DNS records define everything about a domain’s hosted services. Website accessibility and proper email functionality depends on the DNS records. Without the proper DNS record, the hosting service is disrupted in one way or another. DNS management allows you to make use of one server for emails and another separate one for websites. The following are the most common types of DNS records:
- Address Mapping Record (A) – It is also known as Address Record. It converts domain names to corresponding IPv4 address
- IPv6 address records (AAAA) – converts domain names to corresponding IPv6 address
- Canonical Name (CNAME) – The CNAME record specifies a domain name that has to be queried in order to resolve the original DNS query. Therefore CNAME records are used for creating aliases of domain names. CNAME records are truly useful when we want to point our domain to an external domain. In other cases we can remove CNAME records and replace them with A records and even decrease performance overhead.
- Mail Exchanger (MX) – it specifies mail exchange for a DNS domain name. The information is used by Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to route emails to proper hosts. Typically, there are more than one mail exchange server for a DNS domain and each of them have set priority. MX records must point to a domain and not an IP.
- Name servers (NS) – this specifies an authoritative name server for a given host
- Reverse lookup pointer records (PTR)– this is used to lookup domain names based on IP addresses
- Start of authority (SOA) – The record specifies core information about a DNS zone, including the primary name server, the email of the domain administrator, the domain serial number, and several timers relating to refreshing the zone.
- Text record (TXT) –The text record can hold arbitrary non-formatted text string. Typically, the record is used by Sender Policy Framework (SPF) to prevent fake emails to appear to be sent by you. TXT is also used for DomainKeys, which verify that an email came from a trusted source.
These records can be viewed and edited from the cPanel Zone Editor or Advanced Zone Editor. In WHM, they can be edited by accessing WHM >> Home >> DNS Functions >> Edit DNS Zone.
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