Written by Andrew Degenhardt, Elan Communications

Google Apps offers an array of tools for managing your domain. The neat thing is that you can link up all the Google Apps to your domain so you can access them from your own custom subdomains, e.g.: docs.yourdomain.com, mail.yourdomain.com. The Google Apps you can use include Google mail, Google pages, Google Chat, Google Docs, and more.

Google Apps is separated into two service categories: Google Apps Standard and Google Apps Premium. Standard is free, and if you need the extra space for email and the other features that the Premium service offers, you can upgrade to Premium for a low price.

Google Apps is very easy to set up. Here is the web site to sign up for Standard Edition:

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html

As you go through the setup, you’ll be asked for personal and business information, and you’ll be asked to confirm ownership of the domain. There are two ways to confirm ownership and they are both quite easy to do.

Once you confirm that you are the owner of the domain, it’s time to get your first Google App set up.

Email is always the first I start with. Here is a page on Google that gives you instructions on how to set up your domain to work with Google Mail:

http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=33352

Make sure you bookmark the login page for your Google Apps. It’s a good idea to do this until you get the subdomains working properly.

It’s a good idea to set up subdomains to point to each of your Google Apps, instead of using the default address, which is something like mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com or partnerpage.google.com/mail/yourdomain.com. If you want to do this for your domain, here is where you start:

In Google Apps, go to the Dashboard and then click on Email, then you will see Web Address and “Change URL”. Click there and the instructions are pretty easy to follow.

That’s it! Have fun using Google Apps!