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fiveyes · 08-03-2003, 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by MattO
to this day I got no clue about DNS, I've been running BIND for 3+ years on my own server just copying and renaming files to make new domains...

Third party DNS management is the only way to go, IMO. Changing web servers becomes a matter of minutes instead of days for your traffic to find you, since the entire propagation issue revolves around changing the DNS server.

Being tied to your web host's DNS server is actually betting that you're going to be with them forever, which is highly unlikely. I don't know of any ISP's that won't allow you to use a third party to handle DNS requests, but if there are any- don't set up with them. That three day wait when you finally do leave them is just "punishment" for leaving in my book.

There are some free DNS management services out there, but you do get what you pay for. The pricing plan at www.ZoneEdit.com may seem somewhat confusing at first, being based on "credits". Basically, each credit is good for a single usage of one of their services for a year. Your first five credits are free, so if all you have are five domains you want to manage, you never need pay anything (this is also a risk-free way to check out how powerful their system is, too!).

Their services offer basic DNS management as well as advanced implementations such as round robin and dynamic load-balancing and automatic, fail-safe fallthrough backup systems (with rsync, you can have 100% uptime forever!). Their customer service is responsive and will walk you through anything you have problems with.

If you plan on using them, get more credits than you think you need for the best priced deal, they won't "expire" before you use them. Then set each domain name (using one credit each time) to point to your numerical domain address. Finally, contact your registrar and change your DNS server information to point to ZoneEdit. That last step will take those three days to propagate but once it's out, you're minutes away from changing web servers at any moment.