Oliver Bell’s weblog

When I was setting this blog up I happened to also be playing with some of the Windows Live services for another project and for fun thought I would tie in free email @osrin.net for anybody who wanted it using the Windows Live hosted services.

It was easy to set up, and there appear to be over five hundred people who have since signed up to use it - or at least registered accounts.

Setting it up was very straight forwards. Just a few easy steps;

1. Register the domain that you want to use - MSN will provide some options for domain hosting as well as you sign into the domain management in step 2 if that is easier for you
2. Go to http://domains.msn.com and register your domain with the hosted services site
3. Note down the mail servers that MSN allocates to you
4. Edit the “MX” records for your domain to point to MSN’s servers. Most domain management companies offer you an easy way to do this.

From there MSN provide you with a sign-up link and graphic that you can provide to your users, to check their mail they just need to go to http://mail.live.com and sign in.

I pulled the links out of the graphic and integrated them into my site template instead of using the graphic directly.

As a domain owner MSN provide you with a limited view of who is using your domain, you can see how many people have signed up along with their user name and actual name (assuming they typed one in at signup). You can delete accounts through the management interface, but you obviously have no access to the users actual mailbox.

For a small business, a small government, a school or just somebody wanting to offer mail to family members it could not be easier.

That is pretty much it.