Domain, Dns, Nameservers Puzzles, Confuse, Frustrates

[imjjss 0]

I registered a domain with Xisto - Web Hosting. I appreciate the fast and convinient service. But I am too big a dummy to manage all the configurations. Need help!First puzzle--There are 2 places to input Nameservers--First, The DNS Manager/NS records;(4 default nameservers already there)Second, Domain menue/ NameServer tab.I'm confused. Which one of the above 2 places is the right place to type in my webpage hosting site's nameserver?Second puzzle--My webpage hosting site also provide a DNS manager. It says if I choose to host DNS somewhere else, I can disable their DNS manager and add A record in my DNS host place to redirect to my site. I sure prefer DNS hosted by Xisto - Web Hosting. So, I disabled webpage host's DNS manager. When I go to Xisto - Web Hosting's DNS manager to add A record, the form provide the opion to add A record of "xxx.mydomain.com" . This is frustrating-- I want to add A record of "mydomain.com", not a subdomain. Do I need to disable webpage's DNS manager? How can I add A record of "mydomain.com" in Xisto - Web Hosting's DNS manager ?Third puzzle--I read an article says better use more than one pairs of nameservers that from different hosts. Isn't it confusing the ISP? When somebody require a domain, it has to check 2 places to find the domain. I know I must be wrong on this, but really appriciate if somebody can explain this.

[vhortex 1]

I registered a domain with Xisto - Web Hosting. I appreciate the fast and convinient service. But I am too big a dummy to manage all the configurations. Need help!
First puzzle--

There are 2 places to input Nameservers--

First, The DNS Manager/NS records;(4 default nameservers already there)

if you want to be hosted at Xisto - Web Hosting, leave them as is or ask via customer support ticket for your hosting account's nameserver.
Judging from your post, you are hosted somewhere else.. ask your hosting service provider for their name server that you can use to replace the 4 default records that you will find on this page.

Second, Domain menue/ NameServer tab.

If there is a word like "custom name server" then that is the wrong place to change your domain record. That will be where you will add your very own nameserver like ns1.mydomain.com / ns2.mydomain.com

My webpage hosting site also provide a DNS manager. It says if I choose to host DNS somewhere else, I can disable their DNS manager and add A record in my DNS host place to redirect to my site.

You can disable te DNS manager on your hosting and just change the nameserver on you domain control panel. Use the one provided by your hoster.

I sure prefer DNS hosted by Xisto - Web Hosting. So, I disabled webpage host's DNS manager. When I go to Xisto - Web Hosting's DNS manager to add A record, the form provide the opion to add A record of "xxx.mydomain.com" . This is frustrating-- I want to add A record of "mydomain.com", not a subdomain.

No need to create an A record of xxx.mydomain.com if you don't need a subdomain. adding one will create a subdomain or an Alias.

Do I need to disable webpage's DNS manager? How can I add A record of "mydomain.com" in Xisto - Web Hosting's DNS manager ?

The first "A" record is always "mydomain.com", "http://www.mydomain.com/; usually comes next.

I read an article says better use more than one pairs of nameservers that from different hosts. Isn't it confusing the ISP? When somebody require a domain, it has to check 2 places to find the domain. I know I must be wrong on this, but really appriciate if somebody can explain this.

ISP's will only look for 1 IP in random order from your DNS record (this can be changed on the ISP level), once the ISP found a working IP.. it connect on that IP alone until the DNS cache expire or the IP shuts down. Yahoo have more than 80 Nameservers working, normally your regional DNS server will only pick up 4.

I have 4 Nameserver on my VPS, though I only use 2 but 4 are active.

[imjjss 0]

vehortex,

Thanks so much for taking your time explaining those puzzles in details! I still need further advice on how to do it.

if you want to be hosted at Xisto - Web Hosting, leave them as is or ask via customer support ticket for your hosting account's nameserver.

Judging from your post, you are hosted somewhere else.. ask your hosting service provider for their name server that you can use to replace the 4 default records that you will find on this page.

Yes, I host my website somewhere else. The web hoste site gives 2 nameservers.

 

 

If there is a word like "custom name server" then that is the wrong place to change your domain record. That will be where you will add your very own nameserver like ns1.mydomain.com / ns2.mydomain.com

There's not a word of "custom name server", nothing explain what it is for. Here's a pic:

 

 

]You can disable te DNS manager on your hosting and just change the nameserver on you domain control panel. Use the one provided by your hoster.

Ok, I disabled web hosting site's DNS manager. So, I need to change the NS records in domain's DNS manager. To make sure I can change it, I contacted the support. Here's a reply from Nik:

It does not matter if you have set nameservers other than the Default nameservers. If you auto-update to this nameserver, then you have to set A record of your domain to point to your hosting server IP address.

