Setting up redirection

Dns, Web-Hosting

Most of people face issue in using Google sites is redirection……i,e www.domain.com works fine (becoz of presence of cname record) BUT domain.com fails here…… SO lets see the possible ways out to the issue:

  1. use redirection offered by Registrar (eNom, Godaddy, name.com etc…)
  2. use redirection offered by third party dns hosts. (only redirection and NOT dns hosting)

In this post, i will consider #2 as for #1 instructions are already available (Google for them!) and also i guess most of you people are reading this post because you were unable to do the #1! since we are using free services, they are perfect for blogger, small biz sites (having low traffic…i.e less then 10,000 visitors per day) We can use any of following host for setting redirection:

  1. Everydns
  2. Editdns
  3. Zoneedit

here i like #1 the most as for redirection as its really fast and simple (though as dns host it is worst!) and so i will be giving steps for setting up redirection only in everydns…..and anyone can easily use any other service….as steps will be quite similar…


Everydns

To use its redirection, follow these steps:

  1. Get a free account at http://everydns.com
  2. Now login and then add you domain as webhop…. i.e you need to add  your-domain.com webhop to http://www.your-domain.com
  3. Now wait for 10-15mins…. (so that a zone file is created for your domain on everydns)
  4. Now you need to get the ip of everydns redirection server……..which is running redirection script and will be doing redirection of your domain. This can be done easily by doing an “A record” lookup for your domain on everydns nameservers….. you can either simply use any dns lookup tool like e.g Zoneedit here just put your domain in first field, select record type - a in second fiend and put ns of everydns to which you want to query….so you can use ns1.everydns.net in 3rd.
  5. So from here we get ip of server is - 64.158.219.5 please not if you get error like - no a records were found for domain.com on server ns1.everydns.net Its just means that everydns server’s are ot hosting your domain yet…wait sometime to see that…. Incase you are on linux, just put up dig command with “a” and “@” parameters….. so the command here as per this example will be
[anurag@root ~]$ dig domain.com a @ns1.everydns.net
; <<>> DiG 9.3.4-P1 <<>> domain.com a @ns1.everydns.net
; (1 server found)
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 21777
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 4
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;domain.com.                    IN      A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
domain.com.             3600    IN      A       64.158.219.5
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
domain.com.             86400   IN      NS      ns1.everydns.net.
domain.com.             86400   IN      NS      ns2.everydns.net.
domain.com.             86400   IN      NS      ns3.everydns.net.
domain.com.             86400   IN      NS      ns4.everydns.net.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.everydns.net.       7200    IN      A       71.6.202.220
ns2.everydns.net.       7200    IN      A       204.152.184.150
ns3.everydns.net.       7200    IN      A       208.76.56.56
ns4.everydns.net.       7200    IN      A       208.96.6.134
;; Query time: 35 msec
;; SERVER: 71.6.202.220#53(71.6.202.220)
;; WHEN: Sat Nov 29 01:08:52 2008
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 192
[anurag@root ~]$
  1. now just delete all A records present at your dns hosting for “domain.com”
  2. create new A record for domain.com (or root zone…or whatever your dns host calls it) pointing to 64.158.219.5

Hope that will help you in redirection setup :)