diyhosting/dns.html

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<title>Connect Your Domain and Server with DNS Records &ndash; diyhosting.bhh.sh</title>
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<header><h1>Connect Your Domain and Server with DNS Records</h1></header>
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<h2>The Gist</h2>
<p>Now that we have a <a href=domain.html>domain</a> and a <a href="server.html">server</a>, we can connect the two using DNS records.
DNS (domain name system) records are usually put into your registrar and direct people looking up your website to the server where your website and other things will be.
</p>
<p>
Get your IPv4/IPv6 addresses from Vultr and put them into A/AAAA records on Epik.
Simple process, takes a minute, but here's a guide with a million images just so you know.
</p>
<h2>Open up your Registrar</h2>
<p>
As before, we will be using <a href="https://www.epik.com/?affid=we2ro7sa6">Epik</a> as a registrar and <a href="https://www.vultr.com/?ref=8384069-6G">Vultr</a> as a server host.
Go ahead and log into your accounts on both.
Open up Epik, or your registrar, and click on your domain and then a choice for "DNS records."
This is the screen you'll want to see on Epik.
</p>
<a href=pix/dns-epik.png><img src="pix/dns-epik.png" alt="Blank Epik DNS records"></a>
<p>
Note that we are on the "External Hosts (A, AAAA)" tab by default.
Epik sometimes adds records to this page once you buy a domain.
If they did, you can go ahead and delete them so they look clean like the picture above.
</p>
<p>
<strong>All we have to do now is get our IP addresses from Vultr and add new DNS records that will send connections to our server.</strong>
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<p>
Keep the Epik tab open and open Vultr and we will copy-and-paste our IP addresses in.
</p>
<h2>Find your server's IP addresses</h2>
<p>
Looking at your server in the Vultr menu, you should see a number next to it.
Mine here is <code>104.238.126.105</code> as you can see below the server name (which I have named <code>diyhosting.bhh.sh</code> after the domain I will soon attach to it).
That is my <strong>IPv4</strong> address.
</p>
<a href=pix/dns-ipv4.png><img src="pix/dns-ipv4.png" alt="See the IPv4 address?"></a>
<p>
Copy your IPv4 address and
on Epik, click the "Add Record" record button and add two A entries pasting in your IPv4 address like I've done for mine here.
</p>
<a href=pix/dns-ipv4-done.png><img src="pix/dns-ipv4-done.png" alt="IPv4 complete"></a>
<p>
I add two entries.
One has nothing written in the "Host" section. This will direct connections to <code>diyhosting.bhh.sh</code> over IPv4 to our IP address.
The second has a <code>*</code> in the "Host" section.
This will direct connections to all possible subdomains to the right place too,
I mean <code>mail.diyhosting.bhh.sh</code> or <code>blog.diyhosting.bhh.sh</code> and any other subdomain we might want to add later.
</p>
<p>
Now let's get our IPv6 address, which is a little more hidden for some reason.
IPv6 is important because we are running out of IPv4 addresses, so it is highly important to allow connections via IPv6 as it will be standard in the future.
Anyway, now back on Vultr, click on the server name.
</p>
<p>On the server settings, <strong>click on settings</strong>
and we will see we are on a submenu labeled "IPv4" where we see our IPv4 address again.
</p>
<a href=pix/dns-vultr.png><img src="pix/dns-vultr.png" alt="Looking for the IPv6"></a>
<p>
Now just click on the <strong>IPv6</strong> submenu to reveal your IPv6 address.
</p>
<a href=pix/dns-ipv6.png><img src="pix/dns-ipv6.png" alt="The IPv6 address"></a>
<p>
That ugly looking sequence of numbers and letters with colons in between (<code>2001:19f0:5:ccc:5400:03ff:fe58:324a</code>) is my <strong>IPv6</strong> address.
Yours will look something like it.
Now let's put it into Epik.
This time, be sure to select to put in AAAA records as below:
</p>
<a href=pix/dns-ipv6-done.png><img src="pix/dns-ipv6-done.png" alt="IPv6 complete"></a>
<p>
Now just click "Save Changes."
It might take a minute for the DNS settings to propagate across the internet.
</p>
<h2>Test it out!</h2>
<p>
Now we should have our domain name directing to our new server.
We can check by pinging our domain name, check this out:
</p>
<img src="pix/dns-ping.png" alt="Pinging diyhosting.bhh.sh">
<p>
As you can see, our ping to <code>diyhosting.bhh.sh</code> is now being directed to <code>104.238.128.105</code>.
That means we have successfully set up our DNS records!
You can also run the command <code>host</code> if you have it, which will list both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses for a domain name.
</p>
<span class=prev><a href="server.html">Previous: Get a server.</a></span>
<span class=next><a href="nginx.html">Next: Setting up the Webserver</a></span>
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