If you want to use Email service of Xisto - Domains, then you will have to change the nameservers of your account to the 4 Default nameservers.

According to his replay, As long as I don't click auto-update button, I don't need to create A record. That's fine.

 

But the Email service is a problem. It requires me to use the 4 default nameservers.

 

Does the email service worth trying? Maybe I can disable their email service and set google APP email in the DNS record?

 

 

ISP's will only look for 1 IP in random order from your DNS record (this can be changed on the ISP level), once the ISP found a working IP.. it connect on that IP alone until the DNS cache expire or the IP shuts down. Yahoo have more than 80 Nameservers working, normally your regional DNS server will only pick up 4.

 

I have 4 Nameserver on my VPS, though I only use 2 but 4 are active.

So, I don't need to change the default nameservers in the NS record, instead, I can add web hosting site's nameserver below the 4 default?

[vhortex 1]

Thanks so much for taking your time explaining those puzzles in details! I still need further advice on how to do it.

 

Yes, I host my website somewhere else. The web hoste site gives 2 nameservers.

There's not a word of "custom name server", nothing explain what it is for. Here's a pic:

remove that four name servers, take note of them and write them on a piece of paper. replace that with 2 name servers from your webhost on that screenshot that you got.

 

 

So, I don't need to change the default nameservers in the NS record, instead, I can add web hosting site's nameserver below the 4 default?

It will cause conflict, those nameservers must point to the same server, there will be problems when your name servers point to different physical servers. If you have 2 sets of nameservers from different companies, there is no sure way to tell what physical server your visitors will end up.

 

Example.

ns1.hostingdomain.com

ns2.hostingdomain.com

ns1.otherdomain.com

ns2.otherdomain.com

 

Since ISP will pick 1 nameserver that they can connect, some ISP (visitors) will go to hostingdomain.com server and some will go to otherdomain.com. That will be a very terrible problem.

 

You can use your webhost's email service if you will setup your mx record properly, some webhosting have an internal record of DNS and some just copy the content of your domain registar. This vary from hoster to hoster and domain registrar to domain registrar.

 

Email service is always set to default which is to use your domain registrars MX record (mail exchange), this can be fix if your hosting provider have setup an MX record on their side and their hosting DNS is marked as primary (it get's complicated on this part about master and secondary DNS). You can skip hosting your email and instead point them to google services.

 

There is no 100% sure guarantee how much DNS record your domain provider and you hosting provider have. You need to talk to both domain registrar and webhosting company to solve this.

 

***************

 

A little example is my domain coderinthebox.com, the pages are half complete and may not work well.

You can click here to see the domain info and the nameserver.

 

The domain is registered at xisto, it was linked to a third party domain privacy service and it was hosted on vhortex.com via ns1.vhortex.com and ns2.vhortex.com. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ is my website and I have my own nameservers. Even if Xisto also hold a DNS record, both my Email and Hosting are at ns1.vhortex.com and ns2.vhortex.com where my Master DNS is hosted.

 

coderinthebox.com. 86400 IN A 174.132.42.35

coderinthebox.com. 86400 IN NS ns.coderinthebox.com.

ns.coderinthebox.com. 86400 IN A 174.132.42.35

coderinthebox.com. 86400 IN MX 10 mail.coderinthebox.com.

coderinthebox.com. 86400 IN NS ns.coderinthebox.com.

mail.coderinthebox.com. 86400 IN A 174.132.42.35

ns.coderinthebox.com. 86400 IN A 174.132.42.35

All this records are coming from my webhosting on exception to MX and the extra ns.coderinthebox.com and mail.coderinthebox.com record which are copied from Xisto.

Edited February 13, 2011 by vhortex (see edit history)

[imjjss 0]

Ok, done! Replaced the nameservers on the screen shot with the web hosting site's nameserver.In the another place--- DNS menue, there are lists of zone records including 4 default NS records. I guess that is the place for hosting my domain's DNS records, it has nothing to do with my webhosting nameserver. That's where I went crazy :-)My problem nearly solved-- will setup email like you showed. But now I am curious about your DNS configures. (By the way, your site loads very fast, nice design too!)How do you host coderinthebox.com on vhortex.com? My guess is your vhortex.com is hosted on VPS which provide lots of posibilities, so you can host conderinthebox.com as addon domain on the VPS. But how to get the ns1.vhortex.com/ns2.vhortex.com ?

[vhortex 1]

How do you host coderinthebox.com on vhortex.com? My guess is your vhortex.com is hosted on VPS which provide lots of posibilities, so you can host conderinthebox.com as addon domain on the VPS. But how to get the ns1.vhortex.com/ns2.vhortex.com ?

