Help with Website Domain/Domain Records

[TRAPTRAP]

I have a few questions about Web Domains. I thought someone here would be able to help.

My first question, I know most domains, like GoDaddy cost around $10 yearly? Is that $10 or so the only fee I have to pay to own the domain until I have to pay again the next year? There isn't any fee per clicks on my sites domain by visitors that will cost me thousands of dollars a month is there?

My second question, if any one could give me a VERY simple description of what DOMAIN RECORDS are, and how to update them.

MX, CNAME, A, TXT, I think I need to know all about, and be able to understand. At the moment I have little to no idea what those are. So if it can be broken down SIMPLY?

Here's the link to the WIX site I'm using, and their tutorial page on it. They only speak in a manner as if I already know what they are, though. They don't help a lot.

http://www.wix.com/support/html5/domains/managing-your-domain-records/

Thanks to anyone who can help.

[liquibyte]

You really don't need to know what all those are until you need to and by then, you'll know what they are.  Domain registration cost depends on the TLD, .com, .org, and .net are $9.95/year I believe.  Most registrars have a control panel for your domain name that can be used to set things like the DNS servers, MX, CNAME etc.  A Google search will really tell you more than you need to know.  The money yearly that you speak of is only for the domain registration and not hosting.  You can get free hosts but unless you're just running a personal site I wouldn't recommend that.  Prices and service for paid hosting vary but you can generally get decent enough service for around $100/year.  Now the big catch.  If you have a high traffic site it's going to cost a lot more than that.  If you're going to set up something commercial I'd recommend getting the best hosting you can afford, and no, it's not cheap.

[mariush]

I would recommend not using godaddy to buy domains.   I personally use namecheap.com and I consider them very good, but you can use anything you want.

Domain prices vary, the common ones ( com, net, org) cost around $10 a year, and you have to pay each year to keep the domain active, like a subscription.  Some domains (I think .info is a good example but I'm not sure ) are cheaper in the first year, then they're more expensive.

Think of a domain records like entries in an address book.  Let's say you bought  domain.com  ... each record tells something about the domain you bought. 

A records tells web browsers were to go to access content... for example you can say  people who type blog.domain.com should connect to a server with the IP  to 1.2.3.4 , and people who type mail.domain.com  should connect to a server with another IP.

MX is a special type o record, which is dedicated to mail ... for example when I send you an email at  traptrap@domain.com,  my email server looks up the domain.com records and picks the MX record which tells my email server to which server to connect to, and other things.

See this page for some more info, there's also other pages there that are useful :  https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/579/10/which-record-type-option-should-i-choose-for-the-information-im-about-to-enter

[ampdoctor]

I would echo what liquidbyte has to say with a caveat. mysite.cheezyfreebiehosting dot com makes your business look shady at best. Stay away from it unless you just want to mess around with coding dummy websites, sharing family photos or whatever. 

Here's my caveat. $100/year is probably on the high side. $5/month isn't out of the ordinary at all. Just go with economy hosting through a decent company that has excellent up time and don't worry about deluxe packages or anything like that. Think about it. Do you really need multiple websites, 50 email addresses, dedicated virtual servers, ssl certificates, etc? Unless your enterprise is massive you're paying for services you'll never use. If that is the case, you'll most likely hire out your web design services/maintenance to somebody who does it professionally. As long as it has decent storage space, supports mySql, php, and linux you're good to go...which is about 99.9% of the hosting out there.

If you're new to the whole website thing, don't get too tangled up with the terminology. Again, just make sure your host has live phone support from somebody NOT in Bangladesh. They'll babysit you through the whole setup process and keep things relatively painless. Oh, and don't buy all the extra crap they're bound to want to tag onto the service. They add up quick and rarely do they pay for themselves.

[Things]

Only DNS records most people have to worry about for a basic site are A records, and MX record if you're dealing with emails too.

Both of which you set up on the domain providers configuration pages. A records simply point your domain(s) to your servers IP, MX records the same for email.

