Category Archives: Email

Help reduce confusion: fix your WOU Gmail ‘from’ address!

Email, Explanation, Google Apps

As promised, here’s how you fix the ‘From’ address Google Apps puts on your messages. Note that the illustrations are from Google’s new look, but if your account still has the old layout, things should be the same except for colors and other details.

1. On the main Gmail page, click the gear icon at the top right and choose Mail settings in the popup menu.
2. On the Settings page, click the Accounts tab, and then the “Add another email address you own” link; a popup window should appear.
3. In the popup, enter yourlogin@wou.edu in the email address box and make sure the Treat As Alias checkbox is checked, then click Next Step.
4. The popup will change and show you three buttons. Click Send Verification.
5. The popup will change again, giving you two choices for what to do after the email verification arrives. You don’t have to leave the popup open, because you’ll use the first method which doesn’t require you to enter the verification code here; either way, though, go back to your inbox using the link in the folder list.

6. Since your @wou.edu address delivers to gmail, you don’t have to go anywhere else to get the verification message. If it doesn’t show up in your gmail inbox after a minute, reload or refresh the inbox page. When it does appear, click on it just like any other message.

7. In the email, click the verification link.
8. This should open a new page that says the verification has succeeded. Click the link to go back to the inbox.
9. As before, click the gear to go back to Settings.
10. In the Accounts tab, the @wou.edu version of your address should now be in the list; click the “make default” link next to it.
11. Finally, check that the @wou.edu address says “default” next to it. If it does, you’re done!
From now on, whenever you send a message in Gmail, it will say “From: yourname@wou.edu” instead of the confusing “@mail.wou.edu” address.

No, your WOU email address has not changed!

Email, Explanation, Google Apps

I’m not sure how this happened, but a fair number of students seem to think that their email addresses have actually changed because they signed up for a WOU Google Apps account. The confusion probably stems from seeing messages from “somebody@mail.wou.edu” where they’re used to seeing “somebody@wou.edu”. The ‘mail.wou.edu’ address only shows up because of the way we had to set up our Google Apps domain; we would have hidden it if we could have. In other words: use the same addresses you’ve always used! They will reach people whether or not they have set up their WOU Google Apps account, and even if they have set it up but still use the old webmail to actually get mail. Coming soon: instructions to make your Google Apps email show up as from youraddress@wou.edu instead of the mail.wou.edu version.

Connecting to a website with Macromedia Contribute (Updated for CS4)

Email, Explanation, WOU website

(As of July 2011, this entry has been updated for use with Contribute CS4. If you are still using CS3, see Danielle or I for help with updating.)

This is another in an occasional series of instructional entries.

Most people who edit pages on the WOU website use Macromedia Contribute. (Well, OK, technically it’s adobe now, since they bought out Macromedia.) Before you can get started editing, though, you need to connect to your site. Here’s how to do that:

  1. First, you need to know your website folder. For example, if your website is https://wou.edu/test/example/index.php, then your website folder is test/example.
  2. Open Macromedia Contribute. You probably don’t have it installed on your machine, so you will need to use Remote Desktop to log into ts.wou.edu. Once there, look in the Start Menu, All Programs for Contribute CS4. Important: do not go to “ts9.wou.edu” as before; just use “ts.wou.edu”.
  3. In Contribute’s address bar, enter “X:\(your web folder)\_mm\publisher”. Continuing the example above, you would enter “X:\test\example\_mm\publisher”. Be sure to use backslashes (above the enter key on most keyboards) rather than normal slashes. Take a moment to thank Bill Gates for making this more complicated than it needs to be.
  4. After hitting Enter on that address, you should see a purple and grey icon in the main window of Contribute. Double-click it. If you are warned about an unsafe system action, click Yes to continue. A dialog box should pop up, asking for your name, email address, and a connection password.
  5. If your personal info is not automatically entered, put it in. For the password, use “publisher4” instead of your own password. Don’t worry about this password being insecure; the real security on the website works at a deeper level.
  6. The dialog box should disappear, and you should be taken to your site’s home page. From there, you can navigate to any page within your site and use the Edit button to begin editing. That’s all! Next time you start Contribute, it should remember your connection, but if you ever start up Contribute and it doesn’t show your connection, just go through these steps again.

One more thing: After clicking Edit and making changes on a page, make sure you either publish it, cancel it, or save it for later. If you quit the program without doing any of these things, the page will be locked and you will get an error the next time you try to edit the page; Contribute will think that you are already editing it on another machine and not let you in. Call or email me to get that lock cleared.

If you want training with Contribute or about Web design, contact Scott Carter in the Technology Resource Center, at carters@wou.edu or extension 88848. I can answer basic questions and help if anything seems to be wrong, but Scott handles any training beyond that.