I'm going to try to answer the Top questions from all of you in this latest blog update.

 

We are not offering free domains or to host Hotmail addresses with our service. We require you to purchase the domain first from another registrar (for example, eNom or godaddy) and then register that domain with our service. What we then offer is free email services with all of the Hotmail advantages along with your custom domain name. Our Help file at http://domains.live.com explains the personal domain concept and buying/managing your own domain in more detail.
 

The MX record redirects email sent to your domain to our Custom Domain email servers (Hotmail system). Since you own the domain you have to change the MX record through your DNS provider (usually the registrar that sold you the domain). Once you change the MX record to the valid address you get from our service, you can enter new users. Each user will receive a Hotmail mail box that they need to log in and activate in order to receive and send email.

 

We have a bug today that leaves your Country/Region blank for all new user accounts. As such, new mailboxes only get 2MB.

To expand the mailbox to 25MB, do the following:

1. Log in to Hotmail and add the country code for each account as "United States"
2. Close each Hotmail account (this will *NOT* delete any email) by going to Help and searching for "Close account"
3. Log in again to each Hotmail account and re-activate. The mailbox size should now be 25mb.

After 30 days, you will be eligible for an even larger mailbox (250MB).

 

 

At this time we don't support subdomains, only "root" domains. It is nearly impossible to validate subdomain ownership. We are considering working with third parties (such as alltel) to offer subdomains from their root domain, but currently this is not available.

 

This is a known bug in our code, and we are working to fix it.

The workaround is to:

1. close ALL of your browser windows

2. open a single browser window and delete your browser cookies

 

We will extend a certain number of invitations to all BYOD domain owners in our next M4 release. Kahuna will support BYOD mailboxes.

 

Not unless you have a paid MSN subscription. See http://join.msn.com/ for more details.

 

Not at this time. We are considering for a future release.

 

I have an existing EASI (Email As Sign In) Passport account that belongs to my domain and want to maintain my old settings when I register this domain with BYOD.
Let me answer this with an example.
Problem: I am the owner of domain batcave.com. I have two EASI accounts (batman and robin) that are used for IM and music purchases. I want to bring batcave.com to BYOD in order to get free email. But I don't want to mess up all of my current MSN information associated with batman@batcave.com and robin@batcave.com (music purchases, buddy lists, etc.).
Solution: I decide to use batman@batcave.com to administer the domain. I log in to BYOD with this account and register batcave.com. I'm asked to change the MX record, so I go to my registrar (goriddler.com) and change the MX record. I log back into BYOD and I see that my account (batman) is already a user in the domain [Note: we add the admin account, assuming it is in your domain, for you automatically]. I want to add robin to the domain. Should I use the Add User or the Import User feature?? The Import User feature! This will maintain all of Robin's old settings,including his password. If I add robin as a "New User", this will create a new Passport account with a new (temporary) password and mark the old robin account for rename. The next time he logs in he'll be surprised to find a rename request! And his new account will not be recognized by IM and MSN music. He'll have to use his old EASI account with a new name. Not ideal.

For a brand new user with no EASI account, say batgirl, you must use the "Add User" feature. You can only import existing EASI accounts.

I hope this helps demystify this issue.