You could have site1.yourdomain.com point to your main server, but maybe if you had some more resource intensive stuff on your site hosted somewhere else, you could point page2.yourdomain.com to another server. Alternatively don't use subdomains at all and just point *.yourdomain (and www. if it isn't included by default) to your server IP.

[TRAPTRAP]

I'm using WIX.COM to build my site. Hosting is $15 a month, which is affordable to me, so in that case the domain ALONE should be about $10-$15? By the way, I'm not using GoDaddy, it was for example. WIX offers domains, which are cheap. Though, if anyone has any good alternatives for a domain site, it's welcome.

I'm still having a bit of trouble with the records. I make be making it harder in my head than it really is, though.

I s it I just have to put my DOMAIN/EMAIL etc. into the records? What happens if I mess that up, will my site be unfindable?

[Timmay]

Every domain server is different. You have a URL purchase which is priced based on interest and history, you then select of bandwidth level depending on expected interest which can be reduced or raised depending on contract and interest, then you have maintenance fees, hosting fees, etc. All of this can range from cheap to expensive depending on a lot of variables. My wife has a photography portfolio site that I wrote for here through 1&1 and since its just photos, info and not much else the total cost is pretty cheap. If she was using a lot of bandwidth that would go up and if she had a lot of visitors using that bandwidth then it would also mean changes in level of subscription which most domain hosts go by (bandwidth pretty much). So since she is a niche photographer and has maybe a few thousand a month her fees total are low and I maintain it for her so zero cost on that side (except sex and BLT sandwiches lol). If I was you I would in-cart a lot of packages to balance what you want. domain, bandwidth and features. And then go from there to see what you need.

[made2hack]

My 2 cents.

DON'T USE GODADDY!!!! DO NOT USE GODADDY!!! I REPEAT, WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT USE GODADDY!!!


Namecheap is fine as @mariush said, I personally use 1and1.

JUST REMEMBER, DO NOT USE GODADDY!!!! Have I said that?

Domain registration is the price of your domain that you pay every year, or pay once for more years. Then you will need hosting (this is where your files will reside on the web).

Most hosting companies already provide the DNS Services you need (IE A, CNAME, MX Records) so when you choose a hosting account, and set it up say for www.example.com, the hosting package will already configure your DNS entries for you.

For clarity, A Record is the one which attaches an IP address to your TLD (top level domain).

So, for example, an A Record will state example.com        TTL (the time to live) ie 84000 the Type (A in this case) and the DATA (say 192.168.1.1)

This tells the DNS authorities that when someone types in example.com, it should forward to 192.168.1.1.

A CNAME record, is additional subdomains on your example.com. Please note, www is a subdomain. So, a CNAME record will have something like www added to example.com.

An MX record is your mail (read, email) redirection which tells, again, any mail sent to @example.com to forward it to your server.

But, again this will be usually automatically created by the domain hosting package you choose.

I recommend Hostgator for hosting, as you can get a 4$ / month package, or a 6$ /month package, both will be sufficient.

[liquibyte]

I'm going to chime in with a bit of additional advice here.  I've seen recommendations to stay away from godaddy by a couple of people and I'm going to have to agreee with that.  I will have to add from personal experience to stay away from 1&1 however.  For decent cheap hosting the market is saturated and the problem with the review sites is that they are highly skewed.

Here's the deal.  Whoever you host with DO NOT register your domain there as well.  I repeat, register your domain with a separate company than your hosting company.  Secondly, find a registrar that is not a reseller.  Deal with the guy at that top, Enom for example.

You can host anywhere you like but if you end up unhappy and want to move things, having a separate registrar makes life very easy on that front and prohibits bad actors from doing anything untoward with your domains.

I'm going to give you a few recommendations.  If you want to try out a host first, you want one that offers a free package so you can see if it's a good fit first.  I've set up many of these and have run my sites on them for years or sometimes just weeks depending on the experience.  Free hosts can be a pain if the owners don't run things right and customer service can be basically nil.  If you know what you're doing this can be a boon if uptimes are good.  Some free hosts don't allow you to use your own domain as well and if I remember right, WIX is one of them.  There's also no reason to have free hosting with their ads on your pages, there's too many that offer hosting without them.  Then you have the issue of email on the domain.  Some offer email, some don't due to spam policies etc.  My recommendation there is that if you need to set up a commercial site, pay for hosting and you'll have email otherwise just use your webmail.  Dealing with spam on your end can be a chore and unless they let you set up your own software it's just not worth it, not to mention how hard it is to actually set up.

