Pt. 3 — Make Your Own Website
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Make Your Own Website Part 3: Email Address and Guestbook

• Written: 18 April 2025 • • Last updated: 18 April 2025 • • •

If you haven't already, check out Part 1: Domains and Webservers and Part 2: HTML and CSS.

In Part 3 of this tutorial, you'll learn how to:

  1. Create a custom email address to help website visitors connect with you.

  2. Set up a guestbook so that website visitors can leave comments.

As mentioned in my first entry, these two elements are optional. It's not like your website won't work or won't be interesting if you don't have your own email or a guestbook, but many people who create personal websites, especially in response to the deafening drone of social media that only seems to grow louder and louder, want a way to connect with others who feel the same. In that light, providing an email address and/or a guestbook can be seen as a courteous gesture to others, just to let them know that you're committed to building a better web along with them.

Create a Custom Email Address

Why should I create a custom email address?

Good question. There's nothing inherently wrong with slapping your personal (or a throwaway) email on your website and calling it a day, except for perhaps security risks. No, the real benefit of creating a custom email address (you@yourdomain.tld) for your personal website is memorability and professionalism. It takes relatively little effort to do, and can cost very little (or nothing additional at all, as you'll see soon), but helps your website look sleek and unified.

What should my custom email address look like?

There's no single "right" way to do it. My address for this website is Freya@thunderbo.lt. You can follow this format—name@yourdomain.tld—if you wish. Other options I've seen are:

Ultimately, it boils down to how you want to present your website to the world.

How do I create a custom email address?

There are two general options: the premium way and the budget way. In short:

For a more detailed explanation:

The main benefits to choosing the "premium" way are, in my experience and opinion, better user interface and the separation of email storage and website files. On the budget option, you're using Roundcube, a functional but not necessarily user-friendly webmail interface. You also have the option to use an email client, such as Mozilla Thunderbird, but not everyone wants to set up or maintain that kind of configuration. Additionally, your emails will be hosted on the same disk as your website files, detracting from storage space. Finally, setting up DirectAdmin to work with email is less straightforward than opting to use one of the providers I mentioned in the "premium" section.

Not all paid email providers (like Gmail), or email providers that let you use a custom domain (such as Zoho Mail) are necessarily privacy and security-focused. But for the "premium" options, I'm only naming providers that are.

The Premium Way

Many email providers offer the use of custom domains to create addresses, but the providers I'll be listing here are specifically, to some extent or another, privacy-oriented. The provider that is right for you might not be the one that I use (Tuta), and that's to be expected. And although the actual tutorial will be focused on Tuta, the process of setting up the right DNS records will be more or less the same across providers.

I am not attempting to make an argument for or against any specific provider, only attempting to lay out all of the details. Thus, my custom domain-supporting email provider shortlist consists of the following:

And for your consideration, a comparison table of features, pricing, and more (as of April 2025):

Provider Free Option?* Supports PGP Encryption? Lowest Personal Tier**; Monthly Price; # of Custom Domains; Storage Highest Personal Tier Other Features/Services Jurisdiction Year Founded
Mailbox.org No Yes Standard; €3; Unclear; 10 GB mail, 5 GB cloud Premium; €9; Unclear; 25 GB mail, 50 GB cloud Office suite, video conferencing software Germany 2014
Proton.me Yes Yes Mail Plus; $3.99; 1; 15 GB mail + cloud Proton Unlimited; $9.99; 3; 500 GB mail + cloud Calendar, drive, docs, VPN, password manager Switzerland 2014
Tuta.com Yes No Revolutionary; €3.60; 3; 20 GB mail Legend; €9.60; 10; 500 GB mail Calendar, drive (IN DEVELOPMENT) Germany 2011

*Note that the free options do NOT have the option to use custom domains; however, these providers allow you to upgrade to a paid account at any time.

**"Lowest Tier" refers to the lowest tier that permits the usage of custom domains. Some providers have lower paid tiers that do not permit the usage of custom domains.

With your option chosen, let's get down to business. Quick reminder that I'll be using Tuta as my example, but the process should be roughly the same, regardless of which option you chose.

  1. First, go to Tuta.com and click the gear icon in the bottom left of the screen. Then, go to Admin Settings > Global settings > Custom email domains, and click "SHOW." Click the "+" icon to begin the process.

  2. Enter your domain and click "Next."

  3. Tuta will issue an authorization check. This basically means that they have to verify that this domain actually belongs to you. To do so, they're asking you to add a unique text, or TXT record, to your zone file.

  4. To add the TXT record, go to your domain registrar. As you might recall from Part 1, my domain registrar is Netim, so I'll be going there and repeating step 4 from Part 1, since I'm going to be editing the Zone file of my domain.

