Google Apps For Your Domain

[Will Rickards]

So I signed up and setup "google apps for your domain" on my willrickards.net domain. I wanted to move to gmail instead of using thunderbird. Surprisingly easy to do. And everything is setup and working fine.

I needed to change some MX records and add some CNAME records. But the process was pretty easy and they even had step by step instructions for dreamhost.

This is cool.

 

[timwhit]

This is free, correct?

Maybe I should so the same thing.

 

[Will Rickards]

yes free for standard tier. $50/user/account for premier tier.

 

[ddrueding]

I've been using this for the ddrueding.com domain for about 5 months now. Really happy with it.

 

[Howell]

I've been using this for the ddrueding.com domain for about 5 months now. Really happy with it.

Really? You know calendar only has one L in it.

 

[ddrueding]

Fixed. Shows you how often I use the website. I typically just go to mail.ddrueding.com.

 

[timwhit]

I installed this on my domain. The spam filter is so much better than Thunderbird. I already knew this of course, since my main email address is a gmail account.

 

[Will Rickards]

So now that I've switched over to using gmail on my domain....
I have a different problem to solve. While it is great that all my e-mail is on gmail servers and easily searchable online. I would like to keep a copy for myself on my own box. Ideally what I'd like to do is take my old thunderbird mail archives and combine them with the gmail messages into something that was easily searchable and could be encrypted. I'd basically be using a mail client just for downloading a copy of the messages. I don't know if google's recent IMAP enabling helps me here or not. I think POP3 would work fine.

 

[Mercutio]

There's some articles about doing that on lifehacker.com, actually.

gmail is an IMAP server, so as I recall, what you end up doing, if you want to use Tbird in addition to Gmail, is basically forwarding yourself a bunch of messages.

Also, GMAIL IS AN IMAP SERVER, which means you can use its spam filtering and still have the nice user interface of Tbird for when you want a proper mail client. Since you're dealing with IMAP, all your stuff stays on their server, but maintains your read message count and stuff.

 

[ddrueding]

POP3 would work fine, just be sure to leave the messages on the server.

1. Open thunderbird with your old mail
2. Add your gmail account as a POP3 server (including "leave a copy on the server")
3. Let all your mail copy down

I think that will do it.

 

[ddrueding]

What I want is a DVD copy of everything Google has for my domain (mail, web, etc). Does anyone know of an easy way to get this? Do they offer it?

 

[ddrueding]

There's some articles about doing that on lifehacker.com, actually.

gmail is an IMAP server, so as I recall, what you end up doing, if you want to use Tbird in addition to Gmail, is basically forwarding yourself a bunch of messages.

Also, GMAIL IS AN IMAP SERVER, which means you can use its spam filtering and still have the nice user interface of Tbird for when you want a proper mail client. Since you're dealing with IMAP, all your stuff stays on their server, but maintains your read message count and stuff.

POP3 would work fine, just be sure to leave the messages on the server.

1. Open thunderbird with your old mail
2. Add your gmail account as a POP3 server (including "leave a copy on the server")
3. Let all your mail copy down

I think that will do it.

If you want a copy on your local machine to perform searches against, POP3. If you just want to be able to access all the mail from TBird, IMAP.

 

[Mercutio]

POP3 is a broken and stupid protocol that should never be bothered with if IMAP is an option.

Here's some stuff about setting up IMAP with Gmail.

And no, google's tools all seem to be segregated into distinct elements, with no central point for wrapping up all your data.

 

[Mercutio]

Gmail Loader

 

[Will Rickards]

Now I'm debating whether I should just move all these old e-mails into gmail.

I'm concerned about security though. For example receipts and other sensitive e-mails I don't really want on google servers waiting to get hacked and then leaked. But should I really be concerned? Gmail is probably a big target.

So say I download all the sensitive e-mail locally. But it is usally those e-mails that I would be searching for! The others I want are usually on the first page of my inbox and easy to find.

But say I want only some e-mails locally. Can I control this easily in IMAP? POP3 is really an all or nothing solution for this. I'd really like to be able to download only certain e-mails.

Also encryption, how to handle this? I use keepass to store all my passwords. But I'd like to encrypt sensitive data like my mail files.
And I have a big mail file. Maybe I should get rid of most of it. I mean my work e-mails I can see wanting to search back years. But personal e-mails not so sure.

 

[Mercutio]

Run your own mail server and handle things the way you want to handle them.

 

[Adcadet]

Did Google somewhat recently add IMAP? I seem to have memories of Google not supporting IMAP back in the beta days.

 

[ddrueding]

Yup, it's actually still phasing in (my domain doesn't have it yet).

 

[Fushigi]

GMail messages randomly disappearing.

I haven't experienced this myself.

 

[ddrueding]

<dupe> quick reply bug.

 

[ddrueding]

That is why you need to backup all your data, even the stuff that is hosted elsewhere.

Hell, having a copy of these forums wouldn't be a bad idea...

 

[Mercutio]

Handy keeps them. SF is backed up daily.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm sure. And I do trust Handy to keep a careful eye on them. I just trust my backup method more

 

[timwhit]

So, what would be an efficient method to backup all of my gmail messages and be able to import the data back into gmail in the case of data loss?

