DNS / CNAME Domain fun

If I want to add a custom CNAME to my domain, but my hosting is with wordpress who don't support it, if I revert back to the default nameservers, add the cname, then revert back to wordpress will the settings follow me or get lost in the process?

Your DNS hosting is with Wordpress?

Should be nothing stopping you moving hosting to a 3rd party provider and simply matching all the settings to what it is currently and adding whatever CNAME's you like.

No, I just modified my nameservers to point to wordpress where my blog is hosted. My domain name was registered through a third party.

My domain registrar says I can only modify my cname if I list their own servers as my nameservers, I'm wondering if I change it back to the registrars default, add the cname, then change it back to wordpress whether that cname information will follow me.servers

Hope that makes sense?

Bigger picture: I'm trying to setup mail.mydomain.com instead of http://mail.google.com/a/mydomain.com

Thanks

Heh, I've just spent a lot of time doing google apps stuff for a bunch of different projects. Your registrar doesn't appear to have much clue, or something is getting lost in the translation.

yourdomain.com is directed to wordpress? it's an A record or a CNAME ?

adding mail. cname should be trival, but here is the easiest way to make everything work with google apps.

Sign up for free DNS hosting at EditDNS.com. Login, click on Control Center.

Add a new domain by clicking Regular, and sticking yourdomain.com in the box. Ignore the other boxes and click Add Domain. From the list on the left, select it and click Edit. Click the Setup Google Apps link. It will set up all the appropriate DNS bits for mail.yourdomain.com, docs.yourdomain.com blah blah blah.

If your existing www.yourdomain.com (whatever points to wordpress) is a CNAME, then find the CNAME it creates for you for www.yourdomain.com pointing at ghs.google.com, and change it to hosted.wordpress.com or whatever it is. Same if it's an A record, but that will be an IP not a domain.

Back to your registrar, and set the name servers there to be:

ns1.us.editdns.com
ns2.us.editdns.com
ns1.eu.editdns.com
ns2.eu.editdns.com

wait a few hours for changes to propagate, done.

Feel free to message me if you get stuck, I can practically do this in my sleep after the last few weeks.

Thanks Kris, much appreciated. I'll check it out.

Do you mean editdns.net?

Editdns.com forwards to www.easynameservice.net and doesn't seem relevant.

Ok, let me just clarify.

I change the nameservers on my domain registrar to the editdns.net servers, then from EditDNS.net > Control Panel > DNS Hosting I change the listed NS records to ns1.wordpress.com, ns2.wordpress.com etc?

I see clicking 'Setup Google Apps' adds all the CNAME records I was after in the first place (mail.mydomain.com) etc etc.

Is that correct?

no, leave the NS as it is. A records for yourdomain.com are what you should eb changing.

How can the registrar not have a clue when you're telling him to do the exact same thing but with a different DNS host??

@wombigino - Currently your DNS is hosted with Wordpress and I imagine they just get you to do that so that they don't have to 'worry' their customers with technical stuff. That's why you can't setup your own CNAME's etc...

You need to get DNS hosted somewhere that YOU can manage it, so this can be with your domain registrar or something like EditDNS.net like Kris suggested. Personally I just don't see the point in involving another party in the mix like EditDNS.

Part of doing this though will be finding out exactly what the current DNS settings are currently at Wordpress. They will most likely have an A record for mydomain.com pointing to their servers (which will be an IP) and a CNAME www.mydomain.com pointing back to mydomain.com. You can find out what these are exactly by contacting Wordpress.com or using a tool like this: http://www.hscripts.com/tools/HDNT/dns-record.php to look them up.

Once you know what your current settings are, you can mirror these in your new DNS provider and point your domain's nameservers to the new place.

Everything should then propogate nicely.

Thanks for the information guys.

Wordpress have told me that I can set up a subdomain such as blog.mydomain.com but will no longer be able to use http://mydomain.com because they don't support using an A record.

If I add a cname for blog.mydomain.com is it possible to automatically forward all traffic from http://mydomain.com to http://blog.mydomain.com ?

Oh wow, that's really whack.

I can't say it will work without trying but you could setup your www.mydomain.com CNAME to point to your blog.mydomain.com CNAME so that covers you on both those counts.

The mydomain.com record is more difficult though. This has to point to an IP which Wordpress won't support so to redirect you will need a hosting account on the domain so you can do something at the file level. You could redirect with a .htaccess file which should make the whole thing seamless.

What a mission though. Maybe you should think about hosting your site elsewhere and using the downloadable wordpress instead?

Yes, Discountdomains offer this service free. You just use their DNS servers (that I use for everything, even biggie.co.nz) and setup "URL Forwarding" for the http://domain.com