First, go to the FastMail.FM Options > Virtual Domains screen and enter your domain name in the bottom (Virtual Domains) section of the page. In the Domain column enter "mydomain.com" (your domain name). Leave the Active column set to the default (Waiting for DNS) setting. FastMail.FM recommends leaving the "Subdomain?" column set to the default setting. Click on Add, to the right of the new row just entered.

Now you need to add a Virtual Alias at the top section of that same screen. FastMail.FM recommends starting with "*" (asterisk character) in the Name column. You will then have only one choice for the domain (the new domain you entered a moment ago), and you can start by leaving the Target at the default value (your FastMail.FM account email address). Click on Add at the right end of that row and be sure that Active is checked.

Click Done at the top of the Virtual Domains screen when finished. The previous steps tell FastMail.FM what personal domain you want to use, that it's still waiting for DNS (to be fixed next at your registar's website), a subdomain addressing detail we don't need to worry about right now, and finally that incoming emails should be sent to [anything] @mydomain.com (because of the wildcard character *) and targeted (delivered) to the Inbox at your normal FastMail.FM address.

One more detail about the Virtual Aliases screen: If you set *@mydomain.com to target username@FastMail.FM.xxx, then any email sent to your domain (with any username before the @) will go into your Inbox. But let's say that you want to set up email folders for Bob, Sue, and Jerry -- and direct their email to those folders. There are three ways to do this (executed in the order shown):

Enter Virtual Aliases, such as bob@mydomain.com targeting username+bob@FastMail.FM.xxx.

Set up a Virtual Alias of *@mydomain.com targeting username+*@FastMail.FM.xxx. Now if an email arrives for sue@mydomain.com (upper/lower case are ignored), then it will be filed in the Sue (case ignored) folder. If there is no such folder, it will be filed in your Inbox.

Use Rules to force certain messages to be filed in certain folders. The Rules have the final say, and can override what the aliases screen says to do (for internal folders).

Now that the FastMail.FM screens are ready for the changeover, it's time to enter the following two names into the two rows at your domain registar's DNS setup screen in the Domain Name Server Name column:

Code:

ns1.messagingengine.com

ns2.messagingengine.com

This causes the registrar to tell the rest of the internet (eventually -- this can take a few hours to make it everywhere) that when your domain name is used for email or web addressing (including HTTP or FTP addressing), then the server that can supply the numeric address (from a lookup table) is ns1.messagingengine.com (run by FastMail.FM), and if this fails then the backup is ns2.messagingengine.com.

FastMail.FM will automatically send you an email when your domain is active through their DNS. You can also manually check on proper DNS upgrading by going to the FastMail.FM Virtual Domains page again and looking in the bottom right (end of the Virtual Domains section). Click on Update at the lower right of the screen. When FastMail.FM sees that the change from your registrar has propogated to FastMail.FM, then the Active column for your domain should change to Email & Web. You might need to wait a few minutes for this to update, but in extreme cases it might take up to a couple of hours to see this change. You will have to click Update to redraw the screen to make it visible. Again, you should receive an email notice from FastMail.FM when your DNS is activated.

When active and propogated through the internet, email to your domain will come to your FastMail.FM account as you specified on the Virtual Aliases screen. You can even set it to send gmail@mydomain.com email to your gmail account by setting up a name and target.

Navigating to Options>Websites/Redirects opens up the File Storage Websites screen, which controls how websites in your own (virtual) domain (and FastMail.FM alias domains) are targeted. At the bottom of the screen in the Create Website section you first create a linkage between a URL and a target to an internal FastMail.FM File directory or to an external site. If you Publish as Cloaked Redirect, then it will appear that your website is at the indicated external server with the indicated title. And you can set up some subdomain (and/or subfolder) addresses for redirection to other sites. So you can use a mixture of your websites at an external server, your websites on the FastMail.FM Files server, and other websites run by others -- all directed through subdomains and subfolders of your domain. This is just about as flexible as you can imagine.

After setting up your websites, they will appear listed at the top of the File Storage Websites screen. You can edit any site entry, and make it temporarily inactive if you wish. Always select Done at the top, when finished, to exit the screen.

You can place data (websites, photos, or other files) on the internet using FastMail.FM File storage. The FastMail.FM File storage settings are all in the Options>Files screen. First you need to create subfolders as needed with the Action tool. Then upload your HTML code (with the filename extension .html) into whatever directory you wish, using the web upload feature on that screen, FTP, or DAV file transfer. Now click on the Websites button (upper right corner of the screen) and you will enter the same File Storage Websites screen described in step (6) above. Create the website name you wish (it could be http://mydomain.com or http://joe.mydomain.com) and the target folder containing the HTML code. You probably want to publish as Files Only for normal websites. Click on Create Website and you should see it in the table above. Make sure it's checked Active and it will be on the web instantly. If the code you uploaded had the filename index.html, then a browser pointing to http://mydomain.com will see your website. As you can tell on this screen, you can map various website names (from FastMail.FM aliases and your domain) and prefixes (http://weather.mydomain.com) or subfolders (http://mydomain.com/newstuff) into any folder in the Files area. You can also upload photos and make them automatically visible in web pages at your domain. Or upload other types of data to be viewed remotely (with a directory listing or only if the access is through the exact filename).