 

[Gilbo]

The biggest problem, in my mind, isn't backing up the messages themselves. You can configure a POP downloader and leave it at that.

The biggest problem is backing up the metadata. I don't have a complicated labelling/tagging system --I depend on search a great deal--, but I need a limited segmentation otherwise the mass is completely out of control. I organize by Life Sphere (Personal, Academics, Business), and by Project, anything beyond that is masturbation given return on time invested (for me). Clearly I can get the messages out of GMail trivially, but how do I get the metadata out? That's the serious problem in my mind.

IMAP folders don't work. They're exclusive labels, which don't work for me. I need to be able to express the reality that something may be both Business & Personal (however unfortunate a reality that may be) or that something may be Project: 123 ABCDE St., and both Mechanical and Acoustical (saying that it's one, when it's actually both is silly), because it's plumbing that needs to sound-proofed.

Ideally, we need IMAP with hierarchical, but non-exclusive, arbitrary metadata. I.e. your friend Amy who you're collaborating with on a project can be found under People->Friends->Amy or People->Business->MyCoolProject->Amy. And it has to be a standard. And everyone has to respect it.

Photographers have XMP, IPTC & EXIF, but now everything goes inside XMP. This is good and makes sense. I want the same for my email (and my bookmarks, my notes, my documents, my music, my video...). Metadata represents our investment in time, organizing our ridiculously over-complicated lives. This shit is serious. Archiving data without archiving the metadata is going to become more and more useless as these piles of data grow bigger and bigger. Without metadata finding a photo I took two years ago that I loved would be completely friggin' impossible. It's already happening, and I'm shocked no one is doing a thing about it.

Vendor lock-in is just taking on a different form. Google uses open data formats, and closes the metadata format. We can keep our data, but in a flat POP download we damn well won't be able to ever find what we need...

 

[ddrueding]

Well said Gilbo. I sure don't have a solution...

 

[Mercutio]

Why do you need labels? What's wrong with just having a decent search function?

 

[ddrueding]

Looks like Google just limited the free version to 10 users rather than 50. Though they told my my old accounts will still have the 50 user limit.

 

[Will Rickards]

That's a bummer. I was just about to recommend the local scout pack switch to google apps and give each leader an account. But we'd need at least 10 accounts.

 

[Mercutio]

I just got 19 copies of that Email. You still have a couple weeks before the 10 user limit goes into effect, so make accounts now while you still can.

 

[Will Rickards]

So continuing this thread...

As currently setup I have 1&1 for a registrar, dreamhost for a webhost, and google for mail/calendar/etc. I don't really have a need for a web host anymore and paying $120 a year for it seems like a waste. So I thought I'd cancel dreamhost and just change the 1&1 domain records. But apparently they don't support TXT records, so no SPF or DKIM, and no easy domain verification.

So who is a good registrar that will provide the full dns services that is about the same I pay now of $10/year? I thought we had a thread on here recommending them but I couldn't find it.

 

[Howell]

All you actually need is DNS services; assuming 1&1 has not restricted you to only using their DNS services. I have mine with dyndns but I obtained my account while it was still free. I believe zonedit.com is still free, it is dynamic DNS capable, and last i checked support was built into smootheall. There are also many other free DNS service providers.

 

[Mercutio]

Most places that say they don't allow custom records really mean "We don't support custom records unless you pay us." There's probably some stupid $10/year add-on you need to buy from 1&1 to allow direct editing of your DNS records.

 

[Will Rickards]

google 1&1 and google apps and there is a ton of negative stuff.
So I'm not looking to stay with them. I'm not really interested in doing the dns stuff somewhere else, like zoneedit. I'd like to just have one company as registrar and dns that doesn't suck. I think namecheap was recommended before?

 

[ddrueding]

I moved someone from Pair Networks to GoDaddy just because it plays well with Google Apps. Can't say it is the cheapest, and their recent support for SOPA would have caused me to look elsewhere, but it did work well.

 

[Mercutio]

Dreamhost works just fine as a registrar. I do most of what I want from there, and their control panel will even start the GApps migration for you.

Dotster made me pay $10/year just so I could set up a TXT record.

 

[Handruin]

Would this NameCheap be an option for non-hosted domains? I've migrated two of my domains over to them so far (SF being one of them) and have been happy, but I'm also not trying to do specifically what you're doing.

 

[Handruin]

Dreamhost works just fine as a registrar. I do most of what I want from there, and their control panel will even start the GApps migration for you.

Dotster made me pay $10/year just so I could set up a TXT record.

Just make sure you changed your password at dreamhost.

 

[Mercutio]

Yes they sent me emails about that. Dreamhost is actually very good about customer communication.

Dotster had a day-long DNS outage last week and didn't say anything to anybody unless they called to complain.

 

[Handruin]

I guess I moved off Dotster in time to not notice. Their prices continued to climb with no added benefits, so I transferred. Of course as soon as I initiated the transfer, I get emails asking me to stay with discounted codes. It still wasn't worth it.