Need some advice on DNS setup (123 Reg domain & GoDaddy hosting)

ScarySquirrel · 8 Oct 2014 at 16:43

Hi all,

I have an IP address that I need to point my domain name servers to.

GoDaddy say that I need to add an A record for this.

Now, do I add an A record for www only, to go to this IP address?

Or should I also be adding something else as well? Like a CNAME? How do I make sure if someone puts in www.mydomain.com and mydomain.com, it goes to the same place?

I'm not that great at this stuff, I just need to know how to point my domain at my hosting in the best way.

Thanks

EDIT: Would a * A record be a good idea to cover it all? Should I have that as well as a www A record, or instead of? Does this cause any SEO issues?

Ogoshi · 8 Oct 2014 at 18:50

I'd point the non-wwwat the A record, then CNAME the www one. You might not be able to use wildcards

Buffalo2102 · 8 Oct 2014 at 18:59

I've just added a single alias www.mydomain.uk pointing to my IP address. Nothing else needed for a single top level domain, as far as I am aware.

ScarySquirrel · 8 Oct 2014 at 21:51

Thanks guys

m4rkw7 · 9 Oct 2014 at 04:50

Ogoshi said:
I'd point the non-www at the A record, then CNAME the www one. You might not be able to use wildcards

This is what I'd do as well.

mtalk · 9 Oct 2014 at 08:26

Did that fix things for you... make sure you allow resolution time for your domain to propagate correctly.

ScarySquirrel · 9 Oct 2014 at 08:49

Well, it is working but I'm worried that I haven't done what was suggested and that it may cause problems in the long run.

At the moment it is working if I put domain.com or www.domain.com into my broswer, this is what I have:

www A 111.111.11.111
* A 111.111.11.111

Not the real IP by the way.

How do I create a non-www A record? Is that the *?

Once I've done this, shall I change the www one to a CNAME?

Thanks

EDIT: I've cancelled with GoDaddy, it was slow as ****. Going to add the site to my current hosting package with South West Broadband, they should be able to help me out with the DNS stuff too

visibleman · 9 Oct 2014 at 17:53

Ogoshi said:
I'd point the non-www at the A record, then CNAME the www one. You might not be able to use wildcards

Yup; typically (obviously it doesn't apply to every situation) you'd use CNAME's for subdomains and A records for domains - 'WWW' is a subdomain

ScarySquirrel said:
At the moment it is working if I put domain.com or www.domain.com into my broswer, this is what I have:

www A 111.111.11.111
* A 111.111.11.111

How do I create a non-www A record? Is that the *?

Usually the star would indicate a wildcard, so everything pre-domain.com uses the A record to point to 111.111.11.111.
In this case, the separate 'www' record would be redundant as it would already be covered under the wildcard.
Obviously using wildcards is fine unless you're planning to have multiple A records for a single domain.

As for "How do I create a non-www A record?", you'd generally just enter in the domain on it's own, so it'd look like -

Code:

mydomain.com		A		111.111.111.111
www.mydomain.com	CNAME		mydomain.com