Forum Moderators: mack
I am planning for the future and hope to start a classified ads section on my specialised site.
One of the companies which hosts them offers the service of hosting a subdomain, and when I asked what that entailed, was told
'You would just need to change the A record through your hosting provider. You can point the subdomain of "classifieds.domain.com" to the IP address of your application hosting account with us (you will be given this after you sign up). Once this has been done, you will be able to access the program via a URL similar to the following: [classifieds.mydomain.com".'...]
I'm very confused as I have never heard of an A record.
Could anyone enlighten me please?
The Domain Name System (DNS) consists of various files and records to help the internet move information from computer to computer and to resolve NAMES to IP Addresses.
The most common file is called the ZONE file, which contains records abbreviated as "A", "MX", CNAME, and NS.
The NS record is the location of the NAME SERVER that ultimately resolves the NAME to the IP address.
The "A" record is the ACTUAL location of the website/server. When a person types in example.com, it will first check NAME records around the world, then lookup the A record to see which actual computer hosts the site.
When you specify subdomain.example.com, you are essentially creating a virtual site on your server, but not necessarily. "www" is also a subdomain as in www.example.com .
SO, you can have multiple A records, each with their own subdomain, all pointing to the same webserver.
MX records route Mail packets.
CNAME records are aliases. I've never used them, relying instead on A records for my aliases.
so... the A record is the actual location of the website/server, and that a record needs to be adjusted to show both the ip address of the main site and the new subdomain are shown. (if I ve got that right)
My hoster will not operate subdomains (even though you point out that the 'www.mydomain.com' is one!), although it will allow subdomains to be registered and 'parked' for the purpose of redirecting.
They also said in response to my query about A records that 'this sort of consulting was beyond their authority'
does not sound good... But at least I know a bit more about the subject.. so thanks indeed.
many shared hosts don't want to get involved in dealing with subdomains because they have to configure new directories on the servers. It's a pain to maintain.
by default, many web servers will be set to domain.com and www.domain.com.
And I have to sympathize with the statement about "outside of their consulting" You have to draw the line somewhere when you are selling services.
