If you own a small business, or a startup, then you absolutely need to use Google Apps. Hands down, Google Apps is the best tool to manage your business. There’s a reason over 4 million businesses have switched.

Your role as a startup owner is to run your damn business, not fiddle around with mail servers and worry about document backup. That’s where Google Apps comes in.

Google Apps is FREE for small business and startups who have less than 10 user accounts. If you need more than that you’re either funded, have revenue, or you have too many partners anyway. You can find Google Apps’ free page here.

Step 1:

Enter your domain name, obviously. Or you can buy one if you don’t already have it. I’ll assume you already own one.

Step 2:

Fill out the Account Administrator fields. I only fill out what is required. First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Phone, and Country/Region. Make sure your administrator email address is something you will never lose access to, you will need this if you ever have to reset your password, which has happened to me.

Step 3:

Select your administrator account email and password, I usually just pick eric (or admin if it’s a client). This counts as your first account.

Step 4:

Set it up! Your Apps account will prompt you to run through a setup wizard. If you think you’ll learn something then go ahead and walk through it. Personally I like to just learn as I go, so I just close the dialog box.

Step 5:

Before doing anything else you need to activate Google Apps. You can ignore anything else until you do this since there’s no point in using Apps unless your domain name knows what to do with it.

Google tells you that the recommended way is to upload a special HTML file to your server so you can prove you own the domain. But there are alternatives!

I prefer to select the Add a DNS record to your domain’s configuration option. The reason I do this is two-fold: 1. I don’t like random HTML files or META tags that serve no purpose, and 2. I need to be in the DNS record screen of my domain management software in a few moments anyway!

Since I use Media Temple to host my DNS records, even if I host the website elsewhere, I have to select Other since Google Apps doesn’t have instructions for how to verify a Google Apps account with Media Temple. Good thing I’m writing them here!

The instructions for verifying an account with Media Temple should be fairly similar to any other web host or domain registrar. I’m using Media Temple’s Grid Server service which lets me host up to 100 domains on a shared server for very cheap.

I edit the DNS Zone File so I can add the custom TXT record that Google has given me.

You will have various settings. Simply click Add a Record, select a TXT type for the record, leave the name blank, and paste in the TXT value that Google Apps gave you. Hit Save.

Media Temple’s DNS propagates instantly so as soon as I saved the new TXT record I can click the Verify button back in my Apps tab and it instantly verified my account!

Step 6:

Arguably the best reason to use Google Apps is for email. So let’s Activate your email. On the home dashboard for Apps you’ll see the different services that you have available to you. You’ll notice that there are some really ugly links like http://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/surrealwifi.com. Don’t worry, we’ll fix those in a bit.

For now, click Activate Email.

This next page has a ton of information. Google Apps does a good job of explaining how to set up your MX (mail exchange) records but again they don’t have Media Temple as an option. It’s all pretty generic anyway. Here are instructions on how to set up your Google Apps email with Media Temple’s Grid Service.

Remember that DNS Zone File that we were editing back in step 5? Yeah, we need that again. I start by clicking the Add a Record button 5 times since we need to add 5 MX records. Change each new record type to MX from their drop down menus.

Google Apps prefers if you set priorities for the records. Media Temple doesn’t have a specific field for this so we prefix them with their numbers. This of course could vary depending on your host. If in doubt, Google says to leave the priority blank and just make sure they are in the right order.

I use these:

• 10 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
• 20 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
• 20 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
• 30 ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
• 30 ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.

Leave the names blank, just change the values.

Save the new MX records and then click I’ve completed these steps in Activate Email screen for your Apps account. You will be taken back to the home dashboard and under email it says “We are checking MX records for your domain. This may take 48 hours to complete.” In reality it usually takes less than an hour.

Don’t close this tab, we still need it!

Now let’s change those ugly URLs that are set by default.

Step 7:

Click Settings from the menu bar at the top of your Apps account.

I mainly use Email, Docs, and Calendar, so let’s change those URLs. The latest version of Google Apps lets us change them all at once.

Click Change URL under the Calendar section.

