How do I leave mail at the registrar while serving the web from host?

Question

Client's domain is registered with GoDaddy where they have a mail-only plan at the moment. Now web hosting has been set up elsewhere and we need to point web service to the new host while retaining mail at GoDaddy. (For reasons not important here, this is not negotiable.)
What needs to be edited to carry this out correctly?

Answer 1

Point the domain's MX records to the GoDaddy server.
Point the domain's A or CNAME records to the server hosting the website.

To find the MX records for a GoDaddy email account:

1. Log in to your Account Manager.
2. From the My Products section, click Email.
3. Click Manage Account next to any email account.
4. Go to the Domains tab, and then click Server Addresses.

Instructions to change MX, A, and CNAME records for a domain purchased from GoDaddy: http://help.godaddy.com/article/680

It is also a good idea to create a record for the mail server itself. The MX record only deals with server traffic, but does not point the clients to the correct server. To do this, create a CNAME record that points mail.example.com to the IP address of the mail server. This allows email clients to use mail.example.com for their e-mail accounts, and sub.example.com as the web address. The same can be done for imap.example.com or pop.example.com, depending on how you set up your user's connections. This also works for webmail.