using your existing domain name with gmail and decluttering the web ui

Email server maintenance sucks. Last week, a botched upgrade of my VPS killed spam-filtering and rendered Plesk (control panel) useless. Days of chasing tickets with Interhost drove me to distraction. High time to consider alternative mail hosting.

Within its Apps framework, Google offers an email service which can be linked to your existing domain name and email address. The process is as follows:

1. Create a Google apps account
2. Verify your domain (by placing a Google-provided file in the root)
3. Create email accounts using "Users and groups" tab
4. Edit your DNS settings (instructions for various hosts here) to use the Google MX records. If you have direct access to DNS settings, these are the MX records:

Once that's done, after 24 hours or so, the DNS update will have propogated through the web and email will start flowing into your Google Apps Gmail inbox. Enable IMAP within Gmail settings in order to access mail from desktop clients. Then set up Google Sync to get email/calendars/contacts pushed to your iPhone.

Gmail's web interface is horribly cluttered so I have created custom CSS to remove the ads, dim some extraneous details and shrink the UI to the bare minimum. This can be downloaded and activated here:

http://userstyles.org/styles/23249

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