Domain catch-all forwarding question...
 

Hi,

I have my own dedicated server with candidhosting. Been trying to get them to set up a virtual host so that I can add domains simply for the purpose of catch all forwarding. They say they need me to email them my domains and where they will forward so they can add the domains for me. I need to be able to do this myself, possibly through the 'webmin' interface because candid hosting tech support is not reliable. They took 6 days just to respond to my email inquiry, and thats because I kept calling techsupport on the phone and complaining.

Has anyone ever set up domains for catch-all forwarding on their dedicated server?

Do any of you use a web interface for this, or do you modify and edit httpd.conf directly?

thanks
SC

The nameservers are the problem here. Candidhosting probly does it for you and they need to point all your domains to one ip address on your server to make virtual host config work.

Then is simply is a question of adding all domains to the httpd.conf . I do it by hand and after that you need to restart your virtual host config

here is how it works on my server.

telnet or ssh to your server and login as root

ps -aux |grep virtual |grep root (virtual is a short for the name of the virtual host config on my server. change as needed)

you will get the process number of the process.

kill -HUP number (number is the process number)

behind that number you will get the path info of the process simply copy and paste it and hit return and all should be set.

Why anyone would tie their name server with their web host is beyond me. Get a third party DNS server account, with someone such as www.ZoneEdit.com (inexpensive and has a great user interface) to handle this. You can not only do web forwarding but you'll never, ever again have that three day propagation problem when you change web servers.

Yeah, I might just end up using a yearly paid domain forwarding service. I need something reliable and with a nice interface for adding domains and emails.

One thing I hate that always happens when dealing with candidhosting.com is, I'll want something done, and they make it incredibly complicated and lag on my request, so I just end up regretting I even asked.

Anyone out there use any yearly paid domain forwarding services?

I've only heard of zoneedit.com, cleverforward.com (free), and mydomain.com. Any other good reliable forwarding services that provide catch-all domain and email forwarding/redirection?

My registrar setup has a great dns interface to manage domain names and it's included free with the price of registration. So you might look for managing your DNS with your registrar too.

Do what FiveEyes suggested: go to zoneedit.com. Problems solved for ever. No more waiting for DNS to propagate when you change hosts.

If not, don't you have Cpanel on your box? you can use the redirect from there, and it is instantly active. I just did one two minutes ago.

Or use a java script for redirection.

I've personally used www.ZoneEdit.com for over 2 years now and swear by them. I've found their customer support to be excellent, if you have a question about anything, simply call or e-mail them and they'll walk you through it. But their user interface makes that unnecessary for most basic tasks, it's straightforward and intuitive to use. However, more complex things can be accomplished when you have your own control over the DNS records, such as round robin or dynamic load balancing as well as fail-safe fallthrough to a backup server (which means if you have two boxes on seperate hosts with rsync daemon mirroring, you'd never see more than a few minutes down time!).

Their pricing may seem a bit confusing at first, since it's based on credits, which are used as needed. But if all you had were five domains that you wanted to simply provide basic DNS records for, the service would basically be free! With just that, you can switch web hosts at anytime within 3-15 minutes time. Do like I did, try five domains for awhile on their service and I'll bet you'll soon buy additional credits and consider them a bargain for the power and control they give you.

Just keep in mind that the whole 3 day propagation delay is not from changing web hosts, it's caused when you change DNS servers. If you've allowed your web server to be tied to your host's DNS server, you're going to end up losing money unnecesarily.

I'll look into zoneedit.com fiveeyes. Only thing I didnt like about them was that they say there is a DNS bandwidth limit. Something like 200mb. Which they say is around 1,000,000 queries. Originally I wanted to switch forwarding domains onto my dedicated server so there would be no bandwidth limit.

Do you get more DNS bandwidth once you pay for the service fiveeyes?

No, how I wish there was though. I would probably consider switching webhosts, if I could just find a host with a decent cpanel to manage all my forwarding domains, and add/delete/modify emails for all my domains on my box, instead of having to email techsupport each time I want something done.

Trying to get candidhosting to resolve my techsupport issues is very frustrating. I wish I was a unix system admin so I could just do everything myself.

This is day 8 dealing with candid just to try and get this domain forwarding issue resolved. You'd think for a customer on a dedicated host, they'd handle the situation expeditiously , but instead I find myself looking for DNS services just so I can get this issue resolved already and not have to deal with their techsupport.

I've been using Zoneedit for about 3 years now and they never charged me anything. It's a great service and when I do some changes it takes affect almost immediatelly so my sites are never down.