Hey everyone,

Kinda new to the whole vps scene, but loving it so far, and the tech guys are so helpful (other than the fact that I normally have to leave a message when using live chat )

Figured I would post this in here too and maybe someone can help me out with it!

Originally I had my company registered as advertisinginfocus.net, but I have since changed it to aifcanada.com (adblockers were stopping anything from loading). Now, when I first set it up I had issues with the dns settings (mail.domain, www.domain, and some others didnt work). The tech guys were very helpful and fixed it all up for me, but now I have changed the domain name for that site and I am having the issues again (mainly the www. not working). It is also the same for any new websites I register with my vps, so would anyone be able to tell me what the dns settings should be (for any new accounts and such, so I dont have to go changing it) and what any .htaccess things should be (I remember we had to mess around with that a bit)

Thanks!
Spenser Jones

P.S.
That was the message I sent in live chat. I was too lazy to retype the whole thing so I just changed a few things in it

Hi Spenser,

Just to make sure I am reading this right, once you changed the name to aifcanada.com, the advertisinginfocus.net domain stopped bringing up the site correct? When I go to aifcanada.com I see your website, but when I go to advertisinginfocus.net I see the default setup page (same behavior with the www. CNAME) so I am guessing this is the case.

If that is the problem, you probably just need to set the original domain up as a pointer in the WHM. I think they are called "parked domains" in there. You should find it under DNS Functions -> Parked Domains. Once you do that, both domains should show the website.

I am not sure about any .htaccess settings; those may be application specific.

If you have further trouble you know who to call


Hope this helps!
Dave

haha, funny timing, the tech guys just got it fixed. But I am still wondering about what my default zone templates should be set as and such. I have my htaccess set to force www on (no duplicate results in google) so thats good now. Oh, and when I try setting up an addon domain in the site cpanel (for users, not whm) it comes up saying:


that is when I try setting up the advertisinginfocus.net domain name as an addon domain (so I can do a forward later on)

I really dont quite understand how dns works and such, so that is why I am having so much trouble, but I am thinking of this as a good chance to learn!

Thanks again!
Spenser

That error isn't a problem. What happens is that by default, cPanel thinks that it is going to be the nameserver for the domains that it hosts. Normally though, you are going to use our nameservers (ns1, ns2, and ns3 .safesecureweb.com or .lnhi.net, doesn't matter which).

So when the error says "the domain is already pointed to an IP address that does not appear to use DNS servers associated with this server", that is cPanel saying "hey I thought you were going to use me as the nameserver, what gives?".

At the end of the day, as long as you are using a nameserver that resolves the domain to the correct IP it doesn't matter, so using ours will be fine. You can call us to make any changes, or you can manage the domain name in your hostmysite.com control panel.

Here is the 2 cent tour of DNS... a domain points to a nameserver. The nameserver handles translating the domain into an IP. The IP address is a location on the internet - it is like a street address. When your request gets to that address, the server handles the request based on how it is setup and send a response back to you.

Obviously it is a little more complicated in practice This wikipedia article will tell you everything you need to know and more if you are curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System


I hope this helps. Any other question, please let me know

-Dave

ok, that explains quite a bit, thanks!

so does that mean that I cannot modify my domain names through the client CP? ie, http://76.12.193.215:2083? cus port 2087 is where the admin CP is, and 2083 is for clients, but does this mean I always have to change domain stuff from the HMS CP or by calling you? there must be an easier way!

What that means is that you can't change the IP address that the domain points to through cPanel. So for instance if you had to make advertisinginfocus.net from 76.12.193.215 to 1.2.3.4 for some reason, you would have to call us or use the HMS control panel. Luckily, changing the IP of a site is not something you should have to do often, if ever.

Any content or settings changes through the WHM or cPanel are fine.

Is that what you meant?


-Dave

yeah, that makes sense... But how would I add the domain to my client's cpanel account? I thought that is what the addon domains part was for

I think addon domains let you point a domain name to a subdirectory of an existing site, but I am not a cPanel expert so I am not 100% on that. A quick google search turned that up though, and it sure sounds good

I was under the impression that parking a domain would basically associate it with that customer's account in their cPanel. If that isn't what is going on our guys in support should be able to point you in the right direction. The forums over at cpanel are really good too -- a lot of activity over there and a helpful community.


-Dave

Parking a domain does two things IIRC:
- Sets up a ServerAlias in apache so apache will serve the content on both domains
- Sets up that domains dns to point to the original domain.

Two would obviously be of no concern, since dns will be hosted elsewhere.

One thing I can recommend is if you use someone elses DNS servers (aka hostmysite's), create all domains with wild card certs pointing to your VPS. Reason being, if your client goes in through cpanel and tries to create a subdomain, that won't work until either you or HMS modifies the dns. HMS's support may be fast, but your client will expect that to happen instantaneous, as it would if you were hosting dns on the cpanel server.

Ok thanks guys, you have helped a bunch!

but no ideas as to why I get that error, I guess I will just set aside some time to contact the live chat guys

Thanks!