The MX Record for mehranikoo.net Now Pointing to Windows Live Mail
As I wrote in an earlier post, I had a plan for migrating from my web host's email service to Windows Live Mail. I had some spare time yesterday morning just before an internal training course so I made the migration happen.
Configuring Windows Live Custom Domains and Windows Live Mail
The process was fairly straightforward and took around 10 minutes. I signed up for the Windows Live Custom Domains service and proved the ownership of my own domain by updating the MX record in the DNS settings of my web site to point to Windows Live Mail. I had to wait for few minutes before the update was applied and made accessible to Windows Live. Then I created a new mailbox (Member Account) using my Windows Live Id (...@mehranikoo.net). At this point, the service was all up and running and my mail was being delivered to Windows Live Mail.
The MX record in my web site's admin control panel
Windows Live Custom Addresses
I also wanted to be able to use http://mail.mehranikoo.net/ for checking my email so I updated the CNAME record in the DNS settings to map mail.mehranikoo.net to go.domains.live.com and then added a new custom address to Windows Live to map the CNAME record for mail to Windows Live Mail.
As I was adding the custom address for email, I noticed that custom addresses can also be used for other services like Live Spaces, Live Search and Live Maps (SkyDrive is missing though). So I created a custom Live Search site by creating a macro for searching the content on (and related to) http://msdn2.microsoft.com/. The original address for this macro is http://search.live.com/macros/mehran/msdn but my new CNAME record (http://msdn.mehranikoo.net/) can be used to access this search site too. All CNAME records in the DNS settings point to go.domains.live.com and it is up to Windows Live service to point to the correct location.
CNAME records in my web site's admin control panel
Custom Addresses in Windows Live Custom Domains
Linking Windows Live IDs
As I mentioned earlier, I created a new Windows Live ID for my @mehranikoo.net mailbox so I had to manage the new one in addition to my @live.co.uk Live ID. If you have more than one Windows Live ID like me, instead of signing out and in, you can link your Live IDs using the Windows Live settings page. This allows you to switch between your accounts (by using a dropdown menu) without having to sign out and back in again.
Mail forwarding and sending mail from a different address
Although linking Live IDs provides an easy way of accessing multiple accounts when using Live services like Mail and SkyDrive, but I still had to switch between different accounts to check my email. So I enabled forwarding on my @mehranikoo.net account to forward the emails to my @live.co.uk account. The downside of forwarding is that you use a different address to send your email from, which can be confusing for the recipient. I resolved this by adding my @mehranikoo.net address as a new email address to my @live.co.uk account. This way, when I am sending an email from my @live.co.uk account, I can choose which address to be used as the from (and reply to) address. When someone sends an email to my @mehranikoo.net account, it is forwarded to my @live.co.uk and when I reply to it, Windows Live Mail automatically chooses the correct "from" email address if it is added as an additional email address. Sweet.