You can change your domain’s DNS settings for things like A, CNAME and MX records should you want to use your domain with third party services as well as with your web hosting account with us.
The Domain Name System, or DNS, is the means by which computers connected to the Internet get information about each other. The individual pieces of information are known as records; each record is of a certain type. Computers look up records for a domain by asking the name server for the domain about the records relevant to that domain.
IP addresses are the numbers which identify computers to each other.
DNS record types:
A records
These contain a mapping from a name to an IP address. For example, there is an A record set up for “microsoft.co.uk” which points from “www” to “80.176.211.43”. This means that when your web browser is pointed at www.microsoft.co.uk, it is really going to the server address 80.176.211.43.
CNAME records
These contain a mapping from one name (known as an alias) to another name (known as a CNAME, or canonical name). When a computer looks up records for the alias, it is given the records for the cname instead.
For example, if we set up a CNAME record for “yourdomain.co.uk” with alias “web” and cname “www.newdomain.co.uk.” then all queries for “web.yourdomain.co.uk” would be pointed to “www.newdomain.co.uk”. It is important to include a trailing ‘.’ on the end of your CNAME records, this makes them fully qualified domain names.
MX records
These determine where email for a domain is to be delivered. A domain can have several MX records; each one has a priority from 0 to 100. Email is delivered to the one with the lowest number first, and to any others only if the first one cannot accept it. For example, there is an MX record for “bbc.co.uk” pointing to “mail.bbc.co.uk”, with priority 10. This causes our email to be delivered to “mail.bbc.co.uk”.
Please see our support page regarding DNS changes.