Domian name and webhosting

DevilWAH

If I have a domain name resisted with one company, and I want to host a site on another companies service.

Can I do this or do I need to transfer the name over to the second company?

ajmatson

Yes you just need to either transfer completely the domain, or point the records to the new name servers supplied by the second company. If you transfer the domain the new company may or may not charge you but if they do they usually will renew it for another year for you

Forsaken_GA

The short answer is no, you don't have to transfer the domain.

As long as the domain registrar will allow you to modify what the authoritative DNS servers are for the domain, you can use any provider you want. My own domain has been through several iterations, so I'll use my own examples:

#1 - Godaddy. I originally registered a domain through them years ago and used to pay them 5 bucks a month for cheap web hosting. They controlled the DNS and the webserver.

#2 - I went to work for a web hosting provider who provided me with my own web hosting resources as part of my benefits package. I cancelled my Godaddy web hosting account, but the domain was still registered there. Rather than move the domain registration somewhere else, I just modified the authoritative DNS servers to point to my employers. Once that change went through, I was able to use all of my employers tools for DNS and not interface with Godaddy at all.

#3 - I left the web hosting company for a job which does not provide me web hosting resources, hence I had to move everything. Rather than move everything back to Godaddy, I now lease a VPS from Linode.com, which I setup as my web/email server. I moved the authoritative DNS servers back to Godaddy, who has a web GUI for modifying DNS records, and just point the required records to my VPS's IP at Linode.com.

At some point I may setup my VPS to be authoritative for my domain, at which point I'll need to register the IP's with my registrar and then I can point authoritative DNS at them.

At no point in this process have I had to fiddle with my domain registration record beyond changing the authoritative DNS servers, so no, you do not need to move the domain registration unless you have a really pressing need to do so.

Your DNS services and your web hosting services are usually two different things, and alot of folks get that confused.

DevilWAH

I was checking this out last night and its is as simple as I thought it should be in the first place.

Rather than move the name servers over, I want to keep this with Zen as they have great DNS admin tools.

So I can just point a single host name record over to the new hosting solution.

Two hosting solutions so far have told me that once I sign up they can tell me the ip/host that the record would need to point to. Strange how the first one I asked told me I had to move the name to be registered through them!!

So I can as I wanted keep my domain registered with Zens nameservers, while pointing to multiply hosting solutions.

I suppose hosting compinies want you to move the domain to them to get the extra cash, so don't make clear you are allowed to do this.

Does any one know if it is possible to rent names direct from the ICANN, rather than through a 3rd party? It's not that I actuly want to do it, just wondering if it is possible?

Forsaken_GA

DevilWAH wrote: »

I suppose hosting compinies want you to move the domain to them to get the extra cash, so don't make clear you are allowed to do this.

It depends on the company. My former employer didn't charge anything for DNS hosting, it was value added. The only rules we had were that we would not point a second level domain A record or www to an IP off of our network, any other third level domain was fair game.

We *strongly* encouraged our customers to point the authoritative name servers to us. Had nothing to do with money, had everything to do with ease of administration. Customer could tell us what they wanted, and we could do it.

If DNS wasn't pointed to us, and the customer wanted to do something like change their email over to Google Apps, we told them change the DNS over to us and we'll take care of it, or you'll need to contact whoever is hosting the DNS for support (we were NOT about to figure out how to navigate another companies website, and then change information with that company on behalf of a customer, that's just a big bunch of liability incursion we could live without).

After a few incidents of this, most customers were ok with pointing the DNS to us (though with some registrars, just changing the authoritative DNS servers involves a fair amount of voodoo)

DevilWAH

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

It depends on the company. My former employer didn't charge anything for DNS hosting, it was value added. The only rules we had were that we would not point a second level domain A record or www to an IP off of our network, any other third level domain was fair game.

We *strongly* encouraged our customers to point the authoritative name servers to us. Had nothing to do with money, had everything to do with ease of administration. Customer could tell us what they wanted, and we could do it.

If DNS wasn't pointed to us, and the customer wanted to do something like change their email over to Google Apps, we told them change the DNS over to us and we'll take care of it, or you'll need to contact whoever is hosting the DNS for support (we were NOT about to figure out how to navigate another companies website, and then change information with that company on behalf of a customer, that's just a big bunch of liability incursion we could live without).

After a few incidents of this, most customers were ok with pointing the DNS to us (though with some registrars, just changing the authoritative DNS servers involves a fair amount of voodoo)

I agree, if you have a single web hosting solution then its a good idea if they control the DNS, but in my case my DNS points all over the place with multiply records. And I am likely to end up with multiply hosting solutions (both online hosting and through company and privatest sites), so like you say I want to keep DNS and hosting two completely separate things.

One company deals with DNS, and the others the hosting.

Forsaken_GA

DevilWAH wrote: »

I agree, if you have a single web hosting solution then its a good idea if they control the DNS, but in my case my DNS points all over the place with multiply records. And I am likely to end up with multiply hosting solutions (both online hosting and through company and privatest sites), so like you say I want to keep DNS and hosting two completely separate things.