Here are two that I recommend. Freehostia.com has an excellent free option with one caveat, no SMTP email sending until you have a paid account, you can recieve mail though.  https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/]Nearlyfreespeech.net[/url] has the most excellent option that you only pay for what you use, bandwidth included.

Take my experience into account here which is also my disclaimer, I've only been doing this since the mid 90's.  Here's the text from Enom's help pages on the things you're confusing yourself about.

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DNS records translate meaningful domain names into IP addresses used to identify the actual location of devices on the Internet. These host records can be used to direct your domain name to your web server’s IP address (via A or AAAA records) or specify which servers handle email delivery for your domain (via MX records) for example. See below for a full list of supported record types:

A (Address) Record

    An A record tells a DNS server what specific IP address to map for a host name. It is the most common type of DNS record. An A record is typically used to direct your domain name, for example [url=http://www.yourname.com]www.yourname.com[/url], to a web server.

    Example A record format: 98.124.253.253
AAAA (IPv6 Address) Record

    An AAAA (or “quad-A”) record is similar to an A record, except that it maps a hostname to an IPv6 address. An A record specifies an IPv4 address, which is currently the dominant Internet Protocol version. In 1998 the IETF designated IPv6 as the successor to version 4 mainly for its much larger amount of available addresses, which provides flexibility in allocated addresses and routing traffic and prevents address exhaustion as more and more hosts are connecting to the Internet and available IPv4 addresses are running out.

    IPv6 addresses are normally written as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits, where each group is separated by a colon.

    Example IPv6 format: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334

    To shorted the writing and presentation of addresses, several simplifications to the notation are permitted.

        Any leading zeros in a group may be omitted; thus, the example becomes: 2001:db8:85a3:0:0:8a2e:370:7334

        One or any number of consecutive groups of 0 value may be replaced with two colons (::): 2001:db8:85a3::8a2e:370:7334


    Optional section

        This substitution with double-colon may be performed only once in an address, because multiple occurrences would lead to ambiguity. For example, the illegal address notation 2001::FFD3::57ab, could represent any of the following:

        2001:0:0:0:0:FFD3:0:57ab

        2001:0:0:0:FFD3:0:0:57ab

        2001:0:0:FFD3:0:0:0:57ab

        2001:0:FFD3:0:0:0:0:57ab
        Using the double-colon reduction the localhost (loopback) address, fully written as 0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0001, may be reduced to ::1 and the undetermined IPv6 address (zero value), i.e., all bits are zero, is simply ::.

        For example, the addresses below are all valid and equivalent:

        2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:0000:1428:57ab

        2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000::1428:57ab

        2001:0db8:0:0:0:0:1428:57ab

        2001:0db8:0:0::1428:57ab

        2001:0db8::1428:57ab

        2001:db8::1428:57ab

CNAME (Alias) Record

    A CNAME (or Cononical Name) record tells DNS that this hostname is an alias of another domain name. This hostname then ends up resolving to the same IP address as the target domain name.

    This helps if you manage multiple hostnames on the same or even different domain names that will allways point to the same IP address. If you specify all of these hostnames as CNAME records that point to one host with an A record, then if you need to update that IP address the master A record is all that needs to be updated, and all hostnames referring to it via a CNAME will automatically resolve to the new address.

    Restrictions

        A CNAME must have no other records of other types (MX, A, etc). This is very important especially with the @ record. If you specify a CNAME record type for the @ hostname, then email will not route properly for this domain name.
        CNAME records that point to other CNAME records should be avoided. It is possible to create infinite loops and other error conditions.
        Other DNS record types that point to other names, such as NS, MX, PTR, and SRV should never point to a CNAME.

