Article
Follow along with the article here:
https://devinschumacher.com/how-to-setup-g-suite-mx-records-google-workspace-spf-dkim-dmarc/
Everybody hates Google documentation....
Let's face it - it's the fuckin worst.
So, instead of wasting your prime adult years trying to figure out what an MX record is, how to setup SPF, DKIM & DMARC records and why nothing ever works...
I filmed a quick video for you showing you all about it.
You'll still prolly be bored to death, but at least there's a light at the end of the tunnel now.
Cheers,
& Stay funky
--
tags: #emailmarketing #email #gsuite #google #seo #digitalmarketing
You know... for those of you who like to read gigantic blocks of semi-accurately transcribed text
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Alright, in this video we are going to set up MX records for G-Suite. And if you don't know what that is, MX stands for most extreme. So these are the most extreme records you can set up. That's completely a lie. It stands for mail something. So anyways, mail transfer, I don't know, look it up. We're gonna set up MX Records and I'm gonna do it for a G-Suite account where I'm adding a new domain to an already existing G-Suite account. And it's the same process if you're using an absolutely fresh G-Suite account. The only difference is that you would start from sign up here instead of already logged in. So let's get to it. All right, so here I am inside of a G-Suite account and what I'm gonna want to do here is on the left side I want to click account and then domains. And then here we can see manage domains. And I'm going to add a new domain.
(00:58)
So the domain name that I'm gonna add is that one. And you have two options. Secondary domain or user alias domain. Uh, I think you want to go with the left one. It depends on what you're trying to do, but I'm trying to send emails. So I believe I need to go with the one on the left. I could be wrong, but let's click add domain and start verification. Cause this is about the most extreme records, not about this other crap. So you're gonna get prompted for a password and you log in and now, now we do it again.
(01:36)
Better not prompt me for a password again. All right, cool. So now you're at the screen where you probably got confused and started looking for the stuff. Anyways. So text record verification method, or you can switch verification method methods. Uh, text records are easy. So all it is is putting a text file, literally a text file on your server or name server's, dns, wherever your DNS is being held, that this server can go ping and make sure that it's there. Verifying that you in fact have ownership. So mine is here at CloudFlare and if you're at CloudFlare or if you're at anywhere else, you're just gonna click on DNS and you're gonna scroll down here and you're gonna see the ability somewhere to add a record. Now let's go back here and figure out what record we exactly need to add. So I'm gonna click continue and it's saying let's add your verification codes.
(02:27)
And this is a text record. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna copy the text record flip back to our dns and we're gonna click add record and under type, you wanna scroll down or just type it in like a normal person TX T for the name field you're gonna put at or the at symbol. And for the content, you're gonna paste in that text record and you're gonna click save. Now you can see that that text record is here, type text name, it translated that to your root domain. And the content is that crap that Google wants to verify. So now back here, you can simply scroll down and click verify My domain. Now this is probably gonna take a couple minutes cuz Google is slow, but CloudFlare is fast. If you did this in search console, it'd be instant. Oh, that wasn't too bad. Okay, so now you can see here that this secondary domain is in fact verified and I can activate Gmail and I can send and receive um, messages from it. I can add users and whatever. So right now I'm gonna click activate Gmail and here's where I'm setting up my MX records. So let's click next and let's see what it gives us. Okay, I am ready to, yeah, I'm ready to receive all emails for your domain in Gmail.
(03:56)
I, I don't know, whatever. Just click 'em both. Click next. Okay, so now it's always gonna prompt you to try and figure out where your stuff is so we can log you in, blah blah, blah. I go for the manual route. So right here you can see click to view the generic instructions. I probably should have opened that in a new tab. So let's go again. Click, click and all right, it didn't really give me any generic instructions cuz Google is notoriously stupid. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna Google search for um, G Suite MX Records.
(04:37)
Yeah, I'll put 'em in the, the comments or description or something. All right, so Google Workspace MX records. All right, so here we have, this is what we have to add here. So these are gonna be the records. So now what we're gonna do is the first one here is that's the value and we have MX type. So we're gonna go back to our dns, we're gonna click add record. And this time the type is gonna be most extreme MX right there. See that's the record type mx. Now for the name you're gonna put at and for the value, you're gonna put this thing here for the TTL or Time to live. Time to live, who cares? Um, I leave it at auto cuz I think auto is the same exact thing as 3 3600, which is one day you could put it at 3,600 though. Oops. And then priority one. All right, cool. So save. Now we basically have to do that four more times except the changes a little bit each time. So once again, we're gonna add an MX record. So add new record mx. The name field was at the mail server. Is this the priority? This time is five.
(06:06)
All right, so we're gonna save. Now we gotta do it again for the next one. Most extreme record at this mail server priority again is five, and the next two are gonna be priority 10. All right, so most extreme at this mail server, and this time it's 10. And one more time. DAF Punk, most extreme at mail. Server
(06:48)
10. So now you have your generic Google MX records here and you should be able to come back here and say Activate. All right, so now it's gonna go through and it's gonna start checking everything and seeing what's going on and it should be fine. In the meantime, what we want to do is we wanna set up some other records because these ones are gonna actually be, well, probably not more important, but they're gonna be very important to your deliverability. And that's gonna be your spf, F, dkm, and Dmar C. So how do we do that? Well, here is where we're gonna be adding these records and I believe I have an S so P for that. So I'm gonna pause the video and go find it. Okay, I found it. So the first thing we wanna do is set up an spf. This fan is too loud an SPF F record. And we are gonna do that by going to this link, add your SPF record at your domain provider, protect against spoofing and fishing. So basically it says all this crap that you're probably gonna read and still be confused with. So instead what I want you to do is basically paste in what I'm gonna give you. If you only send email from Google Workspace, well then you can enter that and you know, that's fine. So I guess we'll just do that. We'll keep it easy for you. Come back here, click add record. The type is gonna be a text record.