One company deals with DNS, and the others the hosting.

Well, like I said, my old company was willing to do any type of DNS changes, with a few restrictions. ie, yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com had to point to an IP on our network, but something like dev.yourdomain.com or vids.yourdomain.com or tickets.yourdomain.com, we were perfectly ok with pointing off our network. And for things like changing MX records to point to something like Google Apps or another third party email provider was fine too.

You're proficient in the use of whoever has your authoritative DNS, so your solution works for you. Believe me when I say that most webmasters (especially adult webmasters) aren't anywhere near that competent, nor are they willing to learn if you take the time to educate them. They just want it working the way they want it working. Now.

My biggest gripe with folks doing their DNS hosting off network was when they'd do something like setup a new domain or a new sub domain that was supposed to be hosted off of our servers, and then they put in a ticket complaining that it doesn't work. Well gee, if you didn't tell us you were creating the subdomains and pointing them towards us, how are we supposed to set the servers up for them? Or when they complain to us that they changed a DNS record and it's still showing the old site, and their authoritative DNS servers have a TTL of 86400, so I had to explain how THAT works, and so on.

So glad I don't have to deal with customers anymore.

DevilWAH

wow moving that site was so easy!!! I hear so many horror stories about moving hosts. That C panel stuff is actually quite good.

I do like to have CLI access, but for your average Jo Blogs, it really makes things simple.

In the end I actuly did go with the same company for hosting and DNS. The only thing I don't quite get is this PArking of the domain? What does that actuly do and can you park a domain at several different hosts?

Forsaken_GA

DevilWAH wrote: »

wow moving that site was so easy!!! I hear so many horror stories about moving hosts. That C panel stuff is actually quite good.

*shudder* cpanel

cpanel is great. Until it breaks. Then you get to have some real fun.

In the end I actuly did go with the same company for hosting and DNS. The only thing I don't quite get is this PArking of the domain? What does that actuly do and can you park a domain at several different hosts?

Parking the domain is basically just pointing the domain servers at some authoritative servers who will serve up an IP that points to a webserver that serves a generic 'this domain parked' (or whatever). There's not anything special involved, it's all just DNS and web server configuration.

msteinhilber

Glad it worked out well. I suppose things have probably changed quite a bit since I was doing it back in the day - but back in 1999 maybe through 2001 I ran into an obscene amount of new clients that would signup for hosting, upset with their current host's track record of uptime and lack of support. Seemed like for a while, especially back then, people would get a domain name, hosting, and perhaps some cookie cutter design by one of the dozens of "web hosting" firms that would pop up almost on an hourly basis. Ran into a fair amount where during the registration process, the host essentially registered the domain as though they were the registrant causing an absolute horror show for the client and me in a lot of cases.

Fortunately that's probably uncommon these days, and registrars have come a long way since then too to make it easier. I personally use Namecheap now, previously used Registerfly and got to participate in the horror show that was the Registerfly fiasco and ultimately lost a handful of domains I couldn't control in any way after calling it a loss having tried for weeks. I let the registrar handle my DNS personally, mostly because I like the DDNS client feature so I can have an A record update from wherever. Doing it that way can be a bit of a pain in the rear if your host isn't good on getting the word out on changes. I just do a simple shared hosting account now since funds are tight, and recently had some downtime for a few days before I noticed it and it turns out they claim to have had a server failure which is fine and dandy but they changed all of the IP's on that server, wonderful huh.

msteinhilber

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

*shudder* cpanel

cpanel is great. Until it breaks. Then you get to have some real fun.

Good thing you're not posting that somewhere else like Webhostingtalk or similar...

Those cpanel fanboys are the control panel equivalent to Mac fanboys

Forsaken_GA

msteinhilber wrote: »

Good thing you're not posting that somewhere else like Webhostingtalk or similar...

Those cpanel fanboys are the control panel equivalent to Mac fanboys

Yeah I know. Quite a few of the guys on Webhostingtalk used to be my customers. The other ones reside on a pair of forums that wouldn't be appropriate to name here hehe

Cpanel is great if you're not doing alot of traffic. If you are, putting a LAMP stack, POP/IMAP, SMTP, *and* authoritative DNS all on one box? Talk about your single points of failure. And of course when a customer grows big enough they don't want to hear about distributing services like with a dedicated mysql box, a dedicated box for mail, and so on. They think it's good enough to just get another CPanel box and move some sites. I've seen so many CPanel boxes die hot flaming death just because some hotlinkers out of asia decided their content was good enough to steal for a few minutes.

It was nice not having to deal with common everyday crap like setting up databases or email addresses or subdomains and the like, but when I saw a ticket from a Cpanel customer, I hated my life, because it meant A) they screwed something up bad enough to warrant my intervention they were going to ask me a really clueless question.