My move to Google Apps

This past week I have been moving things over to Google Apps. This change has come as a result of an increasing amount of spam mail coming to my personal email address, as well as the want to have a central calendar solution that I could access anywhere and sync with my computer and mobile phone.

The amount of spam I receive is largely due to my own negligence I expect; not being too cautious about which beta products I’ve subscribed to and the numerous mailing lists I’ve joined, as a result I changed my email address for the move to Google Apps.

The move was relatively straightforward. I chose the free edition of Google Apps as it offers all the features I want for both email and calendar functionality. Setting up an account was simple; I chose to use a domain I currently own and followed the steps to creating a Google Apps account.

Once everything was sorted at the Google ‘end’, I had to change CNAME records at my host’s end, Dreamhost, in this case to ensure email was now routed through Google’s servers. Whilst I am quite confident in creating CNAME records and pointing them to the relevant places, Dreamhost have implemented a feature that allows you to use Google Apps on your domain.

This new feature also allows you to access the Google Apps via sub-domains created on the domain name you are wanting to use GMail, so calendar.yourdomain.com, docs.yourdomain.com, sites.yourdomain.com, and start.yourdomain.com. It makes it somewhat easier to remember than the default https://www.google.com/a/yourdomain.com URL you are given by Google (Note: In order to use these sub-domains you will need to change the URL of the respective services within the Google Apps dashboard).

Although I have only been using Google Apps for a short-while now, already I am finding email easier to manage; GMail’s interface is much more usable than the slow, unattractive SquirrelMail, and as for Google Calendar, I am able to sync it with my mobile phone as well as Microsoft Outlook using Google Calendar Sync.