Overview

Custom DNS records can be added to a fully hosted domain as well as a DNS-only domain. It all depends on the type of records you’re making and why you’re making them.

Keep your site as Fully Hosted in general if you want it to be hosted on GreggHost’s servers. However, if you wish to create A or CNAME records to point your site away from GreggHost, the first step is to delete the hosting service that GreggHost has already applied to your domain.

If your nameservers are pointed to GreggHost, the procedures for changing the records below will only work.

a track record
a record of AAAA
CNAME record, MX record, TXT record, NAPTR record, SPF record, SRV record, CAA record, DKIM record, ALIAS record, CNAME record, MX record, TXT record, NAPTR record, SPF record, SRV record, CAA record
Unique IPv4 or IPv6 records Nameservers
Additional information
When generating custom DNS records, the @ sign is not required. When the Name box is left blank, this symbol is automatically added.

Setting your domain to DNS only

Instructions on how to set your domain to ‘DNS Only’ can be found in the following article.

Changing your domain’s DNS settings to ‘DNS Only’
If your site is now hosted at GreggHost and you wish to use A or CNAME records to route your DNS to another hosting company, you’ll need to do this.

A record

IP addresses are referred to as A records. They can be used to point your website to a different hosting firm or to external services for distinct subdomains of your site.

A subdomain can be pointed to a specific IP address.
Go to the Manage Websites section.
menu with three dots
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button under your domain and then the DNS Settings link if you’re in Grid view.
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button to the right of your domain in List view, and then the DNS Settings link.
Button “Add Record”
To add a new record, click the Add Record button.
Hover over the A Record area and click the ADD link to add a record.
A Record Host Can Be Added: This could be the primary domain or a subdomain (blog, store, etc).
A record’s foundation: You must first set the domain to DNS Only if you wish to create an A record for the root domain that points away from GreggHost. After that, you can leave this field empty.
Subdomain A record: Enter the subdomain name in this box for a subdomain (blog, dev, shop, etc.).
Enter the IP address to which the subdomain will point.
To save, click the Add Record button.
The propagation for the new record begins once you click the Add Record button. It can take up to 6 hours for the new record to appear on the internet.

AAAA record

IPv6 addresses are represented by AAAA records. They can be used to point your website to a different hosting firm or to external services for distinct subdomains of your site.

A subdomain is pointed to a specific IPv6 address.
Go to the Manage Websites section.
menu with three dots
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button under your domain and then the DNS Settings link if you’re in Grid view.
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button to the right of your domain in List view, and then the DNS Settings link.
Button “Add Record”
To add a new record, click the Add Record button.
Hover your mouse over the AAAA Record section and click the ADD button.
AAAA Record Host: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa This could be the primary domain or a subdomain.
AAAA record at the root: You must first set the domain to DNS Only if you wish to generate a AAAA record for the root domain that points away from GreggHost. After that, you can leave this field empty.
AAAA record for the subdomain: In this field, type the name of a subdomain (blog, dev, shop, etc.).
Enter the IPv6 address to which the subdomain will point. 2607:f298:5:104f::765:5be is an example.
To save, click the Add Record button.
The propagation for the new record begins once you click the Add Record button. It can take up to 6 hours for the new record to appear on the internet.

ALIAS record

An ALIAS record is a virtual DNS record that works similarly to a CNAME but can be added to the root domain name (which is not possible with a CNAME). It can also be added to an existing subdomain record where a CNAME must be unique.

ALIAS and CNAME records are not the same thing.
CNAME records are unique identifiers for domains.
Adding a CNAME record to the root domain is not possible.

example.com
Because the root domain (example.com) can only use an A record, this is the case (IP address). A CNAME record is used to point a subdomain like www.example.com or calendar.example.com to another service that uses a hostname (not an IP).

Only CNAME records can be added to a subdomain that doesn’t already include A records.

ALIAS records are a type of alias that is used
Even if the root domain already has an A record, it is feasible to add an ALIAS record to it.