(08:23)
And then as you can see, type text host is still at, and then the value is gonna be that thing they told you to paste in. Not that, but that. All right,
(08:41)
Next we wanna set up a dkm or D K I M or who cares. So here it is. If your domain provider is Google Domains, which is not in my case, meaning I didn't purchase my domain at Google Domains, I got it at name cheap or wherever, blah, blah blah. So here we go. Step one, do this. So in your admin console, you gotta go to menu apps, Google Workspace, Gmail. All right, so first we're gonna open that and then we're gonna click authenticate email. So we're gonna look for authenticate email, which is here. And then in the selected domain menu, select the domain where you want to deim what. So we're doing it for this domain. And as you can see, this status here says not authenticating. So we need to generate a new record. And it's saying, okay, 28, 20 48. Yeah. So we're gonna do a 2048 prefix selectors Google, and we're gonna click generate. And now it's generated this giant thing. We can see that it's gonna be a text record. And here's the name of the text record. So we'll go back to CloudFlare, click add under type, we're gonna scroll onto text under name. This time we're gonna put that not the at that rhymes, so you know that it's real. And then under the value, we're gonna put that gigantic value thing right there in the content area. And then we're gonna click save.
(10:15)
All right, one more. Next we have to set up the D mark. All right, so here's the article for that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We're gonna scroll down and I have some notes here that makes it faster and easier to understand, which I'll give it to you. I just wanna make sure I do it right. Okay,
(10:57)
Cool. So sign into the management console, locate the page where we update your DNS records. Add a DNS record by entering your record in the text record for D Mark text record. So in the first field, you're gonna enter that, I don't know what Solar Moore is, is that, is that an example? What are we, what are we doing here? Yeah, okay, so that's gonna be your domain name. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna come here and oh, actually look, there's a wizard here in CloudFlare if you want to, if you like wizards. But we're gonna add a record, text record, and it's gonna go like this. So te shit, it's gonna go text record and it's gonna go underscore D mark dot I believe. And then your domain. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, mm-hmm <affirmative>. And then you have to configure the content, which is a bit precarious. So text record value in the second field, enter the text for your D mark for example, this. And there's some tricky things with this situation here, depending on what you want these settings to be, but let's just follow what they say. We're gonna paste that in there. And we are going to replace this thing here with whatever it is, the email that you like, want all the crap to come to. So I'm just gonna do, um,
(12:37)
I don't know, garbage email at whatever male master at, uh, I think it's actually post <laugh>, it's postmaster or spam or abuse is like a, you know, the typical one people use. So there it's gonna go. And P is none. Policy equals none. So let's look at that for a second. D mark policy, c
(13:03)
P equals none. Well, actually I think the, the, the funky wizard over here can tell us some stuff about this. Ah, shit. So policy, uh, what action is gonna happen when authentication fails? None means no action will happen. Quarantine or reject. You should probably use quarantine. So you can see down here, it's gonna build the DM a C record for you just as well. But since I don't know that everybody's on a CloudFlare, although you probably should be, I didn't use this, but still the type is text, the name is underscored D Mark. And then here's your situation here, and let's go back for a second. So once again, add record, type text name underscored D mark. You can see CloudFlare is already appending my domain to it, so I don't actually have to write dot domain. And then for the content we're gonna put in here, what it gave us, except I'm gonna change this to, you can change that to abuse at your domain or whatever. It's just, it's a place where you're gonna get mail when, um, you know, crazy things happen and you wanna be aware of it. So we're gonna click save now. Now we should have everything set up correctly, so let's just go check. I have a couple handy links here,
(14:31)
Okay? Okay. Okay. So now what we're gonna do is we're gonna go to this thing called the Google Admin Toolbox. And we're gonna select the, the dig feature. Dig, where are you?
(14:51)
There he is. So we're gonna select dig here, and in here you're gonna enter underscore a D mark dot, and then the domain that you set up. And you're gonna click text over here and you're gonna see this thing populate. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Here's the raw view in case you like it. Raw Chico. So you can see here we have all this stuff. It says no error, everything's green, which is usually a good sign. But I do have this funky, uh, dark reader on, so maybe everything's red. Ah, blinded you. Sorry, sorry. I hate it when people do that. Okay, so we're back here and everything looks good on the Dig tool.
(15:47)
All right, one last thing here. All right, so we also have this thing now called the MX check, the Google admin MX check. So we're gonna run, you're gonna put your domain in there, and then we are gonna put in our domain selectors, uh, uh, DK selector. Oh, that's optional. Screw it, run checks. Boom. So that's, it gives us a check mark. Effective SPF ranges and check marks all the way down. I wish I had a fireworks like thing right there cuz that deserves a celebration, folks. So anyways, now you have your MX records set up. You have your, the SPF record set up and your DKM record set up and your Dmarc record set up and you're ready to start spamming. No, you're not actually ready to start spamming. You still gotta warm your emails up and you still gotta not spam people cuz you know, whatever. But anyways, you're, you're pretty stoked and you're pretty set up there. So that's how you set up the MX records and the other records that are related to the most extreme records, which are the spf f d d Mark, which keep you safe from fisherman, ta-da.
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