Okay, so you have a domain and a fully operational website. However you'd like to give your administrators, bloggers and other staff members an email address to use? 

Look no further, I will teach you the quickest, easiest and most reliable way to build a powerful and flexible email service. If you have a domain and a website you must then know how to add 'A' and 'CNAME' records to your DNS. For the email service we're going to use a new type of record, an 'MX' record and possibly an 'SRV' record (you may need to contact your registrar to implement this). 

You must already have a Hotmail account to do this (your current account will act as an admin account). If you don't have one please head along to hotmail.com and get one before beginning this.

Once you've signed up for Hotmail head along to domains.live.com.

Step 1:

Simply follow the registration process and you'll be greeted with your domains dashboard which will look something like this (I've blanked out my domain and MX server details):

Note it says my service is active, yours will not be active. In the top section where it says 'Mail setup (required)' you have an MX record which will be where the red line is. 

This is the MX record you'll have to add to your domains DNS, so go ahead and copy this.

Step 2:

Head along to your registrar, login and access your domains control panel and add the MX record to your DNS. Please note you will have to wait a few hours, log back into domains.live.com after a few hours and check if your service has activated yet. Please allow up to 48 hours for this to take place.

Step 3:

After waiting some time (and drinking some coffee) your dashboard will eventually read service 'Active' and you can create accounts under your domain for staff members of your website to use. You can set a temporary password so that when they login they have to change it. If you're an admin testing the link please make sure you're completely signed out of all Hotmail accounts, otherwise the link will not work properly.

Now you and your website staff have email you can use hotmail.com to sign in. 

I hope this quick and easy 3 step guide has enabled you to set up your email service correctly, if not please drop me a comment or an email at kristopher.maguire@findingnino.com and I'll help you resolve your issue.

If you'd like to take it one step further and provide visitors with email under your domain please read part 2.

PART 2 (Email for the masses!)

Now that you've gave your staff members email under your domain you can also get a link or a graphic to post on your website so readers, visitors and members of the public can sign up to email services under your domain!

Head along to your dashboard again and under 'Open Membership' click the 'Settings' button and switch it on (mines is already on):

Then click 'Sign-up module' and you'll be greeted with this:

This is your sign up module where you can make changes to your signing up graphic to place on your website (like a banner advert). 

Simply copy and paste the HTML onto your site to use the graphic after you've made your customizations, once this is done anyone will be able to sign up to your email services by clicking the banner.

If you don't want to have a graphic and would prefer to just use a small and simple text link you can do so, your link will be in the exact same place above the red line as in the picture (once again I've blanked out my domain). You will need to copy and paste this link on to your site.

When people click this link or small banner advert on your site they'll be taken to a Hotmail sign up page but for email under your domain, anybody anywhere with a computer can do it and you can watch the email service under your domain grow!