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The Domain Name System (DNS) is used by
computers around the Internet to translate
easy-to-remember names, such as yahoo.com and
person@company.com, into the numerical addresses
used to route Internet traffic to its destination.
Each of your domain names are assigned a number of
name servers; you may have encountered the name
servers for your domain when you transferred it
from your previous host. With our name servers
assigned to your domain name, each time a user
wishes to view your web site or send you an email
their computer will contact our name servers and
they will reply with the numerical address needed
to access the web site or send the email. This name
resolution process takes place transparently to the
end user.
Our name servers are automatically configured
with appropriate DNS records to resolve domain
names mapped to one of our hosting accounts to our
web and email servers. Therefore it is not normally
necessary for you to edit the DNS records held on
our name servers. However, you may want to host
only your website with us, whilst your email is
handled by another service provider or by your own
company mail server or vice versa.
You may customise DNS records for your account
using the DNS page;
records you enter here will be applied to all
domain names mapped to this account. Records you
enter here will take precedence over any records
automatically defined by default.
Adding A Custom DNS
Record
Click 'Add MX Record' or 'Add A or CNAME Record' to
add an email or website record respectively. On the
resulting screen, enter the prefix; for example to
define shop.yourdomain.com, enter shop in the
prefix field when editing the DNS for
yourdomain.com or the account it is mapped to. If
you wish to define a record in the root of domain
(sometimes called the origin or referred to with
the @ symbol), leave the prefix field blank. If you
wish to define a TTL for the record, enter it in
the box provided. If you do not define a TTL it
will default to 86400 (1 day). If you are not sure
what TTL is required, leave the box blank; the
default is appropriate for the majority of cases.
Complete the remaining fields according to the
instructions below for the record type in question
and click 'Add Record'.
Deleting A Custom DNS
Record
To delete a Custom DNS Record, click its adjacent
'Delete' link, you will be asked to confirm the
deletion before the record is actually removed.
Editing A Custom DNS
Record
You may change the parameters of an existing DNS
record by clicking the adjacent 'Edit' link, the
description of the options when editing a record is
the same as when creating a new record.
Mail (MX) Records
The MX (Mail Exchanger) records for your domain
name instruct other mail servers where to send
messages destined for your domain name. When
creating an MX record set the value to the hostname
of the server you wish to receive the mail, be sure
to terminate the hostname with a period (.) unless
you want the domain name appended to the hostname
by the DNS server. If you have multiple mail
servers and thus multiple MX records, you may
assign each record a distance between 0 and 10.
Mail transport agents will attempt to deliver mail
to the server with the lowest distance first, if
that attempt fails they will try the server with
the next lowest distance and so on. This is useful
when you have a primary and a backup mail server.
An MX record must point to a hostname, not an IP
address, if you need to direct mail to a server
which does not have a hostname, you will first need
to create one for it by adding an A record pointing
to the server IP address, then create the MX record
directing to the newly created hostname.
Web Site (A & CNAME)
Records
The A and CNAME records determine the server that
will receive web site traffic. An A record is used
to direct traffic to a server's IP address whilst a
CNAME record is used to direct traffic to a
server's hostname. When creating an A record set
the value to the server IP address in dotted
decimal notation. When creating a CNAME record set
the value to the server hostname, but be sure to
terminate the hostname with a period (.) unless you
want the domain name appended to the hostname by
the DNS server.
Name Server Reloads
& Caching
The name servers are reloaded hourly; it may
therefore take up to one hour before the changes
you make become active on our DNS servers. Once
changes have become active other name servers on
the Internet may continue to serve the old
information until the data in their cache times
out.
Technical Support
It is important to realise that setting DNS records
incorrectly may stop your domain name functioning
and that since third party servers may be involved
over which we do not have control, we may not be
able to investigate, debug or solve problems you
encounter when using custom DNS records.
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