Getting a Website Started

1. Sign on to your control panel, or go to its home page.
2. If you are going to be the only user on this account, you don't need to do much in the first section. You already have an email account theuserID@mydomain.com, and all mail addressed to the domain, no matter who the addressee will forward to this mailbox. You can go to the step Getting your mail below.
3. If you want to have other users besides yourself, click on "Manage Accounts" in the eMail section of the control panel. You will get a window listing the current users (yourself). For each one you want to add, click on the "Add Account" button at the bottom. You will get a form to fill in.
   - Email: beside this, fill in the box the name the user will sign on with and have eMail addressed to
   - Password: Enter the person's password in the second box
   - Quota: You can probably leave this as presented, but do keep in mind that space used for eMail comes out of your total space allotment.
   - Domain: If you have parked domains, you can set up mailboxes on any one of them. Otherwise all eMail addresses are at your main domain.
   - When the information is correct, press "create" and that user will be created.
   - You should get a window with a message confirming the creation of the new user.
   - If you go back to the mail accounts page, the list of users will be modified to show the new one(s) you have added. Later, you can remove these by clicking on the red X, the delete button, or trash symbol (depends on theme), though you cannot remove the initial user (yourself.)
   - If you later want to modify the user name or password, click on the pencil icon for that user. Remember that you change the password for the main account elsewhere.
4. Getting your mail
   The account(s) set up so far are called POP (Post Office Protocol) accounts. Mail sent to such addresses will accumulate on our server until you collect it with an eMail client such as Eudora (or, you can use the webmail interface from your control panel). You send using the SMTP mail protocol. You need to set up your eMail client to send through and collect eMail from your account using the applicable username and password. See the instructions that came with your email client for this.
   Note that:
   - to receive mail you will probably have to enter the user name as theuser@thedomain.com rather than simply as theuser,
   - to send mail you must check a preference in your eMail program probably labeled something like "enable authentication", as our server will not allow just anyone to send eMail with your account. It automatically uses a form of "POP before SMTP" (asking for the password used for getting mail before trying to send) to ensure that only someone with your POP password can send mail.
5. Setting up aliases and forwards
   When you first start, all mail on the system that does not have an eMail account to go to will go to the main account holder's mailbox (yours). This is called a "catch-all" and it is already established (see below).
   However, you may want one or more of your users to be known by other names in addition to their account names. For instance, if you have a user joe@mydomain.com, you may want to have mail sent to joey@mydomain.com to go to this person as well. Or, you may want mail addressed to someone on your system to be sent (forwarded) somewhere else altogether. In either case, you need to set up a forwarder. Go back to the main control panel and select "Forwarders."
   You will be taken to the Forwarding Maintenance page. For each forward that you want to set up,
   - select "Add Forwarder", then
   - put the name to be forwarded in the left box, and in the right box, place the full eMail address you want this mail to go to, whether on your own system (an alias) or some other system altogether (a true forward). You can even forward the main account (yourself) if you want, say to your hotmail account or that at your ISP.
   If you later want to modify the alias, you have to go back to "Forwarders" and delete the old forward, then add a new one to replace it. By the way, if you forward the same userID to two different places, the messages will go to both.
   NOTE: It does not matter whether you have given the name you forward an actual account on your system. This will work in either case.
6. Changing the default of "catch-all" address
   This is the address to which all mail will go if not specifically addressed to an account or a forward that you have set up above. It starts out set to the main account holder (you) and this is probably what you want. However if you want to change this:
   - go to the control panel main or home page
   - click on Default Address
   - you will be taken to the default address maintenance page
   - click on Set Default Address
   - fill in where you want it to go. Note that there are some options here for bouncing such mail
7. Using the "catch-all" address in practical cases
   Suppose you order something from "joescomputer.com" and you are concerned that Joe might sell his mailing list and you get spam, OR you put an email address on one of your web pages for a specific purpose (not a terrific idea, as it is sure to attract spam.)
   - Use a unique address such as joescomputer@mydomain.com or mybirthdaycongratulations@mydomain.com.
   - Mail to either address will come to you automatically through the catch-all provision. You need not do anything to make this happen.
   - If the address does generate spam, you can filter it out easily because of the first part of the address. This can be done in your control panel or by your mail client. The former might be better, as you won't pay to download it.
8. For more detailed instructions and other options, see the documentation page for cPanel, a link to which can be found at the bottom of the control panel page.