Then click Change URLs for all domain services

For the heck of it let’s change all the URLs. I’ve left the default suggestions like docs., calendar., email., etc.

Hit Continue.

Head back to your DNS Zone File settings. If you’re like me, which is slow, your host might log you out for taking too long. That’s ok, just log back in and find those settings again! I actually reload the page just to make sure that I’m logged in, otherwise I might make a bunch of changes just to find out that I’m logged out, and that is a real kick in the teeth.

Add 5 more records. Change their types to CNAME.

In the Name section of each record enter in your custom URLs prefixes. I left them as default so I used:

• mail
• start
• calendar
• docs
• sites

Each record should have the value set to ghs.google.com. Save them. Your provider might spit out an error saying that you have two records the conflict. For me, Media Temple creates a mail record by default, so I just deleted their default one so the only thing left was my Google Apps record.

Click I’ve completed these steps in your Apps account and they should all redirect. This was instant for me but it all depends on your DNS.

At the time of this writing, Google Apps doesn’t support custom URLs for their Contacts feature.

Your Media Temple DNS records should now look like this!

Now would be a good time to test out your custom URLs. Just type http://mail.[yourdomain].com to try it out.

Step 8:

By the time I’d finished the custom URLs, the Email section on the page now said “Updating Google servers… This may take up to 1 hour to complete. We are updating Google servers to enable email for your users.” Hardly 48 hours, eh?

I suppose there really isn’t a step 8. You’re pretty much done. Plus this post is already over 1200 words… thanks for sticking around!

Google Apps has many more features to explore and they are really pushing their app marketplace. Personally I don’t use any marketplace apps, but you might find them interesting.

If you’re clicking around your Google Apps dashboard you might want to try the following:

• In Settings
  • Enable Calendar labs to get the latest features.
  • Enable the Preview for the new Contacts manager.
  • Change the default document visibility in Docs so you don’t have to share it with your coworkers every time you make a new document.
  • Enable Google Sync in the mobile section so you can add your new account to your smartphone the proper way.
• In Domain Settings
  • Enable SSL to Automatically enforce Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connections when your users access Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Sites. In short, it makes your accounts a lot more secure if.
  • Upload your own logo to customize the branding of your Google Apps account.

I would not enable 2-factor authentication. I had a really bad experience with it when I moved from Canada to Chile and time zones changed and my authenticator iOS app wasn’t working and blah blah blah. It was also really annoying in general.

This post is really long, and has 8 steps, but Google Apps is so worth it.

Please post any questions, comments, or suggestions below!

Travelling Forever has an old post about keeping everything on a USB key instead of a computer. I think this is interesting, but outdated. I wouldn’t want to rely solely on my USB key when I know I’m screwed if I lose it. I prefer to rest easy on the fact that I can do the majority of my work with simply an internet connection.

For the last few months I’ve basically not needed a personal computer. This began when I moved all my email accounts to the IMAP format. More specifically my personal email at my own domain is hosted by GMail so I just have to log in from wherever. The best part about this is I can use my main computer if I wish and still use Thunderbird, but if I want I can jump on a computer at school or even use my cell phone to check my email. I was originally going to set up my own IMAP server and try to fiddle around with everything myself but I figure it’s simpler to just let Google do it for me. It’s free and reliable and I don’t have to play tech support for myself. Read Google’s Email Switch Guide.

Along with Google I use their calendar system. It’s a great program that I can access anywhere there is an internet connection. I use it to schedule almost anything I do, and using a service called GooSync I can sync all my calendars with my phone. I haven’t found a better calendar system that lets me easily share my events with other people. I’ll admit the GooSync site looks a little unprofessional but it’s straight forward and any reviews I read called it legit. It hasn’t failed me yet

A major problem I had in the past was having my bookmarks around when I wanted them. I tried out Foxmarks for a little while but I didn’t like the whole syncing idea. Now I use del.icio.us and it works amazingly. If I’m going to be on one computer for an extensive period of time I’ll install the add-on in Firefox, but otherwise I can just log in and search my own bookmarks. del.icio.us is also a great alternative to your regular search engine. See my del.icio.us bookmarks here.

