Editing zone files

All our hosting services will allow you to edit your zone file. You will need to login, click 'edit' next to your domain name you wish to edit, then 'zone file' link will be in the vertical menu. If you do not see this link, you will need to order dns hosting., which is free with all domain name registrations or transfers.

If you have web hosting or email hosting with us, the zone file records associated with your hosting are not editable by you. You are able to add additional zone files but not edit the zone files that will affect your hosting service. If for some reason, you need to edit these zone files, please contact us and we will get the uneditable zone files edited for you.

Editing Zone File : for various applications

Brief Instructions

The following instructions provide a brief overview of how to edit zone files and situations where editing a zone file may be appropriate. If you are not IT savvy, we do not recommend that you attempt to edit the zone files, especially if your site has a live website and email. Editing zone file will affect your website and email (if the ns records are pointed to the zone file you are editing), if not done correctly.

Please be careful NOT to hit the BACK key on the browser, because the system will lock you out, and you will need to have tech support reinstate your access to zone file editing. If you want to see the changs you have made, click 'manage domains', then 'edit' then the 'zone file' link.

To do a set the www and hostless A record for a domain name to point to a dedicated ip address,

Select from the pull down menu A, enter the ip address and click "Add", then enter into another field www  select A and then the ip address. This will create an a name record, so your domain name will work with a www and without a www. Below is an example of using advanced dns management to redirect a domain name to a static ip address. You must remember to click 'commit changes' and then navigate back and check that your name server records are the same as the records listed below. (You need 2 A records, one with a "www" - this is so that you will be able to resolve your domain name both with and without the www). The example below shows how your zone files should look.

To add a mail record

1. From the drop down box, select MX and enter the preference number and name of your MX record. Do this until you have entered all your MX records. Your mail server must allow you to receive mail from this domain, or you still will not receive mail. The zone file edit below simply shows how to tell your domain name where your mail server is located. The preference number can be a number from 0 to 100, the lowest number is the preferenced mail server.(if you are creating more than one MX record 

2. Commit changes  Until you commit the changes, your changes will not be saved.

Below is an example of what the zone file should look like with mail records in the zone file. You will notice there are some extra A record here, and these relate to the web hosting account, but for the purposes of this example, the first 5 records below relate to adding Google as a mail provider.

To add a CName Record

Type of zone file, select C, type in the url of your cname record and click 'Add'.

Commit changes. Until you commit the changes, your changes will not be saved.

In the example below, you can see the Cname has been added that is pointing to Apple's MobileMe service and the A name record is pointing to the corresponding ip address for that service.

To add an exchange server record

If you want to set up your email to use an exchange server that is hosted at your company, you need to know the ip address of the exchange server. Then you create a name for your exchange server, let's say we call it remote.registeraustraliandomains.com and the ip address is 1232.132.12.1

Then you create two records: one A name record and one MX record

remote    A   1232.132.12.1

registeraustraliandomains.com MX  10 | remote.registeraustraliandomains.com

Commit changes

Last Step: Change your Name Server Records

 If you have transferred a domain name in, you will need to change your Name Server records, before changes you have made to your zone files will work. By default, all new domain name registrations have the name server records below.

Please accept with blind faith, that we are correct that your zone files will not work until you set the authoritative name servers to point to the name servers below. Most people struggle with this, because it doesn't make sense but what changing your NS records does, is to tell the central registry and all the other name servers in the world, to look to this hosting service and the zone files that you just made to know where to point your domain name to.

WARNING: If you have a website or email associated with your domain name, these services will be affected by changing the name server records. Do Not change these records unless you know what you are doing !!

Wait. Do not visit your domain name for at least an hour after your name server records have been redelegated. If you are anxious about whether or not you have correctly set up domain name forwarding, log in and check the name server records fields are set correctly and go to 'zone files' are correctly entered.

Please visit updating name server records for more details on how to change or view your name server records. When using our advanced DNS, you will need to change the name server records to the primary and secondary name server records above. If you wnt to lower the time that it will take for your zone files to update across the internet, you need to modify the TTL value a few days before you change your name server records. TTL, or Time-to-Live, is the length of time for when a zone file is set to expire. This is usually expressed in seconds and the default setting is 86400 or 1 day. So, to minimize any disruption, you should login and reduced your TTL to 300 about 48 hours before the change of name servers.  This means that all the other servers on the internet will go back to the authoritative name servers every 5 minutes and check for updates to your domain records. A lower TTL means faster propogation and less disruption to your mail and website. Please remember to log back in and change the TTL value back to 86,400. The reason it is set to this value is to minimize the load on the authoritative name servers

Further Reading

http://download1.swsoft.com/HSPcomplete/3.3/release/doc/HSPC_RG/adding_dns__records_a_cname_mx_ns.htm

http://www.reachcustomersonline.com/content/2003/11/03/15.22.55/index.php