What are Domain Name Settings (DNS)?

What is DNS?

DNS stands for Domain Name Settings.

DNS is the internet's way of connecting human readable domain names with computer readable addresses.

Technically, this means your DNS will connect your domain to your server via an IP address, or multiple IP addresses.

You can think of this similar to a phone book; DNS servers maintain a directory of domain names and their addresses. When you type 'cloudshop.net.au' into your browser, your browser will first query a DNS server - this server will respond with the IP address (location) of the website - and your browser will ask that server for the website files.

When you update your domain to CloudShop's name servers, you are telling browsers to ask CloudShop's servers where your website is. If your website is hosted with CloudShop, our DNS servers will point your domain to your website hosting.

DNS can be confusing. There are other records, what are they?

What are Nameservers?

Nameservers will point your domain to the company which hosts your DNS settings. Normally these will be the company which hosts your website, sometimes these will be the company where you registered your domain name. It is recommended to use four nameservers located in multiple locations, preferably multiple countries.

By the way - at CloudShop, you can use the following nameservers:

ns1.cloudshop.net.au
ns2.cloudshop.net.au
ns3.cloudshop.net.au
ns4.cloudshop.net.au 

What are A Records?

A records point your domain name to a specific server, using an IP address. If you are adding new nameservers often your host will have A records setup automatically. This is the case with all our cPanel plans.

You can use A records (for example, within the cPanel advanced DNS tool) to point a website at a specific server, or point a subdomain at a specific server.

What are CNAME records?

CNAME records point your domain name to another domain name, or hostname. Unlike A records, CNAME records do not use IP addresses.

An example would be pointing the subdomain example.cloudshop.net.au to server001.cloudshop.net.au, or support.example.com to externalsupport.example-company.com

What are MX Records?

MX records point your domain name to an email server. If email is being sent to your domain, the sender will look for your MX record.

For example, if you host your email with Microsoft Exchange, you may have to update your MX record to exchange.cloudshop.net.au