Let's take a look at some of the key terms.
So what happens when you have Office 365 or any e-mail based service is you have to decide what's going
to be the actual host name versus the domain name address.
And when I say that, I mean, you know, a host name could be the name of a machine or in the event
it's an email address, it could be how your email addresses are going to be assigned.
So am I going to be to take us?
Am I going to be Sandra?
Am I going to be Sandra B..
What is it that you want to add to the beginning of that e-mail address in order for me to get e-mail
essentially my nickname.
But then the other part is the actual domain name.
When you start Office 365 and you haven't brought in a domain or done any configuration, it really
starts with something called on Microsoft dot com.
So if I wanted to be Sandra, then I would have that piece, the prefix essentially.
Then it would have it basically would ask you what you want to name your domain.
So I might choose Santur Network.
So the entire default e-mail address would be Sandra AdCenter Network dot on Microsoft dot com.
Now, for some people, that's absolutely fine and that's going to do the job.
But it is a long e-mail address.
So let's go back to the domain name.
The domain name is what you decide.
You want to have to represent you as an individual if you're just setting this up for you.
Maybe you're a company of one or what domain you're going to use for an Internet presence like W WW
dot Santa classroom dot com.
So based on that, you've got to know what domain name you're bringing in.
If you don't have a domain name yet in your brand new to this whole process and you need to reach out
to a registrar.
Now, what I can tell you about registrars is there are two really big ones out there.
That's go daddy and Network Solutions.
I'm not here to advocate for either one of them.
I'll tell you personally, I use both of them because they really are the big dogs in this industry
off of that.
There are literally tens of thousands of people who resell domain names and they resell them super,
super cheap.
I'm half tempted to list off a bunch of them, but I'm not here for bad press.
But what I can say is if it seems too cheap, you know, ten dollars a year, what have you, you have
to be very careful because a lot of these companies go out of business.
And when they do so, you're going to spend the next six months hunting down your domain name to make
changes to renew it.
It really can be a giant nightmare for the extra 20 or 30 dollars a year that you would save.
I would say just don't go there.
Stick with some of the bigger names that are much well-known, much better well-known.
And please make sure that username, password and you are all that you bought the domain name are written,
documented and hidden in seven different places because a lot of people lose it.
And it's a lot of stress if you do that.
So you decide what kind of domain name you want.
You go out to a registrar, you purchase your domain name.
We always call it purchase.
Think of it more as a rental or a lease, because quite honestly, the first time you forget to renew
it, they're going to take it away from you and give it to someone else.
So you're really not going to own it less to keep up those payments.
You can buy it for one year, three years, five years.
Ninety nine years.
It's all up to you and what you want to spend.
And then you have this DNS.
So DNS is can be seen as this big complex beast.
Some acronym out there on the Internet, amines, domain name, server or service, depending on who
you talk to.
All DNS is is a server that tracks where to find your domain services.
So.
The first thing you do is figure out what you want to call yourself.
The second thing you do is you register it.
It is here at the register that they have DNS.
Now, in the DNS, you're going to tell it where to go to WW w.
So let's say you're going with network solutions are also going to host your Web site.
Those records are going to be filled him or let's say that you register the domain name and you come
to my organization and we're gonna handle the rest of the e-mail and pointing to Web sites ET.
I'm going to go in to DNS and I'm going to say w WW is and I'm going to give it what we call an IP address.
And if you want to think of an analogy of an IP address.
Think of it as a telephone number.
Where you gonna go to find that particular Web service?
And then you do the same thing for mail.
Mail is actually called an M X record, which stands for mail exchanger.
And once again, all you're putting in here is an IP address of the server that's handling your mail.
Well, guess what?
You are in Office 365 and you'll see here.
Yes, I'm trying to write with a mouse and it looks like I'm trying to write with a potato.
But other than that bad handwriting, I understand that when you're going through the 365 steps, they'll
tell you what DNS entries you have to populate.
You take those entries, you go back to the registrar and you put them right in.
That's how when someone sends you e-mail over the Internet, that's how they're actually going to find
the mail server.
So if I was to email a friend of mine at Santur Network dot com, as soon as I hit send whatever e-mail
system I'm using, looks at DNS for Sender Network dot com.
It finds the IMX record.
It figures out that my mail gets delivered by Office 365.
It gets forwarded and they get a chance to get the email.
So that's how they kind of all works.
The good news is it's typically a one and done.
And if it's a first time through, I would highly advise that you take the time to reach out to someone
who does I.T. and allow them to kind of help you through the process.