by WebKeyDesign | May 7, 2014 | cPanel, Networking, Tech Notes
In this post, I discuss how to setup your own domain with Zoho Mail, a hosted email solution from Zoho. Similar to Google Apps, Zoho provides a set of online business tools including office apps, project management, and contact management. At the time of this post the hosted email package has a free option as well as higher tiers for users who need more options. The biggest selling point for Zoho is that none of their apps have advertisements, and so if you are bothered by other webmail solutions that feature ads, Zoho seems to be a good alternative solution. Other than webmail access, the other reasons to use Zoho is that it works with desktop email clients, smartphones, and tablets.
My Requirements For An Email Solution
In order of importance, here is what I was looking for in an email solution.
Integrates with your Domain name
- I wanted an email solution that would work with my current personal domain that my family uses.
iPhone and iPad Support
- Everyone in the family has an iPhone, iPod, or iPad that they can use for email.
Apple Mail Support
- Oh, we do use our Mac computers every now and then, so we need desktop mail.
IMAP
- I want to keep email on the server, and not worry about losing it. I can also manage my email from my smartphone when I have time. This is really convenient.
Cost
- Free if possible, but am willing to pay for a good solution on a yearly basis.
Ad-free
- Not having my kids bombarded with advertisements is a good thing.
Zoho’s Instructions
Step 1: Verify domain ownership
Please verify your domain ownership. This is required to prevent imposters from using domains to send malicious messages. You can follow either the CNAME method or HTML method for verification.
Step 2: Add / import users to your organization
As the administrator of your organization, you have a Control Panel link in your user interface. In the Control panel, click User Details on the left list of options and click Add User option on the top. You can also import a list of users by selecting the Import User option.
Step 3: Migrating data to Zoho Mail
We recommend you to test migration for 2 users before pointing MX records.
Step 4: Point MX records to Zoho
Point the Mail Exchanger (MX) records to Zoho to start receiving mails to your inbox.
Changing My eMail
Steps 1 and 2 were pretty easy. Since I only have 4 users accounts, it took a few minutes to setup my four users in the Control panel. I skipped Step 3, I don’t really keep a lot of personal email. My current email was stored in Apple Mail and I was fine leaving it there. The interesting step is number 4. The Internet works via DNS. The domain naming system allows everyone and everything to find each other on the network. This is accomplished by DNS having different types of records to point requests to the right place. In the case of most personal domains, you have two different parties involved. The first is a domain registrar who takes care of your domain registration. The second is your hosting provider, usually for shared hosting this is a cPanel type hosting provider. When someone tries to email you at user@some_domain_name.net, a lookup is made to the root DNS authority for the .net domains, your registrar is what adds your domain to the DNS authority servers. The root server then sends you to your nameservers specified. Your nameservers are at your cPanel hosting provider. The final step in the lookup is to see what your cPanel nameserver has for what is called the MX records. The MX records have the server that processes your email and ideally where the email is going to go.
Your current hosting provider has MX records for its own email processing. What needs to be done, is to remove the current MX records and replace them with MX records that point to Zoho’s servers. This way only your email, emails sent to user@some_domain_name.net, will route to Zoho, but everything else will still be at your current hosting provider. To do this most cPanel hosts make it easy to do this now. Log into your cPanel control panel and scroll down to the Email section. You want to click open the MX Entry icon.
You will first choose your domain name that you want to change the MX records for. This is your main domain. First add the MX entries as Zoho instructs, then remove your current record for your host. When the changes are complete, it should look similar to this:
The DNS changes take a matter of minutes to a couple of hours to propagate to the rest of the internet.
by WebKeyDesign | Mar 18, 2014 | Project Management
We have all been in this situation. It has been a busy work week and although you really need to get some work done, you find yourself in a meeting. The reason is usually the discovery of a problem and the meeting has been called to figure out a solution. After the first 15 minutes, you start to see just how effective your team really is. If what occurs next is an active and engaging debate between everyone in attendance, then you have nothing to worry about. However, if the room goes silent or if the list of ideas seem familiar and there are few of them, then most likely your team has issues. I am a big believer in the concept that all problems are people problems first. Regardless of how great a process can be, if the people executing the process don’t understand it (or their role in said process), then that process will ultimately fail. The same goes for teams. If you have a team where members do not understand what role they play or are not willing to actively participate within the team concept, then your team is not very effective at all. Not being effective, means not productive, not able to think creatively, not working at all. This is most often described as the Nonfunctional team. Nonfunctional teams are costly, don’t produce quality work, and force your most talented and productive people to look for another job. The impact on the business is immediate and sometimes irreversible. So what can be done to build better team?
Begin The Conversation
Recognizing that the team is nonfunctional is great, but the problems will not just go away by pointing them out. Team members will need to be communicated to individually and as a group. Convincing most team members that there are problems will not be hard, getting them to talk about it is what will be difficult. It is important that the team take responsibility and ownership over improving the team environment. Empowering your team is the single most important thing you can do. Take the time to listen to each individual’s point of view. Some managers take it upon themselves to do a day long meeting and hash out a team building event, but if the problems have been going on for a while, it is better to build up support before going to team events. As a team leader or manager, be prepared for obstacles. Remember that the status quo is not where you want the team to be and that feeling “comfortable”, means that you have not really implemented any change.
Strategy
Once you have some support on your side, present to the team the plan. You should have some goals, as to what defines the team, what values the team will have, and how the team will get there. These should be written out and easily recognizable to anyone who reads them. Reaching your goals will mean changing the culture of the team, to work effectively, to focus, and to let go of old habits, processes, policies, politics, etc that get in the way of these goals.
