Using Admin Centre for Geek Girl Blogs Email

Author: Bronwen Zande

This article explains how to use Admin Centre to provide email and branding awareness to members of a community.  We will use the Geek Girl Blogs site as the case study.

To set up your domain and point the MX records to the Windows Live (Hotmail) MX servers you should read Daniel Wissa’s article here. This covers the following steps:

1. Register Your Domain
2. Setup your Windows Live Admin Centre domain at domains.live.com
3. Assigning a domain administrator and accepting terms of service
4. Setting up the  MX records for mail.

Administering Member Accounts

Create the accounts that are important to your site/domain e.g. info@geekgirlblogs.com, admin@geekgirlblogs.com through the Member Accounts Page

Use the Add Account function to create your accounts.  If you’re pre-creating accounts for others, It is advisable to select the Require password change at first login option to ensure they change their password.

Generic Email Boxes and Auto Forwarding

If you are setting up generic email boxes that you wish to then forward to a central email address you should perform the following steps:

1. Go to mail.live.com
2. Log in with the live id for the generic mailbox
3. Choose the Options->More Options menu on the right
   
4. Choose Forward mail to another e-mail account
   
5. Enter the email address you wish to forward to.
   

Open Membership or Not?

Admin centre allows you to decide whether you want to allow open membership. Open Membership allows people to create an account in your domain i.e [xxx]@geekgirlblogs.com, even if you don’t provide a sign-up module.  If you want to approve each request for an account you should turn Open Membership to OFF. To set you membership settings to Open or Closed:

1. Go to Open Membership –> Settings
2. Turn on or off depending on your desired sign up method.
    

Creating a sign-up module

Geek Girl Blogs wanted it’s members to have an easy way to sign up for an account. Admin Centre provides a number of customisable html modules you can easily add to your site or send in email invitations. To create a module:

1. Go to Open Membership –> Sign-up module
2. Select the type of module you want i.e. web site or email
3. The text you want on your module, text size, module size and whether it links in same or new window.
4. There are a number of sizes to choose from:
   
   
5. Copy the HTML onto your site and you’re done.
   
6. The finished sign-up module
   

Co-branding

Co-branding allows you provide branding association to your users by allowing you to show your logo look and feel when your user’s access their accounts through any of the live services. To set this up:

1. Go to Co-branding –> Header logos
2. Upload your logo
   
3. Now when your user’s log in they will see your logo in the top left corner
   

Summary

Windows Live Admin Centre allows you to easily add email, domain management and extend your branding message into your user’s Live experience.