Introduction
Before we begin, it’s important to understand what DNS is and how it works. Here is a short summary/illustration of DNS: http://www.dyndns.com/support/kb/what_is_dns.html#why
Steps to Properly Configure your DNS
The following instructions will ensure that when people visit your domain (www.yoursite.com) it will point to your Blue Sombrero custom website. These instructions are for premium.bluesombrero.com websites ONLY, and are not for clubs.bluesombrero.com registration portals.
Steps to update your DNS to point to Blue Sombrero Servers:
- Create a www CNAME to premium.bluesombrero.com (Make the TTL as low as possible).
- Create an @ A Record to 174.129.202.173 (only if you want to send users to your site using http://yoursite.com (notice no www). (Make the TTL as low as possible).
- Notify Blue Sombrero of all domains that you are using and pointing to the Blue sombrero Custom Websites
*CONTACT YOUR ACCOUNT MANAGER IF YOU WOULD LIKE THEM TO DO THIS FOR YOU!
Glossary of Terms
Domain Name: This is the name that identifies a website. For example, "apple.com" is the domain name of Apple's website.
IP Address: The Internet Protocol (IP) Address is the numeric code that identifies all computers that are connected to the internet.
DNS: The Domain Name System (DNS) is like a phone book for the Internet. If you know a person's name, but don't know their telephone number, you can simply look it up in a phone book. DNS provides this same service to the Internet. When you visit http://www.apple.com in a browser, your computer uses DNS to retrieve the website's IP address, 17.149.160.49. Without DNS, you would only be able to visit Apple's website by visiting its IP address directly, such as http://17.149.160.49.
Registrar: A company that registers the names of websites chosen by website owners and integrates the names into the DNS by recording them on computers known as Domain Name Servers, the "address books" of the Internet. Two examples are Go Daddy and Network Solutions.
A Record: The Address (A) Record, also called a host record, is the record that associates a domain name with an IP address.
Cname Record: A CNAME is an alias for a host record. CNAME records point back to an A record to find the IP address. If you change the IP address of the A record, all your CNAME records pointed to that record will automatically follow the new IP.
MX Record: Your domain name's MX (Mail) Records control delivery of email sent to your domain name.
Setting up Email Addresses for your Club
We recommend using Google Apps Standard Edition which offers up to 50 custom email addresses for FREE for your club! We use Google Apps at Blue Sombrero for Email, Calendars, and Google Docs, and strongly encourage our customers to do so as well.