Yes I am using a VPS hosting. NS1.vhortex.com and NS2.vhortex.com is called domain host branding. You don't need to be on a VPS to have this feature. In order to setup one, your hosting provider needs to setup this nameserver on their hosting (not all webhosting give this feature free). The important part here is the availability of having 2 dedicated IP.

The trick part is the creation of the Name server records on the actual domain, this must be also created on the domain registrars end. In my case, vhortex.com's customized nameserver is created on the webhost as a VPN service (it is free if you have a VPS account and less problematic to configure than on shared hosting), a partner record was also created on the domain registrar such which is Godaddy in my case.

Not all domain registrar will have the feature to create customized name records since not all of them gives full domain management. Xisto is one of the few company that offers this flexibility.

Updating the domain takes maximum of 48 hours to propagate or be reflected on all DNS server around the globe, what happen is that this domain servers copies what was inserted on your domain record. Customized nameservers takes a few hours to setup, you can speed this up by restarting the server. If you are not transferring your domain and you only want to create a customized nameserver, it will take 30mins to resolve (this may take more time on some region).

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Dedicated IP may cost you from $15 - $88 but most VPS accounts allow you to have an extra IP for $1 with a few free dedicated IP. This payment is on monthly basis and you need to keep on paying them. You can already have a VPS account for $20 and at least 10GB space and 2 free IP with dedicated RAM. With this info, it is much better to be on VPS due to the huge savings on the part of IP rentals.

[vhortex 1]

You can do all of this with xisto (Xisto - Web Hosting) services. I have not checked about the customized nameserver fees yet. I only get the VPS account on a different webhost since it is the agreed hosting service between 4 people.

The space is 30GB and a bandwidth of 500GB, all 4 people can have a copy of the billing statements delivered to 4 email addresses. We only need the 1.13 GHZ dedicated CPU and he 500GB bandwidth. One of us is hosting his print samples on the VPS which have sizes of around 10MB each per file non compressed.

********************

This feature is available via Logic plan $1.95 per month if you will customize it.

"Setup Custom Nameserver: Yes +$4.49 USD Setup Fee"

The service cost $4.49 USD. Xisto also won't force you to have dedicated IP's to get customized nameservers.

[imjjss 0]

Thanks for sharing this valuable knowledge!

 

What's the benefit of having your own custom nameservers? My guess is-- for branding?

I am a dummy in this field, now I have a path to follow. As long as my site generate some money, I will go for paid hosting and follow your path. Your hosting package is really luxery

 

Currently, I paid domain by MyCent and host website on free hosting. Because my posts might not be enough to support both domain and hosting package.

 

I disabled hosting site's DNS, and replaced the Xisto's default nameserver with hosting site's nameservers. Now Xisto's DNS manager feature is gone. It says I have to use its required nameserver in order to use its DNS manager. See picture below:

 

For me, of course it's better to use Xisto's DNS manager because it's with my paid domain and it provide more control options. But then, where else can I add my web hosting site's nameserver?

[vhortex 1]

For me, of course it's better to use Xisto's DNS manager because it's with my paid domain and it provide more control options. But then, where else can I add my web hosting site's nameserver?

That is a risk with shared hosting on a templated account, no customization. On some shared hosting, you can have a customized local DNS or a customized pass through DNS. They call it differently but the bottomline was to allow the domain registrar to manage the DNS.

Pointing the full domain control away from Xisto domains really means a big loss on the domain control.

***************

@the VPS
It is not really a luxury but a wise choice, I never need more than 3GB of disk space and more than 20GB bandwidth but I do need 200mb of dedicated RAM and at least 500mhz of CPU power.

Combining 4 person's varied needs for hosting solved the issue for all of us. The guy who needs 15GB of space and 200Gb of bandwidth got his required needs. The 2nd guy who needs 900mhz of of CPU power and 10mb of diskspace got his problem solved. The fourth guy who needs 3GB of space and 50GB regular bandwidth was also happy.

[imjjss 0]

I sent support ticket. Nik replied saying they don't see any problem on DNS manager at their end. After I showed him the above picture, he said,

Yes, it is right that once you have set the nameservers of your domain to other nameservers(i.e. other than 4 Default nameservers), then you can not use the Manage DNS features in Xisto - Domains.

But, at my end, I can still click through the "Manage DNS" button, and add records. I am not sure it's a bug on their website, or it's an non-strick rule that not need to be applied.
My free web hosting site provide DNS manager, but, yes, it's a big loss if give up Xisto's DNS manager.

Your domain is with Xisto and your web hosting also at another place. Seems your Xisto's DNS manager keep working still. So, maybe mine will still working as well.

Yes, it's a wise choice to share VPS hosting among friends. Everybody get what he need without wasting resrouces. Your site loads very fast, I see the benefit.