Help setting Custom DNS records when Domain Mapping
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Hi there,
I’m in the process of finishing off a new website I’ve been creating on wordpress.com for the local charity I help out with. It will replace our existing website (hosted elsewhere) which is a bit long in the tooth and not very easy for novices (all of us) to update!
Once the site is ready to go live I’ll be using the Domain Mapping upgrade to map our existing domain name to the new site. In preparation I’ve been looking through the following guide that outlines the process and on the whole it seems relatively straightforward: http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-existing-domain/#instructions-for-mapping-an-existing-domain
One slight ‘complication’ is that our organisational e-mail addresses contain our domain name so I think this means I’ll also need to add some custom DNS records (an MX record I think?) to ensure the existing e-mail service we have in place continues to work post-mapping. This is the one area that scares me a bit as I really don’t know much about this stuff and don’t want to rely on guesswork in case I break something…
Therefore as recommend I sent an e-mail to our domain registrars asking:
“Could you please provide me with the complete MX and/or other DNS records I will need to enter on WordPress.com’s end, so that my email on this domain will continue to function after my name servers have been updated?”They have responded but based on what they have provided I am not entirely clear how I use the info (there seems to be more entries than I was expecting including some Custom A info which I wasn’t expecting) in terms of what I should be entering into the Custom DNS screen.
I have pasted their message below (I’ve de-personalised in case this info is ‘sensitive’ in nature) and wondered if someone would be kind enough to take a look over it and give me some help in terms of what records I need to create?
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MX Records: (I’ve replaced our real name with ‘ourname’)
Subdomain Mail server Priority
mail.ourname.org.uk. 10
* mail.ourname.org.uk. 10Mail A record:
Subdomain Address (I’ve changed the digits)
mail 12.345.67.89
———————————————————-(NB. Our domain name is as above but without the ‘mail.’ pre-fix)
Thanks for your time and any assistance you can offer would be really appreciated!
Warm wishes,
MarkThe blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Afternoon Mark,
Not sure if anyone responded to you yet, however, it’s an easy setup.
Go to Mysites > Upgrades > MyDomains
I trust you have already setup your personalized domain there, next to it should be a ‘Edit’ button, click it and go to ‘Edit DNS’.
Click the dropdown and choose MX record. You’ll notice the fields change below. You have all the information listed above ready, just fill in the blanks.
‘YourBlog.Wordpress.com’ handled by ‘mail.ourname.org.uk’ with priority ’10’ and click save.
Hope this helps.
Jon -
Hi Jon,
Thanks so much for the very fast response.
I’m glad it’s a simple process!
Looking at what you’ve outlined re. the MX record I was thinking along the right lines but the way the info was laid out and the mention of the Mail A record in the reply I got kind of threw me.
We haven’t done any upgrades yet (I’m waiting until a couple of folks have finished reviewing the site) so don’t see the mapped domain name yet (just the free one that WordPress allocated when I set up the site initially).
From the guidance notes and the info you’ve provided though I’m quite comfortable with what I need to do when the time comes.
One thing I do wonder if I could clarify with you though is that for the first entry in the MX record you show an example of ‘YourBlog.Wordpress.com’. I take it because we are mapping an external domain name to the site I should be entering that one (ourname.org.uk) in this field rather than the one that is currently linked to the site (esfifetest.wordpress.com)?
Thanks again Jon & I hope this makes sense.
Best wishes,
Mark -
Sorry in other words the MX record should be set up as follows:
‘ourname.org.uk’ handled by ‘mail.ourname.org.uk’ with priority ’10’
Thanks again.
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Correct. For instance my WordPress blog started as businesstechandinnovation.wordpress.com, however after upgrading to a premium account which allows custom domain names, I’m now blog.businesstechnology.ninja. Using me as an example, and google as my email provider, it would look like this:
‘blog.businesstechnology.ninja’ handled by ‘smtp.google.com’ with priority ’10’
/Jon/
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Hi Jon,
Thank you for the reply and for the very clear explanation. That makes perfect sense.
I really do appreciate all your help!
Take care,
Mark -
Sorry – just to double check but do I need to be doing anything with that Mail A record I was provided with?
Reason I ask is that I came across the following page which I think relates to the same topic (but could be wrong). It mentions that when adding e-mail through another provider “The DNS records will consist of one or more MX records, and often an A record and/or a CNAME record as well” :
http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/add-email/add-other-email/
Thank you!
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You would only need to create an ‘A’ DNS record if your mail server was not already DNS mapped. IE. Mail.Google.com is already mapped, obviously, however if you were to be building a new mail server you would require an A record.
You can verify this by performing an “nslookup mail.servername.com”. If it comes back with nothing, there’s no A record. If you were to provide your exact DNS names I could answer this question in a few seconds.
Feel free to message me directly if you’d like to keep it private, however DNS records are public record.
Hope this helps!
/Jon/ -
Hi Jon,
I wasn’t sure if our DNS information was in the public domain or not but having had a look at the following online nslookup tool I can see that it clearly is.
