Domain name mapping – could really use some help before updating "name servers"

  • Unknown's avatar
    esfife · Member ·

    Hi all!

    I did have another thread open but it was becoming quite lengthy, so I thought it might be an idea to shelf it and start a new one. I’ve tried to summarise things below and added a couple of questions in the following 2 posts:

      Background


    The charity I help out with has just finished work on a new website that will be hosted on WordPress.com. This will replace our existing website, hosted by a company called Heart Internet and we intend mapping our current domain name ( sci-scotland.org.uk ) to the new site.

    In addition to hosting our website Heart also provide us with our e-mail service, meaning we need to add Custom DNS settings to WordPress to ensure our e-mail still functions post-mapping.

    Now I have to admit to being a complete novice when it comes to domain mapping, DNS settings etc. so have been using the following WP guide: http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-existing-domain/#instructions-for-mapping-an-existing-domain

    As per Step 2 I contacted Heart to ask for the complete MX and/or other DNS records I would need to enter at WP’s end and they provided me with the following:

    MX Records:

    Subdomain Mail server Priority
    mail.sci-scotland.org.uk. 10
    * mail.sci-scotland.org.uk. 10

    Mail A record:

    Subdomain Address

    mail 79.170.44.38

    The mention of an A record confused me a bit as it wasn’t something I was expecting so created this thread to ask for advice: https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/help-setting-custom-dns-records-when-domain-mapping?replies=14

    A fellow forum member, Jon, very kindly agreed to help.

    Jon advised that an A record would only be required if our mail server ( mail.sci-scotland.org.uk ) was currently not mapped. He therefore suggested I perform an “nslookup mail.servername.com” so he could take a look at things.

    I did so and when Jon looked at the results he advised:

    judging by your DNS records you just listed, you are not using another email provider, but your own that you have specified. IE. same domain as your blog except with mail in front of it.

    This means when you point your NS (nameservers) to WordPress to handle your DNS, you will want to create BOTH an A record and an MX record.

    So it was agreed that the following DNS records needed to be added for Step 2:

    MX: sci-scotland.org.uk handled by mail.sci-scotland.org.uk with priority 10
    A: mail.sci-scotland.org.uk points to 79.170.44.38

      Where things are at:


    In preparation for making the site live I have just recently completed Step 1 (add our custom domain & pay for mapping upgrade) and Step 2 (add Custom DNS) as outlined in the domain mapping guide.

    We have arranged for Heart Internet to update our domain’s “name servers” (per Step 3) shortly after the new year break, so we are on hand to check everything is working as intended.

      The current issue(s)

    Whilst completing Steps 1 & 2 I noticed a couple of on-screen messages that concern me slightly.

    They may be things that can be ignored but to be on the safe side I feel it best to get a second opinion – perhaps a Happiness Engineer or Staff member as they were systems generated?

    (Details in the following posts)

    Thanks for reading and for any help you can provide!

    Best wishes,
    Mark @ SCI

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

  • Unknown's avatar
    esfife · Member ·

    Issue 1

    According to Step 3 of the domain mapping guide we will require to update our domain’s “name servers” to show the following:
    NS1.WORDPRESS.COM
    NS2.WORDPRESS.COM
    NS3.WORDPRESS.COM

    However, whilst looking at the Edit DNS screen for this domain I am presented with the following message which makes no mention of NS3.WORDPRESS.COM:

    Your nameservers need to be set to NS1.WORDPRESS.COM and NS2.WORDPRESS.COM for these DNS records to work. If you have already updated the nameservers you can ignore this message; it will stop appearing soon.

    Should our ‘name servers’ be pointing towards NS1, NS2 & NS3.WORDPRESS.COM or just NS1 & 2?

    Thanks!