As far as homepages go I used to make my own little link filled page that I’d write in HTML. Now I use Netvibes exclusively. It aggregates all the RSS feeds that I want and keeps track of what I’ve read and it doesn’t force me to leave the page. Netvibes has got literally hundreds of custom written widgets that you can plug into your homepage and all you have to do is log in. Comparable to Netvibes you have iGoogle, Pageflakes, and MyYahoo. I’ve introduced several friends to Netvibes and they have mostly converted away from iGoogle. Netvibes also lets me keep a little list of handy links that I use often, such as banking and school websites. It also has nifty plugins for Facebook and GMail which will update themselves automatically.

Another huge obstacle you’ll face with leaving your laptop behind is how to access your files! You could leave it running at all times and set up some sort of server or VNC to your machine whenever you need something. This is pretty technical and it doesn’t leave much redundancy of your data. What I’ve been doing for the last several months is keeping a copy of any relevant documents on a USB key. I used to have a nifty Swiss Army knife that my dad gave me for high school graduation several years ago. This had a small 128mb dongle inside, but unfortunately I left it in a school computer one day Now I have an awesome SanDisk Cruzer micro 4GB stick on my key chain. Unfortunately it comes with this pesky U3 Launchpad software, you can get a removal tool though.

For the record I’m not a big fan of syncing anything. I’d much rather have a static copy available remotely at any time, but for the sake of redundancy I have been syncing my personal files.

The best way I’ve found so far to sync important folders is to use Microsoft’s own SyncToy v2.0 Beta. I use this in for two reasons, 1. to keep a copy of my important data with me at all times and 2. to keep a backup of my important data. Every time I use my laptop and I’ve made changes to either work or school documents I plug in my USB key and run the SyncToy shortcut I pasted in there. I simply hit Run All and in a few seconds SyncToy has made a carbon copy of any files that have changed. I try my best not to change both locations are the same time but if that happens SyncToy politely asks you what you want to do. You can create as many folder pairs as you want. Tom’s Guide has a rough introduction to different syncing programs.

I’m finding it’s really nice to not worry about lugging around a laptop or when I’m next going to be able to come home to check my email. It’s really freeing to know I can go to almost any computer out there and work just as I would normally at home. I even did my cafe’s payroll on a computer I’d never used before simply because it was convenient for me to do so. The only limitation you’ll face is whether the computers you’re using have the software you need, like the Office or Adobe suites.

My friend Mack suggested that this I’m some sort of “internet nomad” because of this. Does anyone else have similar experience distancing themselves from their computers?

So I decided to sign up for Dreamhost. It was easy enough and I got a great deal ($50 off with the coupon code ‘kingofcouponcodes’). Now, while I was doing all this, my internet connection with Shaw was having area problems and everything was extremely slow! It only served to compound my frustration when I realized that it takes several hours to transfer DNS settings to a new domain. And  once I did, Dreamhost’s IMAP serving is complete crap. I suppose trying to copy 2379 emails to their servers didn’t help the situation.

So with my email not going anywhere and everything in limbo I decided to sleep on it and see what happens in the morning.

This morning nothing is better. Dreamhost is inexplicably slow when loading my inbox (both in Thunderbird and webmail). Now I’m waiting for my personal email to point to Google’s servers and I’ll be using their Gmail service for my email. Google hasn’t failed me yet and from what I’ve read they already have everything in place for mobile email access.

Stupid Shaw. Stupid Dreamhost

If you own a website and have ever considered putting a Google Search box on it, don’t. Recent experiences at my company have shown that it is all but useless. We average 30 million page views per day and that little search page, which is even nicely skinned to match the site, earns us around $3/day.

From the stats I can generate I would say our demographic is too tech savvy to randomly use the search built into our site. Rather, our users have a set way in which they conduct a search and they are sticking to it.

Really the best part of AdSense for Search is to monitor the top 25 queries that go through it using the Advanced Reports tab in AdSense. I won’t lie, ours are slightly disturbing and are a prime example of when not to listen to the masses when determining a brand focus.

AdSense for Search doesn’t hurt to have in place, but it takes up valuable real estate I believe can be put to better use.