CNAME and email

wellman · February 19, 2007

I've had my site (www.wellmanphoto.com) working well for some time, now. I'd like to start using a wellmanphoto.com email address, but I don't want to mess anything up or break anything.

Right now, my registrar is handling the DNS, and of course the CNAME records for "www" and "@" are set. If I start using the nameservers given to me by my web host, will it break my CNAME functionality?

I also might want to start blog.wellmanphoto.com or something, so I assume I'll need to get this "right" for that to work, too.

Thanks for the help!
Greg

Mike Lane · February 19, 2007

wellman wrote:

I've had my site (www.wellmanphoto.com) working well for some time, now. I'd like to start using a wellmanphoto.com email address, but I don't want to mess anything up or break anything.

Right now, my registrar is handling the DNS, and of course the CNAME records for "www" and "@" are set. If I start using the nameservers given to me by my web host, will it break my CNAME functionality?

I also might want to start blog.wellmanphoto.com or something, so I assume I'll need to get this "right" for that to work, too.

Thanks for the help!
Greg

Who is your web server? For my dreamhost account this kind of thing is trivial so I imagine it can't be too difficult with another service.

wellman · February 19, 2007

Mike Lane wrote:

Who is your web server? For my dreamhost account this kind of thing is trivial so I imagine it can't be too difficult with another service.

My domain is registered with namecheap.com, and until now, I haven't had a host. I just had the two CNAME records with namecheap. If I can get this to work, I have a VPS set up with knownhost.com to handle the email and hosting duties.

By the by, thanks for your dreamhost recommendation. I ended up getting the VPS above for the church website I run, just to have root access to the mailserver. I'm considering DH for an offsite backup solution though, and I've got your referral link saved.

wellman · February 19, 2007

Houston, we have a problem.

My registrar is namecheap.com. The way I've had things configured before was to have

namecheap.com managing the DNS
the @ and www records CNAME'd to www.smugmug.com.

All was well.

Trouble is, when I update my nameserver pointers to my shiny new VPS (removing DNS responsibility from namecheap), I lose the ability to see/set my previous CNAME settings. I'm assuming this means I need to set up CNAME settings on my VPS? Can anyone help?

Thanks.

wellman · February 19, 2007

Got things working, I think. Only one server gets to control DNS-related settings, so once I defined my host's nameserver, I had to move CNAME records from my registrar to my host (my VPS). Got that done. The main website (www.wellmanphoto.com) is resolving fine now. The time-to-live on the @ record was longer, so it will take it some time to catch up.

Just wanted to follow up...

Art Scott · February 19, 2007

If you were with GoDaddy it would be simple...I bought my domain and set up the CNAME and all with GODADDY and received my business email for free with them and had it routed to one of my hotmail accounts to be read on outlook express.

jchin · February 20, 2007

I'm sure you can do something similiar ... email has to do with MX records, and you can point them to any server that is ready to receive email for that domain (or sub-domain) name.

Google's GMAIL can be setup to send as that domain as well. Take a look at their site. And it is all free. (NOTE: I have not pointed a domain at my gmail account, but it can be done according to Google's website).

wellman · March 20, 2007

OK, need some more help on this. Looks like I'm only halfway there. Using the DNS Zone settings below (in WHM on my VPS), I now have www.wellmanphoto.com pointing to my SmugMug site. Unfortunately, wellmanphoto.com (w/o the www) points to the VPS. I've tried adding an "@" record, but the software yells at me. Any ideas? Thanks.

Andy · March 20, 2007

@ in A should point to our IP record 63.81.134.23

From SmugMug Help

SmugHelp wrote:

I don't want my visitors to have to type www...

If you just want your web address to be http://yourdomain.com instead of something like http://www.yourdomain.com, you can use the @ symbol instead of inserting the subdomain when setting it up. (A subdomain is the part the proceeds yourdomain.com — www is a common subdomain.) Registrars use the @ symbol to indicate the lack of a domain (rather than just leaving it blank).

Some registrars don't allow CNAMEs with @ symbols. They force you to use an A record instead. The basic principle is the same, but instead of pointing to www.smugmug.com it points to our IP address.

Gotcha: Our IP address might change in the future, causing an A record to break. For this reason we suggest trying a CNAME record first.
Our current IP address is 63.81.134.23

wellman · March 20, 2007

Andy wrote:

@ in A should point to our IP record 63.81.134.23

From SmugMug Help

W00t! Thanks, Andy!

CNAME and email

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