If you host your domain, you can use Google Apps using your own domain name, including using their gmail application.   If you use Dreamhost the steps are different and much simplified.  Be sure to setup the new email accounts in Google BEFORE you change tell Dreamhost to make the chagne, or you change the MX Records or you will lose emails.  Google provide excellent help on how to do all this, including videos.  However these don’t take into account what Dreamhost is doing for you so I have written these notes.

1. Sign up and sign in.

Dreamhost: If you are using Dreamhost to host your domain, go to your Dreamhost control plane and select Domain/Manage Domain.  Select to edit the domain.  Towards the bottom look for Google Hosted and click the link “register at Google Apps for your Domain”.  Do NOT try to have Google host yet since your email will be routed to Google and you have not yet setup user accounts.

Other: If you are not using a hosting company that provides the support, from the Google Apps home page, click ‘Compare Editions and Sign Up’ to get started and access to the control panel.  For most everyone the free Standard Edition would provide all that is needed.  You might wish to pay for the Premier Edition if you need more disk space, need to migrate your old email over or want 24/7 support.  After you make your selection on which plan, then enter your domain name.  Be sure to check that you are an administrator.  Learn more

2. Verify domain ownership.

Dreamhost: For one domain I setup I did not need to verify.  It seemed that once I clicked in the Dreamhost control panel to switch over to Google mail, verification worked.  For another domain I had to follow the steps below.  I choose to create a HTML file and upload to the domain.  It might be that for this second domain I had a WordPress blog setup on it instead of a website, as was the case for the first domain I switched over.  Once I had it verify using the HTML file I uploaded it said it woudl take up to 48 hours to verify domain ownership, however it worked in a matter of minutes.

Other: Otherwise go sign in and go to the dash boarad and then confirm that you own the domain you signed up with to activate Google Apps.  If you did not purchase your domain from Google, you will need to verify you are the owner.  This requires you to ypload a special file to your site and then create a special CNAME record for your domain. Learn more

3. Customize Google Apps.

This is the same if you use Dreamhost or not.  Google Apps lets you easily modify a variety of settings that apply to your entire organization.  Learn more

4. Create User Accounts.

This is the same if you use Dreamhost or not.  From the Google  control panel, create your user accounts accounts to match the users email accounts you already have setup.  Do this BEFORE you change the MX records in the next step.  You can bulk upload a list of user accounts if you wish.  Learn more

5. Turn on Email.

Dreamhost: If you are using Dreamhost, go to the Dreamhost control panel there and select Domains/Manage Domains.  Select Edit for the domain you are hosting and click “Google Host this domain now”. Dreamhost will re-route your email rather than you needing to change the MX records for that domain.  Then go to the control panel in Google Apps and activate email.  Although I did not actually change the MX records, I had to tell the google control panel that I had.

Other: If you are not using Dreamhost, to receive your email at Google, you need to modify the MX record for your domain.  You do this at the company where you have your domain registered.  Once you make the change, your email will not longer be routed where it was previously sent.  If you wish to check things out before you change the MX record, you can use a temporary email address to send to using this format: user.name@your_domain.com.test-google-a.com. You can use the webmail function in Gmail to send out an email directly.  Learn more

6.  Migrate Email.

If you use Micosoft Windows, Google offers a tool to migrate your existing email from some applications, such as Outlook, to your new Google Inbox. For Mac users, I did find one commercial program.  I also found one approach but have not tested it:

• Using Thunderbird connect to your old email account through IMAP,
• Do the same with your new Gmail account. You need to have Imap activated in Gmail in order to access it from Thunderbird. .
• Copy email from each folder of your old accout to gmail.

If you are going to continue to use POP access it is not really important since you will use your email client to retrieve your new email and it will go into the same inbox as before.  If you wish to switch to IMAP, then prior emails will not be online, but that will be an issue of less importance as time moves on.