💻Understanding DNS
Read this to understand who is hosting your domain, website and emails
Where can I find my DNS details?
'who.is' is a great place to look to see who is managing your domain name, website hosting, and email hosting.
See Website Information
Search the whois database, look up domain and IP owner information, and check out dozens of other statistics.
On Demand Domain Data
Get all the data you need about a domain and everything associated with that domain anytime with a single search.
Register Domain Names
Find a domain with the best domain registrar on the web. Start your domain search at Name.com.
I would suggest checking the above link to fill yourself in on which companies are managing which parts of your digital assets.
What’s an A record?
An A record maps a domain name to the IP address (Version 4) of the computer hosting the domain. An A record uses a domain name to find the IP address of a computer connected to the internet
The A in A record stands for Address. Whenever you visit a web site, send an email, connect to Twitter or Facebook, or do almost anything on the Internet, the address you enter is a series of words connected with dots.
For example, to access the DNSimple website you enter www.dnsimple.com. At our name server, there’s an A record that points to the IP address 208.93.64.253. This means that a request from your browser to www.dnsimple.com is directed to the server with IP address 208.93.64.253.
MX
MX record stands for “Mail Exchange Records”. It specifies a mail server responsible for accepting emails addressed to your domain. In other words, MX records tell which mail servers accept incoming emails for your domain and where emails should be routed if addressed to your domain. Therefore, you need to have the correct MX records to receive emails.
| example.com | record type: | prority: | value: | TTL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
@ | MX | 10 | mailhost1.example.com | 45000 |
@ | MX | 20 | mailhost2.example.com | 45000 |
SPF
SPF stands for “Sender Policy Framework”. SPF is an email authentication method. SPF helps servers authenticate that messages appearing to come from a specific domain are sent from servers authorized by the domain owner. It helps protect your domain from phishing and spoofing, and it also ensures that your messages are delivered correctly.
DKIM
DKIM stands for “DomainKeys Identified Mail”. It is also an email authentication method that adds a digital signature to every message. In addition, DKIM allows receiving servers to confirm that the domain’s owners have authorized mail coming from a domain and that these messages aren’t altered during transit.
Tracking
Elastic Email “tracks” opens, clicks, unsubscribes, etc. You need to rewrite links and use web pages. Configuring a “tracking domain” brands these rewritten links and pages with your own domain.
DMARC
DMARC stands for “DMARC is short for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance”. It is also an email authentication protocol that ensures the proper authentication of emails. SPF and DKIM are prerequisites of DMARC and must be implemented before setting up a DMARC policy,
A DMARC policy allows a sender to indicate that their emails are signed by SPF and DKIM and tells a receiver what to do if neither authentication methods pass, such as junk or bounce the email. Please note that the DMARC policy on your domain will affect all of your emails sent from that domain, not only the emails sent using Elastic Email; therefore, please ensure you are using the SPF and DKIM for all your email delivery.
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