs. Most ISP's provide 1-5 E-mail accounts ("mailboxes") as part of the basic access fee, so this is a logical place to start, but it is not the only option. These ISP mail accounts are usually POP3 accounts, which means that you use an E-mail program (Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape mail, etc.) to retrieve your messages from the ISP's mail server and download them to your own computer, where they are saved. In addition to the these mail accounts, many people set up mail accounts on free, Web-based E-mail services, principally Microsoft's Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. These accounts save all mail on the service's mail servers, and you need to be online, and using your Web browser, to do anything with your mail. Perhaps it's just my paranoia, but I've always been a little leery of these services, despite the attractive price (free). All of your information, not only mail but also youraddress books, etc., is kept on the Microsoft or Yahoo server. And Hotmail, in particular, has had some reliability and security problems. A third option, if you're using an independent Web hosting service, is to use mail accounts that come with your Web hosting plan. For instance, www.ptfolkschool.org is now hosted by Hostway, on a $13.95/month "Gold Plan" that also provides 10 POP3 mail accounts. You can configure your E-mail program to use these accounts just as easily as the account your ISP provides. Now that you have your Internet Access, your domain name, your Web hosting, and your E-mail accounts, you're ready for another trick -- E-mail aliasing. When you set up a Web hosting account with your domain name (like our Hostway account for www.ptfolkschool.org), most hosting services will let you set up an unlimited number of E-mail "aliases." An alias is an address using your domain name, that is forwarded to a "real" mail account. For instance, the address I'm using, "jonf@ptfolkschool.org," is an alias. Mail sent to that address is actually delivered to "jfalk@midmaine.com."
That's all for this month, Jon
HelpNet is a project of Pine Tree Folk School, and is co-sponsored by Bairnet (the Bangor Area Information Resources Network) and by the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine.
Pine
Tree Folk School |