ALIAS records for example.com can also be added to a currently active subdomain. If www.example.com or calendar.example.com already have A or CNAME records set up, you can still create an ALIAS record for those domains. This allows it to coexist with other records having the same name.

ALIAS entries, like CNAME records, point to a hostname (such as myapp.herokuapp.com). Unlike an A record, they do not point to an IP address.

Adding an ALIAS record is a simple process.
Go to the Manage Websites section.
menu with three dots
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button under your domain and then the DNS Settings link if you’re in Grid view.
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button to the right of your domain in List view, and then the DNS Settings link.
Button “Add Record”
To add a new record, click the Add Record button.
Hover over the ALIAS Record section and click the ADD link to add an alias record.
Record Host: Alias: This could be the primary domain or a subdomain (blog, store, etc).
Record from the beginning: Leave this box blank if you want to establish an ALIAS record for the root domain.
Record for the subdomain: In this field, type the name of a subdomain (blog, dev, shop, etc.).
Enter the hostname of the place you want this record to link to.
To save, click the Add Record button.
The propagation for the new record begins once you click the Add Record button. It can take up to 6 hours for the new record to appear on the internet.

CNAME record

A CNAME record, like custom A records, can point your hosting away from GreggHost. Instead of referring one domain to an IP address, as the custom A record does, this record is used to point one domain to another.

A CNAME record can only be generated on a subdomain, so keep that in mind. This means that the root record (example.com) must always be an A record and cannot be a CNAME record.

Go to the Manage Websites section.
menu with three dots
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button under your domain and then the DNS Settings link if you’re in Grid view.
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button to the right of your domain in List view, and then the DNS Settings link.
Button “Add Record”
To add a new record, click the Add Record button.
Hover over the CNAME Record section and click the ADD option to add a record.
Create a Record
Fill in the blanks:
An underscore cannot be used as the first character in a CNAME record.

Host: This field can be whatever you want it to be. However, most of the time it’s just www. The www subdomain is now pointed away from GreggHost.
Refers to: Put the address of the location you want this record to point to.
To save, click the Add Record button.
The propagation for the new record begins once you click the Add Record button. It can take up to 6 hours for the new record to appear on the internet.

When adding a CNAME, you may see the following error:

For this name, you already have a record. A CNAME and any other record with the same name are incompatible.

This normally indicates that you’re trying to add a CNAME for www, but you can’t since the record already exists in your DNS settings. You must first configure your domain to DNS Only if you need to add a CNAME for the www subdomain.

Changing your domain’s nameservers to DNS Only
If you’re trying to set up a CNAME for something else, check your DNS records to see if the record you’re trying to set up already exists.

MX record

MX records are DNS entries required for email delivery to your address. If you use GreggHost’s nameservers and add MX records, your email will stop going through GreggHost and instead go through the new company’s mail provider.

If you want to host your email at a different company, only add MX records.

Go to the Manage Websites section.
menu with three dots
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button under your domain and then the DNS Settings link if you’re in Grid view.
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button to the right of your domain in List view, and then the DNS Settings link.
Button “Add Record”
To add a new record, click the Add Record button.
Hover over the MX Record section and click the ADD link to add a new record.
Add the following MX Record Host: Normally, this field is left empty. If your new mail provider demands a host that is frequently a subdomain, such as www or mail, only enter something here.
Enter the MX record you want to point to.
Enter the priority number for this MX record here. This number determines which MX record is utilized first when adding multiple MX records.
Check only the box labeled If you use a Mail Service Provider, I will still check my email at GreggHost.
To save, click the Add Record button.
The propagation for the new record begins once you click the Add Record button. It can take up to 6 hours for the new record to appear on the internet.

TXT record

You can correlate text with a certain host using TXT (Text) records. Adding a Google site verification record or a DMARC email record to your site are two common examples.

