DNS, MX, A record questions

[mcveigh]

A friend is supposed to change some settings on his domain.
He is a franchise owner and has a domain like "hamburgerflorida.com"
He is working with the main company to point his website to "hamburger.com"
BUT he is going to keep his own email addresses that he's been using.

the only info he has been given is

Update your A Record (usually shown as @) to point to this IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Then add a new CNAME record, or modify the existing one (usually labeled as "www") and enter your domain name "www.hamburgerflorida.com"

corporate won't help him with the email side.

he's using network solutions as his registrar.
I logged in there for him, but i'm not sure I won't screw up his email.

right now he only has DNS pointing to the nameservers from his webhost.

network solutions wants him to switch name servers to them when you start making what they call "advanced DNS changes"

what he wants is his domain name to forward to the corporate site but emails keep going to his current mail/webhost.
all the info I've found online seems to tell a diffent way of doing that based on different registrars.🙁

any help is appreciated.

 

[drebo]

His best option is to keep his name servers right where they are and make this DNS change at his current web host.

All he needs to do is change the A record for the TLD to match the IP he was given and then make sure the www. CNAME is set up correctly. The first part will either be referenced as "@", ".", or "hamburgerflorida.com". The second part will be referenced either as "www" or as www.hamburgerflorida.com and needs to be set with a target of "hamburgerflorida.com".

That way, no need to touch any of the other domain settings (there may be SPF records, MX records, etc.)

The registrar is irrelevant here. This change is made at the DNS server level, which is his current web host. They should be able to help him with this.

 

[kevnich2]

In domain world - you have registrar, DNS, web host and email host. Sometimes all of these may be with one single company, or they may all be with different. Sounds like your friend is using network solutions as their registrar and another company for DNS, web host and email host currently and wanting to switch to a new company for the website portion. Correct?

To make the change you want (to tell the internet where to go to get to the new website, you need to go into the DNS settings with whatever company is hosting their dns). This is NOT likely to be network solutions but probably with whatever company your friend is using their email with. I would do a dns search on his domain and that should tell you what their dns servers are. Just be sure and whatever the dns records are, don't modify the mx entry. Only modify the A record for hamburgerflorida.com and the cname for www, which more than likely already points to hamburgerflorida.com

PS - This is my own opinion but not a big fan of network solutions. Their kind of the bullies to me and will try alot to get all your eggs in their basket.

 

[mcveigh]

thanks, i did goto his webhost cpanel page. it only has "simple DNS zone editor" and it won't let me change the current A zone or CNAME settings because they are in use. I get a popup saying

You must have the zoneedit feature to take this action. You currently only have the simplezoneedit feature.

I'll try to get through to their tech support. What a PITA.

 

[kevnich2]

thanks, i did goto his webhost cpanel page. it only has "simple DNS zone editor" and it won't let me change the current A zone or CNAME settings because they are in use. I get a popup saying

You must have the zoneedit feature to take this action. You currently only have the simplezoneedit feature.

I'll try to get through to their tech support. What a PITA.

Having the ability to control this depends on how much you're friend is paying for their hosting. The cheaper services don't allow this feature to be edited without contacting their support. They figure if you want that ability, you're going to pay more to be able to do more things yourself. They don't want you involuntarily messing up settings that they then have to fix. It's better for them to have you contact them via their support channel, you tell them what you want done and they make the change behind the scenes for you.