  • Unknown's avatar
    esfife · Member ·

    Issue 2

    In order for our existing e-mail service to work properly post-mapping it was decided that I should use ‘Edit DNS’ to add the following MX & A records to our custom domain:

    MX: sci-scotland.org.uk handled by mail.sci-scotland.org.uk with priority 10

    A: mail.sci-scotland.org.uk points to 79.170.44.38

    Going into the ‘Edit DNS’ tab within Domain Management I could see that WP had already created the following 4 records, including the MX record I was planning to add:

    A sci-scotland.org.uk handled by WordPress.com
    NS sci-scotland.org.uk handled by WordPress.com
    CNAME *.sci-scotland.org.uk handled by WordPress.com
    MX sci-scotland.org.uk mail handled by mail.sci-scotland.org.uk. with priority 10

    Therefore, all I did was add an additional A record (leaving all other records unchanged) as follows: mail.sci-scotland.org.uk points to 79.170.44.38

    So I think that takes care of the DNS side of things. However, one thing that does concern me is that wen when I clicked on the E-mail tab (also within Domain Management) I got the following message:

    This domain currently has custom mail servers defined in its DNS settings. This means that WordPress.com Email Forwarding is not available for this domain, and that you should manage your email with your email provider.

    The email servers for this domain are:
    mail.sci-scotland.org.uk.

    Having already added the MX & A record mentioned above is this something I can now ignore or is it indicative of a problem?

    Thanks once again!

  • Unknown's avatar
    auxclass · Member ·

    Flagged for the staff to help

    NS1, NS2, NS3 is better but NS1 & NS2 should work just fine (I think I have just 1 & 2 set for my mapped domain)

  • Unknown's avatar
    esfife · Member ·

    @ auxclass

    I really appreciate the response & for you flagging this for staff help.

    I’ve provisionally requested that Heart Internet point our name servers to NS1,2 & 3 but can change that if the WP staff feel NS1 & 2 is a better fit.

    Thanks again & take care,
    Mark

  • Unknown's avatar
    jeremeylduvall · Member ·

    Hi Mark,

    So I think that takes care of the DNS side of things. However, one thing that does concern me is that wen when I clicked on the E-mail tab (also within Domain Management) I got the following message:

    That message you mention can be safely ignored. It pertains to email forwarding, which is an option for users that don’t want to setup a third-party email address like you have.

    I’ve provisionally requested that Heart Internet point our name servers to NS1,2 & 3 but can change that if the WP staff feel NS1 & 2 is a better fit.

    Either should work! Let’s go with NS1, 2, & 3.

    Let me know if your email address does not work correctly after you’ve changed the name servers!

  • Unknown's avatar
    esfife · Member ·

    Hi Jeremy,

    Thanks so much for the quick response & for taking the time to have a look over things for me.

    That message you mention can be safely ignored. It pertains to email forwarding, which is an option for users that don’t want to setup a third-party email address like you have.

    Thanks for the clear explanation and good to know it isn’t an issue for us. That’s a weight off!

    Either should work! Let’s go with NS1, 2, & 3.

    Let me know if your email address does not work correctly after you’ve changed the name servers!

    Sounds good – NS1, 2 & 3 it is!

    Fingers crossed everything will all go smoothly but if we do hit any problems with our e-mails not working correctly I’ll let you know.

    The name servers are scheduled to be updated Friday 9th Jan (allows the weekend for propagation), so probably best I mark this topic as ‘resolved’ for now. I can always re-open it if we do have any problems when the time comes.

    Thanks again & have fun over the festive season!

    Mark

  • Unknown's avatar
    jeremeylduvall · Member ·

    You as well Mark! Good luck with the name severs changes. If you run into any issues, please do give us a shout!

  • Unknown's avatar
    esfife · Member ·

    Hi Jeremy.

    Thanks again for all the help.

    We kicked things off today and the new website is now live. Had expected a bit more downtime but was surprised at just how quickly it all happened.

    I’m pleased to say that things seem to have gone very smoothly indeed and our e-mails accounts are still working fine, which was my biggest concern…phew.