Go to the Manage Websites section.
menu with three dots
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button under your domain and then the DNS Settings link if you’re in Grid view.
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button to the right of your domain in List view, and then the DNS Settings link.
Button “Add Record”
To add a new record, click the Add Record button.
Hover over the TXT Record area and click the ADD link to add a record.
Create a Record
Fill in the blanks:
Host: This field can be anything you want it to be. It’s very common for it to be left blank.
*Value in TXT: Enter the record’s text value to point to.
To save, click the Add Record button.
The propagation for the new record begins once you click the Add Record button. It can take up to 6 hours for the new record to appear on the internet.

NAPTR record

Name Authority Pointer (NAPTR) records are most often used for Internet telephony. Regular expressions are supported in these records. The following is an example of a NAPTR record:

IN NAPTR 100 10 “U” “E2U+sip” “!.*$!sip:[email protected]!” $ORIGIN 4.3.2.1.5.5.5.0.0.8.1.e164.arpa.
“!.*$!mailto:[email protected]!” IN NAPTR 102 10 “U” “E2U+email” “!.*$!mailto:[email protected]!”
For further information about this type of record, click on the following link.

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2915
Adding
Go to the Manage Websites section.
menu with three dots
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button under your domain and then the DNS Settings link if you’re in Grid view.
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button to the right of your domain in List view, and then the DNS Settings link.
Button “Add Record”
To add a new record, click the Add Record button.
Hover over the NAPTR Record area and click the ADD link to add a new record.
Host the NAPTR Record: Leave blank if you don’t know what hostname to enable this record for.
Order: A number (between 0 and 65535) that indicates how multiple NAPTR records are processed. Lower values are processed first, followed by higher ones.
Preference: A number (between 0 and 65535) that sets the processing order for multiple NAPTR records with the same Order value. Lower values are processed first, followed by higher ones.
Flags: A lowercase string containing flags that influence how the fields in the record are rewritten and interpreted. Only four flags, s, a, u, and p, are defined at this time.
Service: Indicates which services are accessible via this rewriting path. It could also define the protocol that is used to communicate with a service.
Regex: A string containing a substitution expression that is applied to the client’s original string to construct the next domain name to lookup.
Replacement: Depending on the values discovered in the flags field, the next fully qualified domain name to query for NAPTR entries. If the regular expression field is empty, this field is used. This field is ignored if the Regex field contains a value.
To save, click the Add Record button.
The propagation for the new record begins once you click the Add Record button. It can take up to 6 hours for the new record to appear on the internet.

SPF record

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records specify what mail servers are permitted to send email from your domain.

Please see the following article for more information on how to set up SPF records:

SPF records can be added or edited.
SRV records are used to identify the computers that host a given service and then establish a link between that service and the website.

Certain programs and applications may require the creation of these records in order for them to function. The following two Microsoft SRV records are a good example. More information is available at the following URL:

Type Name Target Protocol Service Priority Weight Port Microsoft’s two SRV records

SRV record

TTL \sSRV @ sipdir.online.lync.com _tls _sip 100 1 443

a single hour
SRV @ sipfed.online.lync.com _tcp _sipfederationtls 100 1 5061 1 hour SRV @ sipfed.online.lync.com _tcp _sipfederationtls 100 1 5061 1 hour

Format
This is the format of a normal SRV record:

TTL class SRV priority weight port target _service. protocol.name.
Adding
Go to the Manage Websites section.
menu with three dots
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button under your domain and then the DNS Settings link if you’re in Grid view.
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button to the right of your domain in List view, and then the DNS Settings link.
Button “Add Record”
To add a new record, click the Add Record button.
Hover over the SRV Record section and click the ADD link to add a new record.
The example below demonstrates how to add the following record to your database.

CAA records

sipfed.online.lync.com SRV 100 1 5061
Add any extra SRV records that are needed by repeating the steps above.

SRV Record should be added
Fill in the blanks:
Ignore the TTL, class, and SRV fields when creating an SRV record in your panel.

