Website direction

[SQLScholar]

Hey all,

I am a little confused here.

A friend of mine is going to host my website (not email or DNS or anything else).

So if i point my

http://www A

record to his IP..... what does he then have to do his end? Does he need to create another DNS entry on his server for my domain so we can then point to the correct server location for my website?

Many thanks

Dan

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http://www.fountain.me.uk

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind - Bernard Baruch

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes - EW Dijkstra
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[Noway2]

I assume here that when you say point your

http://www A

record you mean with the domain registrar so that if anyone does an address lookup that it will point to his IP. If so, on his end, all he will need to do is make sure that the desired ports (sounds like 80) are open and forwarding to the correct server. Then he will need to have a host application, such as IIS or Apache, listening for connections to that host, along with a virtual host for your domain if he is using virtual hosts.

BTW, once you have the domain pointing to your friends server there shouldn't be any DNS stuff on his end.

One thing to consider is will

http://www.domain.tld

point to a different location than domain.tld? What I mean by this is will leaving off the

http://www take

you to a different location and is this what you want?

 

[SQLScholar]

Hi,

No i am looking to leave my domain registrar where it is. The NSlookup will still point to the same place - but when it looks it up i need the

http://www to

go to his server where i am hosting.

What i want to do is to point www. to his server - and for his server to respond to that. So i thought i would have to point an A record (not NS record as you discussed) pointing to his server. Not sure what to do on his end though? Obviously his server needs to know how to respond to this call.

Dan

----------------------------------------

http://www.fountain.me.uk

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind - Bernard Baruch

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes - EW Dijkstra
----------------------------------------

 

[Noway2]

Based upon your response, I don't think that I was entirely clear. Lets see if we can clarify things.

In order to get your friends system to respond to

http://www.domain.tld,

you need an A record to point to your friends server. This needs to be put into the zone records for the domain's authoritative server. When you registered domain.tld you needed to either specify the address of the authoritative name servers for domain.tld (where domain is actually a sub domain of tld), typically this is done with glue records, or use a DNS service from the registrar to point the domain to your server. Note that www.domain.tld, the

http://www is

a host on the domain.tld domain. There is nothing magical about

http://www that

makes it a website and a browser can go to domain.tld or

http://www.domain.tld

and get two totally different servers. Lets look at an example:
Your server/domain, domain.tld is at 1.2.3.4. You configure an A record for

http://www.domain.tld

to point to your friend 5.6.7.8. Now, I come along in a web browser. If I enter "domain.tld" I will go to 1.2.3.4 NOT 5.6.7.8; only if I enter "

http://www.domain.tld"

will I get the address of and go to 5.6.7.8.

What I am trying to say is that if the root of your domain points to a server that is different than

http://www.yourdomain,

expect confusion as unless someone always uses the

http://www prefix

they won't go to the correct location.

Not sure what to do on his end though? Obviously his server needs to know how to respond to this call.

Now, on your friends end, he needs to have the port open in any sort of router, needs to forward traffic on that port to the correct device if he is using NAT, and he needs to have an application listening for connections on that port.