    There is however one things that puzzles me slightly. It’s probably more more a case of ignorance on my part than anything else (I don’t profess to know a lot about this stuff) but I’ll ask all the same!

    The domain name we mapped over to WP is sci-scotland.org.uk and prior to mapping this was being pointed towards our old (at least as of today) website. On my browser that website displayed our url as ‘www.sci-scotland.org.uk’ and that is also how it appears on google searches etc.

    However, when I look at the new WP website the url is shown as ‘sci-scotland.org.uk’ in my browser without the ‘www.’ pre-fix.

    The only thing that has changed in the interim is our name servers were changed to point towards WordPress (NS1, 2 &3).

    I guess my first question would be why has the ‘www.’ pre-fix disappeared and does it matter e.g. will its absence mean we start from scratch in terms of our search engine rankings as a result of the new website having a different url?

    If it is an issue is there anything I or our registrars should have done in advance or can do now to add it back on?

    Thanks Jeremy & I hope that all makes sense. If not just shout.

    Take care,
    Mark

  • Unknown's avatar
    auxclass · Member ·

    http://sci-scotland.org.uk/ – is the correct URL (no “www”) here

    www is old internet when things were on different servers – nobody did anything wrong – nothing to change if someone enters http://www.sci-scotland.org.uk/ they will be sent to http://sci-scotland.org.uk/ – so no need to change the business cards or stationary until the next natural order

  • Unknown's avatar
    esfife · Member ·

    Thanks for stopping by again auxclass and for the helpful explanation. I guess the usage of www on our old website as that most definitely old school!

    I did notice that when typing in http://www.sci-scotland.org.uk/ I was still correctly taken to http://sci-scotland.org.uk/ , so as you say all our stationery etc. is safe to use.

    In terms of search engines is this a non-issue too?

    Thanks again!

  • Unknown's avatar
    auxclass · Member ·

    Yes it’s a non issue for search engines – they will index the URL without the www but the search results themselves will not be affected – also if you have links to the base blog (whatever.wordpress.com) they will automatically go the new mapped domain –

  • Unknown's avatar
    esfife · Member ·

    I noticed that there is an option within WP to link to Google Webmaster for additional stats etc. Looks interesting so I verified the new website by pasting some meta info to WP.

    However, when I look at the site on the main summary screen Google has an amber exclamation mark beside our site with the following comment: “Severe health issues are found on your site”.

    Clicking on this message takes me to another screen that lists the following 3 items:

    – No Malware Detected (green tick)
    – No important pages have been removed (green tick)
    – Some important page is blocked by robots.txt (amber exclamation mark)

    Clicking on the robots.txt message takes me to another page that runs a robots.txt tester that displays the following:

    # This file was generated on Fri, 09 Jan 2015 16:44:21 +0000
    # If you are regularly crawling WordPress.com sites, please use our firehose to receive real-time push updates instead.
    # Please see http://en.wordpress.com/firehose/ for more details.

    Sitemap: http://sci-scotland.org.uk/sitemap.xml
    Sitemap: http://sci-scotland.org.uk/news-sitemap.xml

    User-agent: IRLbot
    Crawl-delay: 3600

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /next/

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /mshots/v1/

    # har har
    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /activate/

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /wp-login.php

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /related-tags.php

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /public.api/

    # MT refugees
    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /cgi-bin/

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /wp-admin/

    The only thing that is flagged with an amber exclamation mark is the line ‘Crawl-delay: 3600’. Hovering over it brings up a pop-up saying ‘Rule ignored by googlebot’.

    I believe that WordPress automatically takes care of search engine indexing so would imagine that the file has been set up this way intentionally and not something I’d want (or most likely have authorisation) to dabble with.

    Is this a genuine problem or more of an advisory thing to tell me that although google bot found a rule deterring bots it ignored it, so the site /pages will still be picked up and indexed by google?

    Sorry for all the q’s!!