Team Building
For the first day long team event, you will need to tackle the first thing that most teams are not good at, namely communication. Effective teams communicate openly and honestly. In order to do that, as a leader, you have to put yourself out there first and talk about what difficulties you have as a manager or team leader. Communication is personal and so our instinct is to avoid anything that makes us feel vulnerable to each other, however, you have to share. Communication is a shared experience and until you share something, you can’t really communicate. Once you take that first step, the team will follow one by one. It will be difficult at first, but the more you share the better you will be able to communicate. Again, the communication has to be personal. There are simple exercises you can do, or you can simply have an open discussion similar to a talk show. For example, the statement “I feel uncomfortable when…” is a good start. The idea is to have the team get to know each other as people first.
Once you have a shared experience, next comes work. The idea is to communicate better and with better communication comes that magic word that everyone talks about all the time: trust. In effective teams, all team members trust each other. It sounds simple but a good working relationship takes a lot of work. In order to get there, as the leader in the room, you have to help the team to craft some ground rules on communicating with each other. Communication needs to be active and engaging, but you also need to agree as a team that once the team decides on something, that it is decided. You want to allow for individual discussions and points of view, but you also want to the team to be able to achieve consensus.
At the conclusion of your first day long event, you should have come out with ground rules for communicating and agreement to work with each other for the sake of the team goals. You won’t have the perfect team yet, but you will have something which you can build on in the coming months.
by WebKeyDesign | Nov 14, 2013 | Internet Explorer
I must admit that the hardest thing for developers to do is to write good error messages. When it comes down to it, it is really hard to please all of the people, all of the time, and developers are only human and so you end up with epic fail error messages. However, I ran into this error message today on a certain telecom company’s website and it just made me laugh. So when is a browser unsupported? When it is a latest version of Internet Explorer!
I upgraded my laptop to Internet Explorer 11, since it recently became available for Windows 7 users. Thank you Microsoft for still trying to do it your way, but your street cred is not what it use to be, cause not everyone is supporting your latest browser.
by WebKeyDesign | Nov 4, 2013 | Project Management, Tech Notes
One of the most frustrating situations that I run into as a technology evangelist is observing people make poor technology decisions. As a tech guy, I want to advocate for the best technology solution possible, but you always have to consider who will ultimately use the technology, how much will it cost to implement, and over time how will it perform. In truth there is no perfect technology solution, all solutions have their negatives and positives; the best that you can do is choose something which satisfies all the requirements and that people are comfortable with. However, before you run out and spend your budget, consider the following to see if your technology choices are the right ones for you.
Technology Solutions For People Problems
Ironically, technology cannot fix everything, but that does not stop people from trying to use it in situations where it does not fit. The prime example of this is when you have a group of people that need to communicate but choose not to. You usually find that for personal reasons people do not get along and this causes the process to breakdown. All problems break down into two categories: you either have a broken process or you have a people problem. Most decision makers tend to ignore the people problem and focus on the broken process and this is a big mistake. In this scenario, any technology decision will fail because the people problem was never resolved. If people do not get along and stand in the way of a great process, the process will still break down. The best thing to do is to focus on the people problem first and allow the people that will work the process to be part of the solution. Involve everyone and communicate, communicate, eventually the solution will become obvious to everyone.
The Perfect Technology
When choosing a solution from a vendor, you will always get a sales pitch about how wonderful this solution will be for you and how it is so customizable that you cannot afford not to choose it. No technology just works. Everything is designed to work a certain way, and it takes time to learn new technology no matter how awesome it is. Do not buy the sales pitch, instead be prepared to spend significant amount of time when adopting new technology and balance it against how productive or how profitable it will make your process and business.
Single Vision
All of our advances in society have come about because someone had the great vision and determination to create something, even if it was by accident. It is those achievements that propel us forward. When it comes to technology we stand on the shoulders of these great visionaries and we sometimes lose perspective because of our admiration for such and such person. As much as I love all things made by Apple, I need to retain some perspective. Just because I love Mac OS X, does not mean everyone has to love it the same way. The right technology solutions are not always the ones that I want. Ask yourself, does it make sense to buy an entire rack server or will something smaller work just as well? As technology advocates we love our toys, but you want to be careful that not all your technology choices are your technology choices.
Avoiding The Status Quo
The tech world runs in cycles. At one time, the network server was cool, then all of a sudden it is not as trendy, and now it is back. As a decision maker, you have to study the trends and know when it is time to jump off and adopt something outside the status quo. Sometimes the new trend is not going to end well, I’m thinking mostly about those cheap netbooks that everyone was so enamored with a few years ago. On the other side, the tablet is something that just works and you will need to include them in your strategic plans. You want to be an early adaptor who picks sound and effective technologies and yes that is a lot harder than it sounds.
by WebKeyDesign | Apr 19, 2013 | Software
If you are making the switch to Gmail, the first thing that stands out is that although Gmail is very responsive, it is pretty unattractive web application to use. There are plenty of modifications you can make to your browser to make Gmail look better, but I thought I would focus on modifications that strictly work in all browsers. Here are a three modifications that I think improve upon the standard Gmail interface.
- Click the Gear icon and select: Comfortable
- Click the Gear icon and click Settings: Labs: Preview Pane switch to Enable.
- Click the Gear icon and click Themes: under Color Themes select High Contrast.
