Firstly, login to the Account Manager and select 'Manage Domains & Services'

Next select the domain name you wish to manage the DNS for.

You can enable custom DNS records under the 'Manage DNS Zone Records' link of the Domain Manager.

Custom DNS zone records allow you to point your domain name to a web server IP address for virtual web hosting and/or create a MX record to specify who is responsible for handling email for your domain name.

Here is a list of record types you can create and their general use:

• A: record to point your domain name to a specified IP address.
• AAAA: record to point a hostname to an IPv6 address.
• MX: MX record to specify what mail server handles email for your domain name.
• CNAME: A CNAME record is a type of DNS record that points or maps to an alias name. It points to the value of that Alias name.
• TXT: Associate some text information with your domain name.
• SRV: A record to configure services with your domain name. E.g SIP
• NS: Create NS records to delegate a sub domain to an alternative DNS host.
• *: Using the astericks you can create wildcard hostnames for A, MX, CNAME and TXT records.

Creating Custom DNS Zone Records

Changing DNS records is recommended only for advanced users. 1st Domains does not provide DNS how-to guides or troubleshooting hints for DNS records. The following is a guide on using our interface to create DNS records.

To create a new DNS record click Add Record and type in the hostname required. Select the record type (A, AAAA, MX, CNAME, TXT, SRV) and enter the value. The value will depend on the type of record you have chosen and will be either an IP address, a hostname or some text.

Note: There is by default, a 1 hour TTL on the DNS records. Please allow up to an hour or whatever your TTL is set to for changes made to your DNS Records to become visible.

Changing the Default TTL

The Time to Live (TTL) of a domain name tells other DNS servers how long to hold onto a DNS record after it has been queried. The default TTL is set to 1 hour. This means when someone looks up your website for example, they receive the IP address of where your website is hosted from our DNS servers. Our DNS servers then specify how long the requesting DNS server should cache that record (1 hour) before requesting the record again.

Under the Zone Management interface, you can modify the TTL for your domain name down to 5 minutes. So this will mean that any records requested will have a maximum cache time of 5 minutes.

Examples of Use

Lowering the TTL before making a record change will lower the update time for the new record. This is ideal for times that you are transferring web hosting providers, mail hosts, or changing your office static IP address and wish to minimise any downtime while the new record propagates. Lower the TTL first, then wait a few hours for the previous TTL cache to expire before changing your record. Once you're all switched over, reset the TTL back to a more reasonable time such as 1 hour.

You might choose to use the 5 minute TTL permanently if you have a backup web host or fail-over site available. So in the event that your usual host is unavailable, you can login and quickly update the DNS record to point to your backup host and the maximum time before this becomes live will be only 5 minutes.

Can't find the 'Manage DNS Zone Records' link?

If you wish to use our services you will need to park your domain name with 1st Domains.

Note: Parking your domain name will transfer the DNS for your domain name to 1st Domains and may affect services you had set-up with your previous host. This however does NOT transfer your existing DNS records from your previous DNS host. You will need to copy those across to our name servers if you park the domain with us.

Parking your domain name:

1. Login to the Account Manager and select 'Manage Domains & Services'
2. Select the domain name you wish to manage from the list
3. Click on 'Park Domain Name'
4. Turn the parking status slider to 'On' and approve the confirmation message.
5. You can now return to the domain manager, and configure your DNS Zone Records under the 'Manage DNS Zone Records' link.