Improving "Early Life" -- What's Your Take?

So we've got some shocking news here at IPOWERWEB.

We've been informed that some of our customers get confused when landing in the control panel for the first time. Yeah, apparently it's not intuitive that when you click on "POP Mail," it's the same as clicking on "MailCentral." And who knew that it wasn't obvious that the "Set Site Editor" page doesn't actually let you start creating your website.

These nuances, which we tech geeks at IPOWERWEB have come to know and love (okay, not really), present a bit of a problem for new customers coming on board. Our site essentially says, "Our hosting plans include great website building tools, unlimited email boxes and a free domain name! Go after it!" And I guess the process of signing up and logging into the control panel for the first time doesn't mean customers instantly know that clicking on the "WebSiteCreator by CM4all" icon is probably their best bet for starting a new site if they don't know any HTML.

So where does that leave us? With a bunch of somewhat confused customers calling our support team within their first 48 hours on IPOWERWEB. Our bad.

But, before you throw in the towel, let me say this: we are looking to make a change. We get it now. We realize it's not fun for you to employ the "hunt and peck" method to figure out just which of those little icons will actually be the key to creating your first mailbox. We want you to be happy with your IPOWERWEB account, not feel like you've just stepped into a 2 sq. mile corn maze with no iPhone serving Google Satellite View.

And without further ado, let me present the first step to our solution. Our support, product management and development teams have designed and developed a QuickStart Wizard to walk customers through the first three steps to setting up a hosting account (which, coincidentally, are the top three reasons customers call us): adding a domain to your account; setting up mailboxes; and getting a site started and learning what the heck your FTP settings are.

But the greatness doesn't stop there. After you've run through the QuickStart Wizard for the first time (and completed all the tasks), it turns into a QuickStart Manager, which will always be accessible from the top of the control panel (next to the "Preferences" icon), should you want to go back and manage your domains, email and website from the wizard. Same goes for existing customers: even if you've already set up your account, just click the icon and try the wizard on for size the next time you want to create another email box, etc.

Okay, so bottom line? We want your feedback. When this product launches next week (fingers crossed), we want to know -- is it intuitive? Does it make setting up a domain, email address and website easier? What do you like? What don't you like? Tell us by leaving a comment! With your input, we'll be able to improve the next release, and ultimately use this tool as a model off which to base revamps of other tools in our control panel.

502 Errors From Gmail

Have you been experiencing 502 errors when attempting to access your Gmail account?
According to the Gmail Team they are currently fixing this issue and it should be resolved shortly. You most likely won't lose any new or old emails due to this issue, rather it is an issue with logging into Gmail. If you wish to check your Gmail email, you may want to have your emails forward to Microsoft Outlook or your smart phone.

Gmail Issues Lately? Here's a Fix

Many Gmail users that use Internet Explorer 7 may have been experiencing issues when attempting to login to Gmail. Well good news, sort of. The problem is yet to be resolved by the Gmail team but their is a patch to the problem in the meantime. Use the following steps to access your Gmail account if you can't do so the typical (basic) way.

1. Use IE7 to access the newer version of Gmail at http://mail.google.com/mail?hist=0
2. Set your IE7 preferences to always clear your cache when you close IE.
3. Use IE7 to access the classic version of Gmail at http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1
4. Access your account with another browser such as Mozilla Firefox.

Hopefully this helps. If not you may have to wait until the Gmail team fixes the current issue with accessing Gmail via IE7.

Merry Christmas From Gmail

Gmail provided its users with a very special Christmas gift, Gmail now offers 6GB of storage space with every Gmail email account. You could check to see how much space you have used and how much you have left, all you have to do is login to your Gmail account and scroll down to the bottom of the page. 

Gmail Now Supports IMAP

Google has paid attention to the requests of their users and they have released IMAP support for their Gmail email service. On October 24th, a few days ago - Google made it official. IMAP is a wonderful way to access your email from multiple devices, for example from your desktop, laptop, mobile phone, etc. IMAP keeps the information synced across all the devices you use, therefore if you check an email from your mobile phone, it would show as "read" on your desktop. This is a wonderful and valuable feature that will surely please many Gmail users. Here is a quick video about the latest IMAP update on Gmail.

Catch-All Email Account

iPowerWeb web hosting products include catch-all email support. By the way, catch-all is not related to baseball or any sport. Rather a catch all email account is an email account that "catches all" emails sent to non-existent addresses at your domain. Here is an example of what a catch-all email would be and what it would do.
So lets say your domain name is www.my-domain-name.com. You have three email addresses under you www.my-domain-name.com hosting account; those are sales@my-domain-name.com, support@my-domain-name.com, president@my-domain-name.com.
Now what would happen if a person were to send an email to Sally@my-domain-name.com? Well you probably know that Sally@my-domain-name.com was never an email address used under your hosting account and maybe there may not even be a Sally at your business or organization. Still you may not want the email to disappear or never come into your email box, therefore you would setup a catch-all email account in order to retrieve all emails sent to non-existent email addresses on your domain name. If you want to learn more about how to setup your catch-all email or just want to learn more about the way they work, please visit our HelpCenter or call us at 888-511-HOST.