Comments | cellio: domains for dummies

cellio

domains for dummies

Feb 19, 2017 17:07

Can you believe that I've been online since the ARPAnet and yet, in 2017, do not know the nuts and bolts of domain-name management? Perhaps you, dear reader, will point me toward the clues, and I promise not to be offended that you're quietly snickering there.

The recent LJ upheaval is far from the first signal that really, if you care about ( Read more... )

internet, brain trust

Comments 3

vonstrassburg February 20 2017, 05:49:12 UTC

You buy a domain.

You don't host the domain but you buy, or obtain for free, DNS hosting for it. I would recommend PointHQ -- pointhq.com

Then you fill in a bunch of DNS records. You need one A record for every site (e.g. blog.cellio.com or www.cellio.com) and you need one MX record for the mail server.

Then, since you said you don't want to run your own web server, you need to find organisations or people who will run it for you. wordpress.org allows you to set up a site and point your A record to some IP address so that you can have www.cellio.org on wordpress' servers -- it costs a bit extra to do that so you may have to have a monthly plan of some kind.

As far as getting blog.cellio.org to point to DW, you have to ask DW if they allow that, and what it will cost. They have to configure their servers to handle it so expect there at least to be some setup fee and a monthly fee.

If cellio.org is taken what about something like cellio.me or cellio.name?

vonstrassburg February 20 2017, 05:51:37 UTC

More on DNS: Your domain is bought from a registrar. That registrar will allow you to delegate your DNS. PointHQ will tell you what NS records to use once you set up an account there (it's free for one domain). Some registrars will host your DNS for you, don't do that, get it delegated.

Adding A records and MX records to your DNS is done through a simple web interface at PointHQ. The A records you have to add will be told to you by the site hosting your blog or website, or whatever. If you want to have email you will be told what MX records to add by the email host. You can use google to host your email or you can use one of the smaller operators like 25mail.st

cellio February 20 2017, 21:55:05 UTC

Thanks for the info! And, it turned out, while cellio.org was taken last I checked (a few weeks ago), it was available last night. Now it's not. :-)

And thanks in particular for the warning to separate registrar and hosting instead of putting all the eggs on one basket. Now that you mention it, that does seem risky.