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Record Types Supported in Custom DNS Standard Interface

Custom DNS provides two separate interfaces to editing DNS records: the Standard interface which provides support for basic record types such as A, CNAME, MX and TXT records, and the Expert interface which includes support for additional record types such as PTR, NS, SRV and more. This article provides examples of the use of each type of record supported in the Standard interface. (A separate article is provided to document the records supported in the Expert interface.)

Standard vs. Expert Interfaces

The following chart demonstrates the differences between the Standard and Expert interfaces.

Note: You can switch between the Standard and Expert interfaces at any time using the "Preferences" button upper right of the page when viewing a Custom DNS zone. This setting is stored on a per zone basis, so some zones can be in the Standard interface and others can be in the Expert interface. No data is lost when switching between interfaces, but you cannot add, modify or delete records other than A, CNAME, MX and TXT in the Standard interface. (A list of additional record types appears under the Advanced Records section at the bottom of the page.)

Host (A) Records

A host (A) record maps a hostname to an IP address. This allows visitors to locate the address of your server, similar to a phone book listing the telephone number for a person or business. Host records in Custom DNS have the following attributes:

• The Hostname field is the name of the host record itself, such as www in www.domain.com. Hostnames are restricted to the characters A thru Z, the digits 0 thru 9, and hyphens (-). The host field can be left blank to create a second-level record (e.g. domain.com). Using a single asterisk (*) generates a wildcard record, which resolves for all possible subdomains (e.g. *.domain.com will resolve for www.domain.com, ftp.domain.com, asdf1234.domain.com, etc.).
• The Service Type field chooses the desired service:
  • Host with IP Address is a standard host record, which publishes the IP Address field in DNS.
  • WebHop Redirect sets your host record to our WebHop server's IP, which sends visitors to the desired Redirect URL. You can learn more in the URL forwarding section.
  • Offline Hostname sets your host record to our offline website. You can learn more on the Cutom DNS Readme page.
• The TTL sets the Time to Live value for the host record. The longer the cache time, the less often visitors will need to look up a new copy of the record. If the IP address changes frequently, use a low TTL so visitors will retrieve the most up-to-date address; if the IP address changes very rarely or never changes, use a high TTL so visitors will not need to resolve it as often, allowing them to reach your site faster.
• The IP address field takes an IPv4 address (for example 192.168.1.4).
• The Redirect URL field takes a full URL (such as http://www.mysite.com/subdir/page.html), and can be used to redirect to alternate ports (such as http://www.mysite.com:8080).
• If Yes, cloak this page is checked, the redirection will be hidden with frames. The title bar is replaced with the Cloak Page Title.

Enter sample data in the field below to see the A record which would be generated:

example.com.    60  IN  A   192.168.1.4

Alias (CNAME) Records

CNAME records alias one host name to another. For example, many customers alias www.domain.com to domain.com; this ensures that both www.domain.com and domain.com are always assigned to the same IP address. CNAME records in Custom DNS take the following options:

• As with host (A) records, the Hostname field is restricted to allow only the characters A thru Z, the digits 0 thru 9 and the hyphen (-). The Hostname field can use an asterisk (*) to generate a wildcard CNAME record. (The Hostname field cannot be left blank, as RFCs prohibit second-level CNAME records.)
• The Alias To field takes a FQDN (fully qualified domain name). Usually, CNAME records are aliased to host (A) records, but CNAMEs may also point to other CNAME records.

Enter sample data in the field below to see the CNAME record which would be generated:

www.example.com.    43200  IN  CNAME   example.com.

Mail eXchanger (MX) Records

Mail eXchanger (MX) records define the destination servers for a domain's email. You can learn more information about MX records in general in our E-mail, Mail Exchangers, and DNS article, and learn specific information about email with Custom DNS in our Getting E-mail With Custom DNS article.

In the Custom DNS Standard interface, customers are provided with a simple text field for entering their domain's MX records in order of preference. If you have more than one MX record with the same priority, or wish to create MX records for subdomains (e.g. an MX record for forums.domain.com), you may create these records through the Expert interface.

Enter sample data in the field below to see the MX record which would be generated and a description of how mail would be delivered:

example.com.    43200  IN  MX    10 mail.example.com.
example.com.    43200  IN  MX    20 backup.thirdparty.net.

Text (TXT) Records

Unlike other record types, Text (TXT) records are free-form; they can be used for purely descriptive labels on hosts (e.g. "This is Bob's old Dell in Accounting"), or they can be used for a variety of special functions such as Domain Keys and SPF records. Because text records are free-form, new services and protocols can make use of DNS without needing to have a new record type created specially for them.

When creating a TXT record in the standard interface you provide the following data:

• The Hostname field is restricted to allow only the characters A thru Z, the digits 0 thru 9, the hyphen (-) and the underscore (_). The Hostname field can be left blank to create a second-level record, and can use an asterisk (*) which generates a wildcard TXT record.
• Unlike with most other record types, for TXT records the Data field is essentially free-form and may even include spaces. Please note: When entering a string that includes spaces, such as SPF records, you must enclose the string in double quotes; otherwise, individual words will be separately quoted and break up the record into multiple parts.

Here are example SPF and Domain Key TXT records (note the use of double quotes):

example.com.              43200  IN  TXT   "v=spf1 a a:outbound.mailhop.org ~all"
_domainkey.example.com.   43200  IN  TXT   "t=y\; o=~\; r=postmaster@example.com"

Enter sample data in the field below to see the TXT record which would be generated:

hidden.example.com.    43200  IN  TXT    "Nothing to see here..."

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