Name: This field is frequently left blank.
sipfederationtls is a service/sip. Do not include the underscore or the period before or after this value.
tcp is the protocol. This value should not be preceded by an underscore.
Priority level: 100
Port: 5061 Weight: 1
sipfed.online.lync.com is the target.
To add a new record, click the Add Record button.
The propagation for the new record begins once you click the Add Record button. It can take up to 6 hours for the new record to appear on the internet.

Records kept by the CAA
A Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) record specifies which certificate authorities (CA) are permitted to issue certificates for a certain domain name.

Only the CAs listed in the CAA record(s) are allowed to issue certificates for the domain if a CAA record is present.
If there is no CAA record, any CA can issue a certificate for the domain.
These records also allow the domain owner to specify notification rules in the event that a certificate is requested from an unapproved certificate authority. For more details, see the following article:

Subdomains are recorded in the CAA policy.
A CAA record is usually added to the primary domain name (example.com).

All subdomains, such as blog.example.com, are affected by a CAA record uploaded to the principal domain (example.com). A CAA record added to a subdomain, on the other hand, takes precedence over a CAA record added to the parent domain name, giving you more control over the subdomain record.

Adding a CAA record to the database
Go to the Manage Websites section.
menu with three dots
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button under your domain and then the DNS Settings link if you’re in Grid view.
Click the’vertical 3 dots’ button to the right of your domain in List view, and then the DNS Settings link.
Button “Add Record”
To add a new record, click the Add Record button.
Hover over the CAA Record area and click the ADD option to add a new record.

DKIM record

A single certificate authority is associated with each CAA record. This means that for each additional certificate authority that is authorised to issue a certificate for this domain, you’ll need to generate a new CAA record.

The critical flag is represented by the value of one. Setting this field to 1 informs certificate authorities that before issuing a certificate, they must comprehend the following property tag.
tag: Choose one of the following options:
Domain Authorization Entry The issue attribute is set using this command. The domain name of a single certificate authority allowed to issue certificates for the domain (e.g. sectigo.com).
IODEF report on the incident The iodef attribute is set with this command. A certificate authority may report policy breaches to this URL (https://example.com) or email address (mailto:[email protected]). Because this tag is not supported by all certificate authorities, there is no guarantee that all certificate issuances will be reported.
value: The value associated with the property tag you’ve chosen.
To save, click the Add Record button.
The propagation for the new record begins once you click the Add Record button. It can take up to 6 hours for the new record to appear on the internet.

Using SSH to check the CAA record
To query DNS records, the dig command is frequently used. You must also provide type257 when running the command since the CAA record is a new type of record. Consider the following scenario:

[server]

http://example.com/dig type257
Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS Certification Authority Authorization
DKIM record DKIM records are a way of’signing’ emails to prove they came from you, using DKIM keys publicly listed in your domain’s DNS. https://support.dnsimple.com/articles/caa-record/ https://letsencrypt.org/docs/caa/ DKIM record DKIM records are a way of’signing’ emails to prove they came from you, using DKIM keys publicly listed in your domain’s

Unique IPv4 or IPv6 addresses

What are DKIM records, and what do they mean?
Nameservers
Please see the following page for more information on how to set up custom/vanity nameservers.

At GreggHost, you can change your nameservers if you have a unique IPv4 or IPv6 address.
A Unique GreggHost IPv4 or IPv6 record can also be added to your domain. For more information, see the articles below.

Overview of a single IP address
How can I add or remove a single IPv6 address?

Additional details

These records, like other DNS updates, take time to update online. It can take a few hours for things to start working properly. You can try flushing the DNS to see if it helps speed up the propagation, but there are no promises. Instructions for flushing the DNS can be found here:
DNS updates that are flushed can take up to 6 hours to resolve. If your nameservers point to GreggHost and the services set up for the generated record are not functioning within this time, please contact us at Contact Support for assistance.
GreggHost support can direct you to the appropriate places to build custom records and verify that they are appropriately applied to your domain. Support, on the other hand, is unable to assist with the setup of these custom records or the verification of whether or not the record created is correct.