How Can I set it up so people can create an @mydomain email?

I was planning on offering new members to my forum a free email address for a limited time. I'm using hostgator shared hosting and I'm not sure how I could do it or if it's even possible. How it would work is:

"Sign up to the forum and get your own free email account!"

They sign up and make a couple posts, then I send them the link to create their own free email address.

So can it be done? How could it be done without me having to create their email account in cpanel?

Thanks

 

You could write a script that uses the cPanel API to create the email account.

 

or you can find any php mail script

 

You can use third party services many sites offer that go for http://www.gawab.com/ and http://www.everyone.net/ also offer that services all you have to do is to change MX entry that can be done through cpanel. Rest of the steps would be guided when signing up.

I hope it will help.

 

try this gawab.com

 

If you want an external hosted email, look at Google Apps or Windows Live Domains (http://domains.live.com/). It can also allow sign-ups without you having to first create the account.

 

Just use Google.

http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/index.html

Then again, you can use everyone.net if you love ugly ads!!

 

HiveMail was a very popular webmail service script a few years ago. I'm not sure how it is now though.

 

Good idea. I just signed up and got it going, but I'm looking for the option where I can send people to a page to sign up for their email address? where's it?

 

No, you can't do this with Google Apps!

You need to create accounts manually, either by filling a form or upload CSV/XLS file of username and passwords.

 

If you use windows live domains you can setup up to 500 accounts and they provide you with a similar signup page like hotmail. The domains can also be used with msn messenger but the problem is that microsoft puts ads in the footer of every email sent (like in hotmail) and there's no smtp nor pop3 (just hotmail webmail-style). They provide you the feature of a cname record such as mail.yourdomain.com but it will redirect to hotmail.com where they also can login into their email.