    Example CNAME record format: www    CNAME    [url=http://www.myothername.com]www.myothername.com[/url]
URL Redirect record

    URL Redirect is not a native DNS record type. Specifying URL Redirect for a hostname creates an underlying A record that directs the name to our URL Forwarding servers. These servers then perform an HTTP 301 redirect to the URL you specify in the address field. You can specify only the domain name to go to, or a full path to a specific file.

    Example URL Redirect record formats:

    www    URL Redirect    http://www.someotherdomainname.com/

    blog    URL Redirect    http://weblogs.asp.net/pwilson/

    Note that after redirecting, the target URL will show in the browser’s URL text box.

    If a user specifies a path or filename after the domain name when requesting a host that is URL Redirected, that path information is intelligently appended to the destination URL. In the example above, if a user had entered “www.myname.com/someotherpage.html” in a browser, this would redirect to “http://www.someotherdomainname.com/someotherpage.html”.

    Advanced users: The default HTTP code returned for the redirect is 302 ("HTTP 302 Found"). To change the code to 301 ("HTTP 301 Moved Permanently"), add the parameter "redir_mode=301" to your redirect address. To change the example above to use a 301 code instead of the default, you would use: http://www.someotherdomainname.com/?redir_mode=301. If the destination URL already has querystring parameters, use the ampersand ("&") instead of question mark ("?").
URL Frame record

    URL Frame is not a native DNS record type. Specifying URL Redirect for a hostname creates an underlying A record that directs the name to our URL Forwarding servers. These servers then output an HTML page using a frame to fill the page. The contents of the destination URL are then loaded into that frame. The advantage of this over URL Redirect is that the original URL entered by the user remains displayed in the browser’s URL text box.

    Example URL Frame record formats:

    www    URL Frame    http://www.someotherdomainname.com/

    blog    URL Frame    http://weblogs.asp.net/pwilson/

    Note that after redirecting, the target URL will show in the browser’s URL text box.

    If a user specifies a path or filename after the domain name when requesting a host that is URL Redirected, that path information is intelligently appended to the destination URL. In the example above, if a user had entered “www.myname.com/someotherpage.html” in a browser, this would redirect to “http://www.someotherdomainname.com/someotherpage.html”.
TXT Record

    TXT records were originally intended for human-readable text in a DNS record. This record type is now used as machine-readable data for several services, such as Opportunistic encryption, Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Email (DKIM), DNS-SD, etc.

    Our system will accept any text in the address field of a TXT record. If you are setting up a data string intended for use with a specific service, such as SPF, you should use a utility to generate a string for you so there are no errors (for example [url=http://www.openspf.org]www.openspf.org[/url] has an SPF builder tool).

MX records are DNS records that control which email server your domain name resolves to.  Your domain must be using our DNS servers in order to set MX records on our system (see How to Change Domain Nameservers (DNS)).

Please note that making changes to your email settings could result in an outage of email service.

To manage your MX record, please do the following:

    Select the menu option Domains > My Domains.
    From your domain list, click on the domain name you wish to manage.
    Click Email Settings or from the Manage Domain drop-down list, select Email Settings.

If you wish to add custom MX records for your domain, change the Service Selection to "User (MX)".  This is for advanced users who wish to use third-party email service from other providers.  Please enter the MX records in the following format:

Host Name Address Pref
@ mxin.name-services.com 10

If your domain were example.com, the above records would point all mail delivered to @example.com to the mail server mxin.name-services.com.  The Pref field is also known as Priority.  This is used to prioritize mail servers if you are entering more than one.

[amyk]

...so what does this have to do with electronics? Are you going to host a webserver on an Arduino with it?

[TRAPTRAP]

So that I'm clear, I'M NOT using GoDaddy, it was the only one that I knew the name of. I have NO plans to use it, it was an example, as I already said.

WIX does have hosting for a monthly fee, ad removal and lets me use my own domain. MORE examples are appreciated though.

I think I've got the hang of the Domain Records. Again, like I said, I thought they were a bigger deal than they really were.