    Once added, the TXT record should look like this:

    Be aware that it may take a few minutes or even hours (though I've never had to wait that long) for the DNS records to update, so don't be discourage if, after clicking "Next," Tuta throws up an error that says something along the lines of "DNS lookup failed."

  5. Once the DNS lookup succeeds, Tuta will show you another list of records that you have to create in your zone file. These are the same for all domains pointing toward Tuta mailservers:

    You will again need for the DNS records to update, which can take a while (usually longer than just waiting for the TXT record).

  6. After the process is complete, you can go to Email > Email addresses and click the "+" button to make custom domains such as the following:

    (Note that "example@thunderbo.lt" is not an active nor an existent address).

  7. You're almost done. The last step is to make sure that your email works, and isn't going to go to spam. For that, I use mail-tester.com. Just send an email to the address generated, and then click the button on the website to see how your email address scores.

And that's how it's done the premium way!

Now, how about...

The Budget Way

By "budget," I mean "DirectAdmin webmail with Roundcube."

Full disclosure that I myself have limited experience with DirectAdmin email hosting, and I do not personally use this option myself. Nevertheless, this option is stable, well-documented, and most importantly, free of charge. So let's go ahead, shall we?

  1. First, log into DirectAdmin and go to E-mail Manager > E-mail Accounts. Then, click "+ CREATE ACCOUNT" and create a username. We'll use example again. You can choose to create your own password, or have DirectAdmin generate one for you. Since we're working on the asusmption that you're the only person who's going to be accessing this DirectAdmin account, check "Max" on "Email Quota" (MB)." Then, click "CREATE ACCOUNT."

    You'll see this show up onscreen:

    The POP/IMAP Server and SMTP Server will only be relevant if you intend to use an email client. Since we're sticking to webmail for this tutorial, you don't have to worry about anything except your username and password.

  2. Now, go to E-mail Manager > MX Records. You should see this:

    Unlike the premium option, we are not adding or modifying any mail-related DNS records at our domain registar. Instead, any changes you might want to make should be made right here in DirectAdmin, but none of those changes are necessary for this tutorial. I'm just showing you the widget so you can change or modify MX records as needed, if you choose to do so in the future.

  3. Now, go back to E-mail Manager > E-mail Accounts, and log in to your new email account. You'll automatically be redirected to Roundcube webmail.

    From here, you can send, receive, and organize mail. Before publishing your email address, I also recommend, just like at the end of the premium option section, testing that your email works, and isn't going to go to spam. I use mail-tester.com—just send an email to the address generated, and then click the button on the website to see how your email address scores.

And that's it! Happy emailing.

Set Up a Guestbook

Unlike email on a custom domain, this method of setting up a guestbook is 100% free of charge. We're going to use Atabook.org.

  1. First, register your Atabook account. Your username isn't super important, unless you want to link it within your website independently. I embed my guestbook with an inline frame (iframe), so the URL isn't visible. Nevertheless, I still made it a priority to grab "thunderbolt.atabook.org," just for ease of memorization.

    For the remainder of this section of the tutorial, I'm going to be working within my existing Atabook account. After I've logged in, I see this:

  2. The highest priority is to go to Guestbook layout > Change layout. I've already made my own changes here, and the categories are pretty self-explanatory, but I'll lay them out here so that they're easy to replicate:

    When live, here's how these settings manifest:

    You might notice the section called "Logo image (URL)." This image isn't visible on my website; it's actually just a blank PNG stored in the Images directory. If I didn't put this blank logo, Atabook would default to using its own logo, which to me, was distracting. Still, if you click on the blank PNG, it's linked to Atabook.org, and the link can't be changed. You can even try it for yourself—just click on the blank space right above the "Name" box.

  3. Now, you also might notice that I've created a "Link to your website" box that isn't available on the default template. To create custom questions like this one, go to Guestbook layout > Edit questions form. You should see something like this:

    That's where I left my guestbook, but you're free to customize yours to your heart's contentment.

  4. Once your guestbook has reached a satisfactory point of completion, you can visit it live at yourusername.atabook.org. Here's mine, with a screenshot to accompany it:

    To make it easy for website visitors to access, you can also embed your guestbook into your website with an iframe, which I discussed briefly in Part 2 of this tutorial.

And now you're done.

Congratulations!

You've completed Part 3 of the Make Your Own Website tutorial series.

Now, move onto Part 4: Getting Social (COMING SOON).

Conflicts of Interest

None of the URLs on this page are affiliate links; I do not earn a commission or kickback if you sign up for any services or purchase any goods through them. I'm sharing these resources because I genuinely appreciate them for what they are and what they do.