Domain mapping —Change Name servers, why??
-
I am an IT administrator and have been for years. I set up networks, DNS and all kinds of stuff like that.
I understand how the domain mapping works but if you read the documentation and you host YOUR OWN MU site it says you need to edit your DNS zone and create an A or CNAME record to point your IP address.
The information I am struggling to find is why WordPress.com say that in order to use the domain mapping part of their services you must change your name servers to them?? What is the reason for this?
I mean if I control my own domain and point the A record to their IP address it will achieve the same thing…At least from the documentation I have read. What are the extra steps they must do that you can’t do by yourself but requires them to control your domain? Any ideas…
-
Sorry, you need to head over to http://wordpress.ORG/support/ as that is where self-hosted (and multi-site) wordpress blogs using the software from wordpress.ORG are supported.
These forums are for those hosted here on the wordpress.COM free hosting service and things here work differently.
If you do not know the difference, see this support document: http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/ .
-
@TSP hidden in paragraph three, they are wondering why you can’t use some other method in place of Domain Mapping – and I guess skip paying for Domain Mapping – I have one Domain that I just have a forward on but then the URL is not mask.
Above my pay-grade anyway
-
???? @TSP I am not hosting it myself. As aux said I am specifically asking abotu WordPress.com.
@Aux, thanks but I am not asking whether there is another method to use instead of Domain Mapping, I am asking why you must change the name servers to point to WordPress.com.
-
You said,
and you host YOUR OWN MU site
To me that means you are hosting YOUR OWN MU site.
If you are talking about a blog hosted here, and you own your own domain name that is registered outside of wordpress.com, the DNS records for that domain name HAVE to point to wordpress.COM otherwise when someone puts your domain name into their browser the nameservers will not know to route that request to wordpress.COM and to your blog here.
To get your blog here to show up with your domain name, you have to use the domain mapping here and pay the $$.
You can certainly do a redirect from your domain to your blog URL here, but all that is going to do is send anyone putting your registered domain name into their browser to your blog here, and your blog here is still going to have your wordpress.COM URL (blog.wordpress.com).
-
I think you are reading stuff that does not apply here.
If you own your own domain name, read this: http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/map-existing-domain/ . This has all you need to map your existing domain to your blog here.
-
The only time you would have to mess with create a CNAME record is if you are mapping a subdomain. If you are mapping a top level domain name, you do not do this. You only change the main DNS records to point to wordpress.COM so that people can be directed here and to your blog.
-
@TSP, that sentence says “if you read the documentation and you host YOUR OWN MU…” and the keyword here is IF. I was comparing the two methods. I was saying IF you host your own MU site (maybe I should have but another if in there somewhere) you don’t have to change name servers so why must you for WordPress.com?
Maybe it wasn’t clear. I am not hosting my own MU site but I was saying that if I did then the instructions for doman mapping doesn’t require you to change name servers. And the reason I am comparing the two is because on WordPress.com own site they say that WordPress.com uses the WordPress MU/MS package which means they should function the same except for a few upgrades/tweaks obviously.I am reading stuff that does apply to this.
How do I quote people as well liek you did? -
My guess is that its to prevent the numerous support requests they would get if they just allowed people to point their A records at wordpress from self-hosted domains. Also it gives them the ability to change their own infrastructure without cutting off all the mapped domains.
Of course there is no disadvantage to transferring to WordPress’s name-server – you can control all the MX, TEXT, and CNAME records as you like and it makes it easier for them to do a “quick check” that you are correctly configured. You can change the name-servers back again at any time if you want to use the domain for something else too.
Really this is a non issue, it gives WordPress less of a support headache and doesn’t cause you any problems!
-
That sounds plausible Tandava. I just like to understand things and I couldn’t figure out why they needed to point to WordPress. I did initially think the same as you about the supportability of it but actually changing the name servers across can cause A LOT more problems than just telling someone to point an A record to the wherever your WordPress blog is hosted. If they don’t know what they are doing they can lose all of their DNS records and websites, email etc go down which would have a massive impact on their business.
I also didn’t know you could control your DNS with WordPress, so they have a DNS interface? This would have been the disadvantage for me.Actually I think I have just worked it out myself…It is for none of the above. I knew there would be a specific technical reason for it lol!
This is why:
It is for one reason alone. It is because you are using a domain name ie “example.com”. If you were using a subdomain or hostname ie (www.example.com or test.example.com) you don’t need to set your name servers to WordPress.
You see a domain record is ALWAYS a host (A) record, it can never be a CNAME (you will see why this is important later) but a subdomain/hostname can be either a host (A) or CNAME record.
Host (A) records always point to IP addresses whereas CNAME point to another DNS name.For it to work (with a host (A) record) we would first need to know the IP address of the WordPress.com web server but what you may not know is that most web servers have ONE IP address but they host multiple websites. This is how the WordPress blog sites will be hosted. It will have one IP with 100’s of websites. The web server knows which website to serve to the client by a method called “host headers”. Basically this is the DNS you type in your browser. So when you type site1.wordpress.com it resolves it (via DNS) to the same IP address as site2.wordpress.com but you also pass on the host header of site1.wordpress.com and the web server uses this to serve you that specific site. Without the host header (DNS) name the web server has no way of knowing which website you wish to view. This is how it can run multiple websites.
So bear in mind now that each website will have host headers of site1,2,3,etc.wordpress.com.
If we configure our DNS name servers to point “example.com” to the wordpress IP address it will also send the host header of “example.com”. The problem here is that the web server is expecting site1.wordpress.com so it will fail.
The key is to getting it to work is to send a host header of site1.wordpress.com. This is where CNAME’s come in. If I can create a CNAME for blog.example.com (because remember we can create CNAME’s for sub domains and hosts only) we can set the CNAME to redirect to site1.wordpress.com therefore it sends the correct host header to the site and it works… If we could someone create a CNAME for the domain record (which is not possible) we would never need to change the name servers to WordPress (wordpress have a workaround which I explain later). It is because we cannot redirect the domain record to site1.wordpress.com that the issue arises, because host (A) records resolve IP addresses and don’t redirect. CNAME’s on the other hand do redirect therefore we can redirect the wordpress blog.
Now your next question will be “well why does it work if you change your name servers to WordPress??”
Well someone we must get your domain name to point to the CNAME of site1.wordpress.com and I reckon that WordPress have some sort of hack/tweak in place on their DNS servers that does this. This is the reason you must use their DNS servers, ta da!!
Does anyone use domain mapping here? If so what is your domain name? -
Well someone we must get your domain name to point to the CNAME of site1.wordpress.com and I reckon that WordPress have some sort of hack/tweak in place on their DNS servers that does this. This is the reason you must use their DNS servers, ta da!!
We Volunteer to answer questions that directly pertain to free blogs from and being free hosted by wordpress.com. Your question is not about a wordpress.com free hosted blog. If you want to know what Staff have done with regard to domain mapping here on the wordpress.com platform then why waste time posting here? Why not contact Staff directly by using this link? http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/
-
You seem to be making something that works quite well and easy very complex. Two of my sites are Domain Mapped – click on my name for the link to one of them – the email part was a bit tricky but the basic domain mapping with the change name-servers is quick and easy.
-
The WordPress MU forums have moved to the MultiSite forum on WordPress.org Here is the link > http://wordpress.org/support/forum/multisite
- The topic ‘Domain mapping —Change Name servers, why??’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 