Most website owners would not know about, or would ever have heard of DNS.

But without it they would not have a website, nor would they be able to send and receive emails.

DNS or (Domain Name System) is a database system that contains mapping of domain names to their IP addresses. The DNS records are added to the web server and this is what makes your website and emails resolve across the Internet.

There are several different types of DNS records. Most websites will have the following types of DNS:

• A RECORD – An A record assigns an IP address to a domain or sub-domain. (e.g – your-name-here.co.uk points to 209.204.202.85)
• CNAME – A CNAME record or canonical name record makes one domain name an alias of another. The alias acquires all the records of the original domain. (e.g. – www.your-name-here.co.uk is a CNAME of your-name-here.co.uk)
• MX RECORD – An MX record or mail exchange record specifies which mail server is responsible for accepting email for a domain name (e.g. – mail for your-name-here.co.uk is handled by ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM)
• NS RECORD – An NS or Nameserver record specifies which servers will implement the DNS service for a particular domain name (e.g. – your-name-here.co.uk points to ns.host4u.net and ns1.host4u.net nameservers)
• PTR RECORD – a PTR record resolves an IP addresses into a hostname, this is sometimes referred to as ‘Reverse DNS’ (e.g. – The PTR record for your-name-here.co.uk is ‘85.202.204.209.in-addr.arpa’

With Your Name Here we assign a control panel with each domain registration, which allows you to modify your DNS records yourself. However DNS records can be quite complicated and you should only modify the DNS if you know exactly what you are doing.

You can request DNS changes via our support section, or by emailing us directly.