HELPNET NEWS
OCTOBER 2001
********NEXT HELPNET MEETING********
WHEN: 12:00 - 1:30, Thursday, October 18 (Bring Your Lunch)
WHERE: Peace and Justice Center, 170 Park St., Bangor
AGENDA: Right now we're open to suggestions - please send ideas to
this list
********************************
IN THIS ISSUE:
**STAYING ONLINE AND STAYING SANE - YOUR ORGANIZATION'S INTERNET
CONNECTION AND INTERNET PRESENCE (PART 2)
**DOMAIN NAMES - YOUR INTERNET IDENTITY
**E-MAIL - WHO CAN PROVIDE YOU WITH ACCOUNTS?
**E-MAIL ALIASING
*****************************
In the last HelpNet Newsletter (August 2001 - September seems to have
gotten away from me), I laid out some basic tasks that small organizations
may want to do with the Internet:
(1) connect to the Internet, either through dial-up or some form
of broadband connection (cable, DSL, etc.)
(2) be able to send and receive E-mail, and perhaps manage mailing
lists
(3) have a Web site
(4) have a unique "domain name" (e.g. ournamehere.org) for their
Web site and E-mail. This is not necessary, but is very helpful in
establishing your on-line identity.
The rest of that newsletter looked at items #1 and #3, getting connected
and Web site hosting. In this newsletter, we'll finish up the list by
dealing with domain names and E-mail.
DOMAIN NAMES - YOUR INTERNET IDENTITY
You don't need a domain name to have a Web presence. Many ISP's will give
you some Web space as part of your basic Internet access account. For
instance, our family's account with Midmaine gives us Internet access and 4
"@midmaine.com" E-mail addresses. It also gives us 5 Mb of Web
space. However, the address is ugly -
<http://home.midmaine.com/~jfalk>. I sometimes use this space to make
files available for download which are too big to easily send as E-mail
attachments, but that's all I do with it. I don't really care about this
personal Web space's address, but Pine Tree Folk School needed a clearer
identity.
To have an address that is easier to remember and has something to do with
your organization, you can register a domain name. Domain registration
provides a way for a name (www.yournamehere.org) to be associated with a
unique Internet address -- in this case, the address of your Web site.
Domain registration is so inexpensive now ($35/year or less) that I
recommend it for any organization that is at all serious about having an
Internet presence.
To get a domain name, you have to deal with a domain "registrar." Until a
couple of years ago, Network Solutions, Inc. had a monopoly as the only
registrar, but now there is a considerable amount of competition. I have
had good experiences using Register.com (www.register.com), which has an
easy to use Web-based registration and configuration process. I began
using Register.com because of multiple customer service problems with
Network Solutions (www.networksolutions.com), Network Solutions is now part
of Verisign, and I have the impression that they have cleaned up their act
since I my troubles with them.
Register.com charges in the neighborhood of $35/year to register a
domain. There are other registrars which advertise much lower rates --
some offer free registration as part of a Web site hosting package. Be
careful that you don't sacrifice reliability, support or security to save a
few dollars. For instance, I recently found a shocking lack of security
for user names and passwords at NamesDirect.com.
When you set up a Web hosting account the Web hosting service will help you
configure the domain name registration information to point to your Web site.
E-MAIL - WHO CAN PROVIDE YOU WITH ACCOUNTS?
Once you have a way to get connected to the Internet, you have choices
about how to mange your E-mail needs. Most ISP's provide 1-5 E-mail
accounts ("mailboxes") as part of the basic access fee, so this is a
logical place to start, but it is not the only option. These ISP mail
accounts are usually POP3 accounts, which means that you use an E-mail
program (Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape mail, etc.) to retrieve your
messages from the ISP's mail server and download them to your own computer,
where they are saved.
In addition to the these mail accounts, many people set up mail accounts on
free, Web-based E-mail services, principally Microsoft's Hotmail and Yahoo
Mail. These accounts save all mail on the service's mail servers, and you
need to be online, and using your Web browser, to do anything with your
mail. Perhaps it's just my paranoia, but I've always been a little leery
of these services, despite the attractive price (free). All of your
information, not only mail but also youraddress books, etc., is kept on the
Microsoft or Yahoo server. And Hotmail, in particular, has had some
reliability and security problems.
A third option, if you're using an independent Web hosting service, is to
use mail accounts that come with your Web hosting plan. For instance,
www.ptfolkschool.org is hosted by Hostway, on a $13.95/month "Gold Plan"
that also provides 10 POP3 mail accounts. You can configure your E-mail
program to use these accounts just as easily as the account your ISP provides.
E-MAIL ALIASING
Now that you have your Internet Access, your domain name, your Web hosting,
and your E-mail accounts, you're ready for another trick -- E-mail
aliasing. When you set up a Web hosting account with your domain name
(like our Hostway account for www.ptfolkschool.org), most hosting services
will let you set up an unlimited number of E-mail "aliases." An alias is
an address using your domain name, that is forwarded to a "real" mail
account. For instance, the address I'm using, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]," is
an alias. Mail sent to that address is actually delivered to
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Here's a couple of reasons to use aliases:
(1) Organizational identity - all of your E-mail addresses will
have your name on them, even if they are actually delivered to people using
different ISP's.
(2) You can have special purpose addresses - mail addressed to
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], and
[EMAIL PROTECTED] all comes to me, but my E-mail program can sort these
out, making it easier to manage.
(3) Your address won't change - if you change ISP's, as I recently
did, I didn't need to change my [EMAIL PROTECTED] address, and go
through the hassle of informing a long list of individuals, resubscribing
to listservs, etc. All I had to do was reconfigure the aliasing to deliver
the mail to a Midmaine account, instead of my old MINT account.
That's all for this month,
Jon
Jonathan Falk
Pine Tree Folk School
RR 2, Box 7162
Carmel, ME 04419
(207)848-2433
<http://www.ptfolkschool.org>
**Folkschool-list archives are at:
<http://www.mint.net/folkschool/helpnet/archives.htm>
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