custom A record when DNS points elsewhere

  • Unknown's avatar
    shanthiachaleshwar · Member ·

    We have a custom domain purchased through WordPress.com for our WordPress.com website which has been live for a while, and we want to host email for the custom domain on my Hostgator hosting (example: (email visible only to moderators and staff)). I have set this up at my end (in Hostgator) and as far as I understand, I just need to point the DNS to the Hostgator hosting, change the mx record, and then point the A record back to WordPress.com, so the site is still hosted on WordPress.com. Is this correct? When I changed the DNS in WordPress.com’s domain management area, I suddenly could no longer edit the A record. Is there a way around this? And is this the correct approach?
    Thanks in advance for any help, and apologies if I haven’t explained things well.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    There’s two ways to do this.

    1) Point the name servers to Hostgator, and add A records with our IPs to point the domain back here. You’ll need to add the A-records on Hostgator’s end, as your DNS will then be hosted with them, not with us, and you wont’ be able to make any changes on our end.

    2) Get the MX records you need to use from Hostgator, and add them to the DNS on our end. We recommend this option rather than pointing the DNS to a different provider, especially if the domain is already registered and hosted with us.

    Custom DNS

    I don’t see a domain in your account. If you’d like me to help you with adding the records on our end, please provide the records and the domain in question. I’ll also need the request to come from the username that was used to register the domain.

  • The topic ‘custom A record when DNS points elsewhere’ is closed to new replies.