sbs can't get webmail working with out accessing

Your probably using the wrong hostname.

Mail.sitename.com/exchange will work

if you want www.mail.sitename.com this is a subdomain of mail.sitedomain.com so unless you have setup a sub domain for it it's not going to work.

Try mail.sitename.com (that is without the www).  

Has port forwarding been setup on your Router to point to your Server?

If www.sitename.com/exchange works it's fair to assume port forwarding is configured and working

it's purely the name/sub domain that's the problem!

so i cannot use www.mail.sitename.com or mail.sitename.com    --- without setting up a subdomain

what is the norm for sbs-------www.sitename.com/exchange or sitename.com/exchange -- it works fine for me -- the guy at go daddy says no one usually uses the /exchange ???????

is it okay or normal on sbs -- for small business???

thanks

You should be able to setup a mail.sitename.com record and therefore access it via mail.sitename.com/exchange

this is the norm.

mail.sitename.com/exchange  -- does not work -- sitename.com/exchange does work

I have a arecord at go daddy  -- for mail points to @

Thanks

Create an "A" Record that is called

mail.sitename.com.

Point this to your Exchange Public IP.  

then change your MX record to point to the "A" record you just created.

Check that it has been created correctly by using

www.mxtoolbox.com

A problem that can arise is if you see an "A" record called

mail.sitename.com.sitename.com

If you get this, amend the "A" record to read

mail

or make sure there's that dot at the end of

mail.sitename.com.

thanks i tried to create my a record mail.sitename.com.  -- it worked but changed to mail ??

then when i tryed to create the mx record mail.sitename.com. points to ip -- it errored out???

as of now!!
mx record is @ points to mail.sitename.com

and the a record is mail points to ip ??? even though i entered mail.sitename.com

Sounds like there's some kind of conflict - perhaps mail is defined twice and it doesn't like that (which I can understand).

There's nothing magical about the use of the word mail.  Try something like

smtp.sitename.com

same procedure as outlined about, you should end up with

"A" record = smtp.sitename.com    xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

"MX" record = smtp.sitename.com    5

(5 is an arbitrary number denoting the priority of the record in the MX list).  Get rid of any MX record that points to mail.sitename.com.

One final thing you will need to do is to change the Exchange Server's EHLO from mail.sitename.com to smtp.sitename.com

thanks
no just the basic sbs 2003 without isa

are you saying i am good to go  -- this is how it should be

sitename.com/exchange    --- this is what we have been using with no issues -- just thought it should be mail.sitename.com -- to get to the webmail

This is how it should be, at least for SBS.

It would be great for usability reasons to just be able to type the domain name without the /exchange, but with SBS there are so many things loaded up that some compromises have to be made.  I'm fairly certain that you could modify the IIS setup so that OWA would be the site to come up as default, but my knowledge of IIS is a little short to instruct you how to do so.

THANKS