Tech Tip: Setting Up an E-mail Account in the cPan...

If you haven’t heard, I’ll be presenting at the IVAA Online Summit 2010 on the subject of the cPanel.  You can learn more about my topic description here.  This post is in a new series we will be running on the blog called ‘Tech Tips’ and will help virtual assistants get through some of the pesky technical items that pop up on a regular basis.

This blog post will cover setting up an e-mail account inside of the cPanel.  The cPanel is the control panel behind your website.  It does not exist on every single website host but when it is there, it is a very powerful tool.  You can tell if your web host is running cPanel in one of two ways.  You can check their website to see if they list cPanel as a selling feature or you can login and see if the interface is called ‘cPanel’.

Setting Up an E-mail Account in the cPanel

To begin, you want to login to your website host.  For our website, we host it at Bluehost.com – one of our favorite website hosting companies.  Once you’ve logged in, scroll down to the e-mail section which looks like this:

You’ll see that there are many options for your e-mail accounts here but the one you want to focus on for this task is the “Email Accounts.”  Click on the “Email Accounts” icon or hyperlink to be taken to the setup screen.

On this screen, you can set the e-mail account name (for example, ‘info’ or ‘support’) and choose the domain name it should be connected to.  Then, you will want to set a password, confirm the password and watch the Strength meter to ensure it’s a strong enough password.  Then, decide what the mailbox quota on this account should be – that means the accumulative size limit of e-mails and files for that account.  If you are not concerned with space, choose ‘unlimited’.

When done setting all of the particulars, click “Create Account.”

That’s it!  Setting up your e-mail account on the cPanel is easy as that.  If you have any questions, please post as a comment to this blog post!