This is a short checklist to get a new website up and running ASAP. It is intended for people who know what they’re doing and just want a checklist to remember the steps involved and to avoid a trap when configuring forwarding for Google Apps email addresses.

Pre-requisites

• A Linux server with Apache2 installed
• Root access to configure and restart Apache

Results

• DNS configured for mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com
• Email accounts configured
• Apache ready to serve requests for mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com

Steps

1. Register domain name mydomain.com
2. Configure DNS A records for www.mydomain.com and mydomain.com

3. Configure an Apache virtual host to serve www.mydomain.com

   su
   cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/www.existingdomain.com 
       /etc/apache2/sites-available/www.mydomain.com
   make necessary changes in /etc/apache2/sites-available/www.mydomain.com
   a2ensite www.mydomain.com
   mkdir /var/www/www.mydomain.com
   chown user:group /var/www/www.mydomain.com
   /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
   

4. Create redirect from mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com

   su
   cd /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/
   create ../sites-available/mydomain.com containing  
       RewriteEngine ON  
       RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
   cd /etc/apache2/sites-enabled;ln -s ../sites-available/mydomain.com 
       ./YYY-mydomain.com
   /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
   

5. Configure Google Apps for mydomain.com, which is just one click @ name.com 1.Create Google Apps admin account
6. Configure email addresses for mydomain.com
   1. Configure Admin account forwarding
      1. Log in to Gmail using the account which will be forwarded.
      2. Configure forwarding address in Settings/Forwarding.
      3. Enable forwarding address
      4. Test forwarding address from a non Gmail account!
   2. Repeat process for other accounts if necessary, using email nicknames to avoid creating extra accounts.
7. Get started creating some content in /var/www/www.mydomain.com!