DNS stands for Domain Name System. Think of it as the phone book for the internet. Without it, you’d have to memorize a bunch of IP addresses to get to the website you’d like to visit. DNS essentially translates the IP addresses of the web, into names that are easier for humans to remember. Rather than get into the technical details of how the DNS works, I’ll point you to this extremely informative article by CloudFlare.
DNS records are vital to any small business who is launching, migrating or managing a website…
Here’s a list of the most important DNS records for small businesses and a brief, non-technical explanation of each:
- Nameservers: These point to where the DNS records for a domain are setup. Often times, these are pointed to wherever you purchased your domain (aka your registrar), or may be pointed to a DNS manager like CloudFlare or DNS Made Easy. Changing this may take 48 hours to “complete”.
- A records: This records must be an IP address. The A record for the www or root (aka @) is generally the IP address your hosting company gave you.
- CNAME records: Unlike A records, these can point to another domain or URL. These cannot be setup for the root/naked/bare domain.
- MX records: These records are related to email. If you remove or break these, your email could go down.
Where is my website’s DNS setup?
Generally speaking, if you’ve just purchased a domain (example.com) and you haven’t changed the nameservers, the DNS is being managed by your registrar. The registrar is where you registered your domain. Some WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website builders (think wix, squarespace, lodigfy, etc.) tell you to point your nameservers to them. From there, they handle all of your DNS for you, and more importantly might not give you access to it. This is fine for most people, but annoying for anyone who knows what they are doing. They also have a lot of limitations on what they are able to do, but we will cover that in a different post.
The easiest way to figure out where your DNS is setup, go to who.is, type in your domain and look at the name servers. From there, you can google those name servers and you’re likely to find out where to go. Example: nsxx.domaincontrol.com nameservers are through GoDaddy. dns1/2.registrar-servers.com are through namecheap.
What is the easiest way to setup my domain to launch my website?
There’s more than one way to cook an egg… BUT the most straight forward is to:
- Add an A record for the root/naked (aka @) for your domain and point this to the IP address your website host gave you.
- Add an A records for the subdomain www and point this to the same IP address as above
If you’re running WordPress, then you’ll add your domain with or without the subdomain (www) in your settings.
How do I launch my website with a CNAME and A record?
Another option is to do this:
- Add an A record for the root/naked (aka @) for your domain and point this to the IP address your website host gave you.
- Add a CNAME record for the subdomain www and point this to your root domain (example.com).
Essentially, if someone types in www.example.com you’re telling the internet to look for example.com, and it will then reference the A record set in step 1.
What is the best way to setup my domain to launch my website?
- Setup a free Cloudflare account
- Update your nameservers at your registrar (where you registered your domain) to the nameservers CloudFlare gave you during step 1
- Setup a CNAME for the root domain using CNAME Flattening and point this to the CNAME record given to you by your website host
- Setup a CNAME for the subdomain WWW and point this to the CNAME record given to you by your website host
Setting up your domain this way avoids having to go in and update DNS info if your hosting company ever moves your website to a new/different server (aka gives you a new/different IP address).To do this you must be using a DNS manager like CloudFlare – remember you cannot point a naked/root/bare domain to a CNAME. As of writing this, I don’t know of any registrars that offer CNAME flattening.
If you need help with DNS or have any questions, fill out our contact form and we will get back to you. Obviously, there’s a lot more to DNS than what is covered here but if we covered everything we would have to remove the “Basic” from our post.
