Zone Management

This is where you can access our DNS manager and update your DNS records. We use Amazon Route53 for DNS management and below you can find some information about the type of records you will find in our Managed Hosting Dashboard. Check out our blog for details about DNS terminology and our DNS specifications .

DNS Editor

NOTE

Only the site owners can manage the DNS zones.

Here you can manage the domain records for your site. Be aware that you can have multiple domains for a single site, and the list of domains can be managed in the Domains tab of the Managed Hosting Dashboard. Depending on the domains, you’ll see multiple tabs in the Zone Management section. Make sure to first select the domain that you want to manage before doing any operations.

In the DNS Editor you can add new records, as well as modify or delete the existing ones. There are a few records in the DNS manager that you won’t be able to edit because they are managed by us and you can check them out in our DNS specifications .

To add a record, simply choose the record type you want to add and enter it’s name and value. Depending on the chosen record, you will see a brief description of the record, as well as examples for filling in the required fields.

For example, let’s say that you want your custom email service, mail.mysite.com, to point to the same IP address as your site, mysite.com. For this, make sure you have selected the DNS zone for mysite.com. The record will be:

NOTE

The record name must specify only the subdomain mail, not the full mail.mysite.com. Since the mail service is an alias of the root domain, you can also use @ instead of mysite.com.

For more DNS records examples check How to use the DNS manager with various record types .

Nameservers

In order for our autonomous system to take over and ensure high-availability, you will have to set the Name servers found here in your domain provider’s dashboard (NameCheap, GoDaddy etc).

Please note that this is the recommended way because it allows our automated systems to take over in cases of emergency and have a higher redundancy over your site.

In case the Nameservers are not managed by us, you will have to point your subdomains to the alias geo01.dns.presslabs.net as a CNAME record, for the DNS to work properly. Check the FAQ section for more details.

DNSSEC

The Domain Name System Security Extensions is a feature of the Domain Name System that authenticates responses to domain name lookups.

If you want to enable this feature for your DNS Zone, don’t hesitate to contact our support team at the support email address support@presslabs.com .

MX Record Templates

We don’t provide email services. We use Sendgrid for sending WordPress system emails such as password recovery, new account creation and comment notifications, but you need to use a 3rd party mail provider to send and receive other emails.

We offer the possibility to easily setup Google and Zoho MX records. Setting up a mail provider means, besides creating an email account, adding the appropriate MX records that specify which servers to deliver mails to. We take care of all the necessary steps to set up appropriate MX records for Google and Zoho , so the only thing you need to do is choose one of the two mail providers.

If you want to use any other mail provider, you can manually add the appropriate MX records in the DNS Editor section. You might also find interesting our article The Best Use of Google’s SMTP Server for Publishers .

The MX records come with a priority indicator to help direct content through the fastest and most efficient servers. You can find more information on MX records on our blog .

All you have to do is choose one of the two mail providers and the MX records will be automatically generated for you to preview them. Simply press the Create records button and the records will be added to your DNS zone.

If you choose the Google mail provider, the following records will be added:

If you choose the Zoho mail provider, the following records will be added:

Delete Zone

From here you can delete your DNS zone, but pay great attention, since this action is undoable.

FAQs

What are my nameservers and what to do with them?

Nameservers are a fundamental part of the Domain Name System (DNS), as they handle queries regarding the location of a domain name’s various services. Basically, you need to have the nameservers set up to make your site visible on the web.

You can check out your nameservers in the DNS zones section on the Managed Hosting Dashboard.

To check what nameservers you currently have on your site, go to www.whatsmydns.net , type in your root domain and select the NS record.

At Presslabs, we are using Amazon Route53 for DNS management, ensuring automatic failover management and geo serving of the content .

In order for our autonomous system to take over and ensure high-availability, you will have to set the nameservers found in the Managed Hosting Dashboard in your domain provider’s dashboard (NameCheap, GoDaddy, CloudFlare etc).

It can take between 24 and 48 hours for the name servers to fully propagate.

How to use custom nameservers

We highly recommend that you use the nameservers provided by us. However, if you want to use custom nameservers, you will have to point your subdomains (www, cdn etc.) to the alias geo01.dns.presslabs.net as CNAME records in your domain provider’s dashboard. This way we can ensure a full redundancy and failover mechanism.

You should have in your Domains section at least three domains: your root domain (mysite.com), your www domain ( www.mysite.com ) and your cdn domain (cdn.mysite.com or static.mysite.com), from which you can choose which are the main domains. The rest will simply redirect to the main domains.

Here are the steps you need to perform in your domain provider’s dashboard:

1. Make sure to remove any A records pointing to these locations: @, www or cdn (e.g the A-record that points www.yoursite.com to an IP)
2. Add a CNAME record that points your cdn domain (e.g cdn.yoursite.com or static.yoursite.com) to geo01.dns.presslabs.net
3. Add a CNAME record that points your www domain ( www.yoursite.com ) to geo01.dns.presslabs.net
4. Add a CNAME record that points your root domain to geo01.dns.presslabs.net. If that is not possible, then add an A-record that points yoursite.com (your root domain) to the IP of one of the Frontend nodes from the Locations section.

WARNING

If you cannot add a CNAME record that points your root domain to geo01.dns.presslabs.net, then we highly recommend you to use the Presslabs provided nameservers. Otherwise, we cannot ensure the high-availability of your site, because the redundancy of our services is done directly from DNS level.

If you proceed with adding an A-record that points your root domain to the IP of one of the Frontend nodes, please note that if that server will fail or will go under maintenance, then your site will go down. This wouldn’t happen if your name servers were with us, as these situations are treated and handled automatically.

Here are some examples: