Do you want to build a page for a public/private community with each member having a personalised email address as membername@communityname?
Or a page for supporting a cause with each member having a personalizes email address as membername@supportthiscause ?
Or you just want to build a page for your family with personalized email addresses for each of your family members like familymembername@yourfamilyname?
All that for free ,in five steps with no knowledge of html coding .
Then read on
Step 1: Getting a domain name for free.
Go to Co.cc. It is free domain name registration service.
Register yourself a domain name. the domain name that I have registered is testdomainforme12345.co.cc
you will be forwarded to a page like this. click on agreement acceptance and then continue.
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| Registering domain name at co.cc |
You will see a confirmation page like this.
Keep this tab in your browser open. We will be needing to set up this domain for our use.Don't worry, it is very simple.
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| Keep this page open in your browser tab |
Step 2 : Setting up windows Live Admin Center
Go to Windows live Admin Center. Open this in a new tab. Click on get started link that is visible on the page of Windows Live admin center.
On the next page, enter the name of the domain that you have registered and check Set up windows live Hotmail for my domain.
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| Setting up Windows Live admin center for my domain |
Click on continue and proceed to the next page.
Here you will be required to set up administrator account for your Windows Live Domain Center. This admin account will manage the domain here. So Check :Create a new Windows Live Id in your domain.
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| Creating admin account in Windows live Domain |
So proceed with this and after signing up and verifying your email account that you used to sign up with windows live, you would be redirected to your agreement acceptance page.
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| review settings on Windows Live and proceed |
You are now at your domain settings page. Do not close this tab. We will be needing the information stated here later on.
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| Domain name settings at Windows Live Admin Center |
You won't be needing the second information that says DNS record type: MX.
Step 3:Setting up Domain Settings.
Now go back to your co.cc account that you have left opened in a tab of your browser. You will need to just copy and paste information from Windows Live Admin center to Co.CC account.
After going to setup, you will see a page like this.We will update the zone records now.
Click on the zone records and fill in each information from your Windows Live Admin account to this zone records at co.cc
Below are the screenshots
take information from here
And update it here. I have attached one for facilitating you.
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| Add MX record |
every information is given. You just have to copy and paste them.Select MX from type.
paste the value of MX from the Windows live admin Center settings. Put TTL to 1 hour. and put priority to 10.
Like wise, copy and paste for every record except the record I have asked to exclude and SRV record from Windows live admin settings.
So , now you have updated all the Zone records from your windows Live Admin Account to co..cc domain settings zone records.
After updating, it will look like this.
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| Settings Updated in Co.cc Zone Records. |
Step 4: Setting up member's email addresses.
After updating Zone records, just go back to your Windows Live Admin page and refresh it like shown below. Click Refresh on the refresh button shown.
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| Refreshing settings at Windows Live |
It takes some time for DNS settings to propagate, so don't panic if the service is not activated instantaneously.
After the service is activated and you click on refresh, you will it like this.
Email Service Active
and the member manually if you want.
here is a screenshot of it.
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| Adding members to my domain |
That is all. You have set up a domain name for you to use. Add as many members you like. you can make a community or assign email addresses to your family members with the same domain name like yourname@familyname.co.cc
But here, it is required that you have to add each member manually. Looking tiresome, isn't it?
Lets put up a webpage for our community and let people sign up. you don't have to manually add everyone of them.
Before we proceed to that step, just go to membership settings in left sidebar and click turn open membership on
After turning it on, go to signup module and copy the html code that is shown there.
We will need this code. Don't worry, it is just copy and paste.
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| html code for sign up module |
Step 5: Getting a one page website for free to publish the community.
So, now just go to this address to get yourself a one page website. It is Instablogg.com.
Just go here and put up the title for your community page.
To publish the signup module on your community page, just click on source so that the background of the field becomes white and paste the html code of sign up module obtained above from Windows Live Admin Account.
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| Publishing one page website with Instablogg.com |
you can choose the community to be public or private by selecting privacy levels.
So then, fill out a simple captcha form and you are done.
You can also allow comments on your community page. The comments are powered by Disqus.
Publish the webpage and share it so that people know about your community and sign up to be a part of it.
The community page made by me by using this is here.
this link might expire because I have used a custom domain name through Co.cc
If the link expires then go to this link to see the community page.
If you want that domain name to be active even after one year, you will have to purchase a domain name for yourself.
you can purchase a domain name for yourself here.
Some points to note:
1. Each member of your community gets a Hotmail powered email Id and that means they get 25 gb of online storage free on Windows Live Skydrive too.
2. You can manage your domain at Windows Live here
3. your community members can access their emails here. They will have to type their email id created as the username and the password to get through their inbox.
4. you can use url redirects to point your domain name to the community page.
It is very simple. Just put in the url of the page of the community you have just created with Instablogg as the url to redirect to. So, when anyone goes to your domain name, they will be redirected automatically to that community page created with Instablogg.
5. you can do the same thing with Google apps too, but the free version of Google apps allows only 10 users. you don't get a signup module to put on a webpage like you have here in Windows Live domains.
If you have any problems implementing any of this, let me know in comments.
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