  • Unknown's avatar
    esfife · Member ·

    @ Auxclass.

    Sorry was typing up the above at the same time as you responded. That’s good news about the search engines thanks!

    Just need to figure out if the google thing is a genuine problem or not now (sadly it’s like a whole new language to me). If it’s not then I promise I’ll hold my tongue and stop asking daft questions for a while ;-)

  • Unknown's avatar
    auxclass · Member ·

    some directories to be disallowed is normal – the log-in one for instance

    Do you have the setting to allow search engines to crawl your site?

    Dashboard >> Setting >> Reading >> Allow search engines –

    not sure what the warning means but @jeremeylduvall should check this thread and should be able to help with that question

    you are correct – WordPress.COM takes care of the search stuff and you need to do nothing except put great content on your site – and each Post you make – your site calls up search engines and says “new content – stop by!!”

  • Unknown's avatar
    auxclass · Member ·

    Your site seems to be indexed

    https://www.google.com/search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fsci-scotland.org.uk%2F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=site:http:%2F%2Fsci-scotland.org.uk%2F

    Also if you look in Webmaster tools you will see how many items are indexed for your site

  • Unknown's avatar
    esfife · Member ·

    Ah, that’s fine. If it’s just ignoring directories rather than pages that would make sense.

    When I was updating things yesterday I did change site visibility via the Dashboard to “Allow search engines to index this site” so there should be nothing to hinder search engines from crawling it.

    I’ll have a word with our in-house blogger and make sure that she posts up lots of great content on a regular basis! Our old website was a bit of an inflexible beast which seriously impacted on how often we could post updates but WordPress is just so much simpler and quicker to use.

    I’ll keep tjis thread open for now so that Jeremy can take a look at that warning message but hopefully it’ll not be anything to worry about.

    Thanks again auxclass – I really can’t thank you enough for your help & patience :)

    Take care,
    Mark

  • Unknown's avatar
    auxclass · Member ·

    When I was updating things yesterday I did change site visibility via the Dashboard to “Allow search engines to index this site”

    The message might have been left over from when you had the search engines discouraged. If you publish a new Post that will tell the search engines you are open for business again

    You be welcome & good luck

  • Unknown's avatar
    esfife · Member ·

    Thanks!

    I’m not too sure. Could just be a case of bedding in as you say but hopefully @jermeylduvall will have a better idea.

    The robots.txt that the google tester was looking at did seem to be the latest one (created 9th jan @ 16:44) and it indicated that it had last checked on 10th January, which is a day after I made the site visible to search engines.

    I momentarily made the site private again just now which resulted in the live robots.txt file being changed to:

    # This file was generated on Sun, 11 Jan 2015 11:01:33 +0000
    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /

    So it looks like google should be getting a “we’re open for business. come in and have a look” when it stops by….I think.

    I can also see crawl stats in google webmaster in the form of a graph. there are peaks & troughs but on 9th Jan (the day we started the mapping) the crawl count fell to 1 and there is nothing plotted on the graph for yesterday 10th Jan.

    Whilst we were getting the new website ready another of our volunteers had been posting updates on a temporary WP blog they’d created and I have to say that comparing that sites robots.txt against ours there is nothing that jumps out (same delay etc.) aside from the sitemap urls being different, which you’d expect.

    Hopefully something that’ll sort itself out shortly or once we get a bit of posting activity going. Fingers crossed!

  • Unknown's avatar
    esfife · Member ·

    Quick update.

    Been back into google webmaster and I’m no longer getting the “Severe health issues are found on your site” when I log-in.

    It does still show the alert beside crawl count when I go into the robots.txt tester page but at least it seems happier with the site now.

    Crawl count stats haven’t changed and no entry for yesterday or today (but may only be reported at the end of the day) so I’ll keep an eye on that over the next few days and see if the graph is still flat-lining or if we have a trace again.

    Hopefully a good sign though.

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