To give you a clearer picture here are the unedited DNS details I received:
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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
—————————————————Our domain name is sci-scotland.org.uk
Doing a look up on mail.sci-scotland.org.uk produced the following result:
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mail.sci-scotland.org.uk3 hours A 79.170.44.38
Authoritative Nameservers
ns2.mainnameserver.com
ns.mainnameserver.com
———————-So this would indicate that there is an A record. Does that mean that the mail server is already DNS mapped or have I got it the wrong way round?
Thanks again!
Mark -
Mark,
I would have expected your current config with DNS to have both an A record and an MX record as you mentioned before that you are currently receiving mail. However, 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.
A record will contain this information – mail.sci-scotland.org.uk 79.170.44.38 (TTL leave default MS)
-Jon
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Thank you Jon!
I haven’t really been involved in this side of things before now so my understanding is very sketchy. However, as I understand it we pay a ‘re-seller’ (who organises hosting, e-mail, domain renewal and provides some basic IT support for a number of small charities) who in turn arranges the services we require through a single company, Heart Internet. So I guess that would tie in with what you are saying.
We maintain & set up our e-mail accounts by accessing something called ExtendCP and in order to read our e-mails we use a webmail service (www.outitgoes.com), although I think one of the team has some forwarding in place as she can access e-mails via gmail.
If my mention of us using an external service caused any confusion I do apologise. I meant external in the sense that it was external to WP rather than to the company who was hosting our existing website.
Based on what you’ve outlined when I have access to the custom DNS screen I will add both a new MX and A record as follows:
- MX record:
‘sci-scotland.org.uk’ handled by ‘mail.sci-scotland.org.uk’ with priority ’10’
- A record:
‘mail.sci-scotland.org.uk’ points to ‘79.170.44.38’
You added a comment to the A record ‘(TTL leave default MS)’. I’m not sure what this means (apologies again for my ignorance) but can’t see any reference to TTL or MS in the screen grab on this page which shows the fields that can be populated when creating a new A record:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/add-email/add-other-email/
However, I think the gist is what you are saying is that if I do get an option to set TTL I should leave well alone (assuming it is showing a value of MS)?
Thanks again Jon – I really can’t thank you enough for all your help!
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Hi Jon,
Thanks again for the help.
I’m pleased to say that the review of the new website has finally concluded and I’ve been given the go ahead to go live. We’ve decided to hold off until after Xmas before updating the name servers themselves (means we’re on hand if anything doesn’t work as expected) but in preparation I have today started the domain name mapping process by adding our domain name (sci-scotland.org.uk) to WordPress and the DNS co-ordinates you very kindly assisted me with.
I do have a couple of questions though:
Firstly when I added our custom domain name and paid for the domain mapping upgrade I received the following message:
Congratulations! Your blog Sustainable Communities Initiatives at Earthship Fife is now set up to use the domain sci-scotland.org.uk. All that’s left is to change the domain’s settings so it points to your blog.
Change domain name servers
Every domain has “name servers” (sometime called “DNS servers”) that determine what website the domain points to. This can usually be changed from your domain registrar’s website (where you originally registered the domain).To make your domain work with your WordPress.com blog, you will have to change your domain’s name servers to point to WordPress.com’s name servers. On your registrar’s website, remove any existing name servers and add the following instead:
ns1.wordpress.com
ns2.wordpress.comThe change could take several hours to go live. When it does, the domain will start pointing to your WordPress.com blog automatically.
Once the domain is ready, you can come back to this screen and set it as the primary domain for your blog. This will make sci-scotland.org.uk the address that visitors see when visiting your blog. All other domains will redirect to it.Learn more about mapping a domain to your blog.
Email settings
We detected custom email settings on your domain, and automatically imported them. When you update your name servers, your email service will not be interrupted. These are the custom DNS records we imported:mail.sci-scotland.org.uk
While the domain is mapped to WordPress.com, you can edit your DNS records from the Domain Manager, under My Domains.
The one thing that sticks out here is that Step 3 of the domain mapping guide (http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-existing-domain/#instructions-for-mapping-an-existing-domain) indicates that 3 entries require to be added to the name servers:
NS1.WORDPRESS.COM
NS2.WORDPRESS.COM
NS3.WORDPRESS.COMHowever, the confirmation above indicates that only NS1.WORDPRESS.COM & NS2.WORDPRESS.COM require to be added….. Not quite sure which is correct?
We also decided that in order for our existing e-mails service to continue to operate properly post-mapping the following DNS records would require to be created for our custom domain:
MX record: ‘sci-scotland.org.uk’ handled by ‘mail.sci-scotland.org.uk’ with priority ’10’
A record:’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 records,
- including
the MX record we wanted:
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 the other records unchanged) as follows: mail.sci-scotland.org.uk points to 79.170.44.38
So I think that hopefully takes care of the DNS side of things. However, one thing that does concern me is that clicking on the E-mail tab (also within Domain Management) was 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.
Do the DNS (MX & A) records I added take care of this or does it look like there could be a problem?
Thanks in advance!
Mark
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