DNS Basics

DNS (Domain Name System) is the address assigned to a domain name to point it to the server hosting your website or email addresses.  DNS is often referred to as "the phonebook of the internet".  DNS translates human friendly host names to IP addresses.   For example, the domain name example.com translates to the IP address 93.184.216.34.  This is either setup by using the full nameservers at your host, or by pointing a single A-record.  We will cover both in this guide.

Name Servers (NS Records)

The most common records are Nameservers, which delegate an entire DNS zone to an authoritative server.  This will assign all web and email traffic of a domain to the assigned server.  These are usually two records, which look like:

the nameserver assigned to your account

the nameserver assigned to your account

Be sure to reference your welcome email or customer portal to confirm the exact nameservers for your account.

A Record

An A Record (Address Record) points a name to a specific IP address.  If we wanted to point createdomain.com to the IP address 172.67.135.201, the A Record entry would look like:

This will send all web traffic from createdomain.com to the hosting account assigned to the IP address 172.67.135.201.  Several sites can be on the same IP address since they are connected to separate domains.

MX Record

MX Records (Mail Exchange Records) tell email delivery agents what mail servers accept incoming mail for your domain.  Usually there are several records listed in an order of priority.  It will look similar to this:

After the values are saved, propagation will take about 4-6 hours before the email delivery to the new destination begins.

CNAME

A CNAME Record (Canonical Name) can be used as an alias from one name to another.  A good example of this in use is if www.example.com and example.com both go to the same server.  This would be done by setting up an A Record for example.com to the server IP address, then setup a CNAME record for www.example.com to point to example.com.

A couple of examples are below, using both domains and subdomains.

On the second record, we are setting up billing.example.com to load the same content as portal.example.com.

PTR Record

A PTR record (Pointer Record) is a reverse DNS record that is used to set an identity validation to an IP address.  This can help with things like spoofing where someone attempts to send email under your domain when it's not really from you.  Setting this record also helps mail services know your email is solicited and not spam.

The PTR record will usually look like the example below.  Just an IP address and a domain name, similar to an A Record.

TXT Record

A TXT Record (Text Record) Is commonly used for things like Google Domain Validation.  It allows you to enter a string of data that can be viewed on a DNS lookup.  Services like Google use this to verify that you are the owner of a domain.

Here's an example of what a Google verification TXT record might look like: