Setting up host records

Question

I just purchased a domain with crazy domains. I'm trying to figure out if I need to pay for the advanced DNS services.

There is an option to set host records. As a test, I tried redirecting it to Google, but it doesn't appear to work at the moment.

This is where I entered the host record information. It says that I need to pay for hosted DNS if I want an A record or CNAME record. From memory, these are what I used in the past to redirect to the IP address of my website.

So can anyone explain what exactly these host records are and why the don't need a server, but the other kinds of records do? Further, why do these records appear to only let me redirect subdomains, but not the actual subdomain itself?

Answer 1

Most registrars will host your DNS records for the price of a domain name. Sorry this is not the case here. You may have to pay more for this. I cannot find specific information on this so you may have to ask. The whole offering seems rather ala' carte.

Your www.dadb.com.au entry pointing to 8.8.8.8 is not a valid entry. This is not the IP address of Google's website, but one of their public DNS servers. You should remove this immediately as not to cause a problem.

Any domain name should have the following:

An A record that associates the parent (base) domain name to an IP address.

example.com A 10.0.0.103

An CNAME that is an alias associating the www sub-domain to the parent domain name. Optionally, this can be an A record using the same IP address, however, traditionally, a CNAME record is used.

www CNAME example.com

If you want to run an e-mail server, then an MX record needs to be added that points to the domain name.

DNS does not redirect anything. It only assigns a domain name to a network IP address so that when referencing a domain name, the various systems around the world will know how to address and route the packet. That is all.

Also, please understand that it can take some time to propagate any DNS settings you make. Some DNS servers will have any update almost immediately, while others can take 24-48 hours (which is traditional) and on rare occasions 72 hours.