DNS nameservers and A, MX, TXT records

[wickham]

Hi, I'm trying to connect my website with tsohosts.co.uk to my domain name with fasthosts.

I've had the website hosted by tsohost.Co.uk for 20 years and they have recently upgraded cPanel and the website and emails are down. I have been told that I was using a 3rd party legacy server and I should abandon it. I have been given A, MX and TXT records to set up on new DNS nameservers somewhere. The website IP is 92.205.11.*** . The tsohosts email server issxb1plzcpnl49****.prod.sxb1.secureserver.net:2083 and this is in the url of the new cPanel admin.

There is also a url for the new cPanel account page containing a server name https://host.secureserver.net/webhostin ... 4****/view


The domain name is with fasthosts and the domain DNS page says that if I use a 3rd party nameservers edits to DNS records then A, MX, TXT etc. will not take effect, so if I use Fasthosts nameservers ns1.livedns.com etc. I cannot add any records. I have tried Fasthosts nameservers which propagated but the website and emails failed.


Which server should I use in Fasthosts for the nameservers if I don't use Fasthosts nameservers?
issxb1plzcpnl49****.prod.sxb1.secureserver.net
host.secureserver.net/webhosting/cpanel/account/8cade4cf-1aac-4402-8da2-c8cab124****

[Mike4]

An oblique reply but I dumped TSOHost years ago when their tech support changed from being truly excellent to worse than abysmal, more or less overnight.

Nowadays I use NetHosted, whose tech support still seem sharp as needles. Or was last time I asked them something.

[mc2fool]

Not familiar with fasthosts (and ditto Mike4's reply for tsohost), but surely the simplest thing to do is to set your DNS Nameservers to tsohost's ones.

Go into your fasthosts control panel and change the nameservers for your domain to ns1.tsohost.co.uk, ns2.tsohost.co.uk and ns3.tsohost.co.uk.

At that point then hopefully everything should work as the tsohost name servers should have the necessary setup for your domain hosted with them.

[UncleEbenezer]

An oblique reply but I dumped TSOHost years ago when their tech support changed from being truly excellent to worse than abysmal, more or less overnight.

This question isn't about tsohosts support. They've given an answer: the domain name is elsewhere (fasthosts), so that's where the DNS needs to be configured. I'd suggest it's not unreasonable to suppose that a Client who has domain somewhere different to the hosting - not something anyone would recommend to a technophobe - is tech-savvy enough to understand the reply.

What the OP actually tried (and failed) looks rather confused. But mc2fool's reply looks like exactly a path-of-least-resistance to a fix, and should also be future-proof against the same thing happening again.

[wickham]

At that point then hopefully everything should work as the tsohost name servers should have the necessary setup for your domain hosted with them.

The domain name isn't hosted with tsohost, but I'll try your suggestion. Tsohost never mentioned their own nameservers, just said I should get over to Fasthosts, but I've had no joy using fasthosts nameservers.

[Mike4]

An oblique reply but I dumped TSOHost years ago when their tech support changed from being truly excellent to worse than abysmal, more or less overnight.

This question isn't about tsohosts support. They've given an answer: the domain name is elsewhere (fasthosts), so that's where the DNS needs to be configured.

Indeed which is why I said it's an oblique reply.

When tech support from TSO Host is needed, it often isn't there in my personal experience. Just sayin'.

[Infrasonic]

At that point then hopefully everything should work as the tsohost name servers should have the necessary setup for your domain hosted with them.

The domain name isn't hosted with tsohost, but I'll try your suggestion. Tsohost never mentioned their own nameservers, just said I should get over to Fasthosts, but I've had no joy using fasthosts nameservers.

You are pointing your domain name host (Fasthosts) to the domain website host (TSOhost), so when people search for your domain website it is effectively 'forwarded' to TSO by Fasthosts.

Likewise for email, the MX is a 'send email addressed to Wicham's domain email addresses here' and for sent email the SFP/DKIM TXT and DMARC TXT policy tell recipients of your domain email that it has come from an authenticated source - this helps to prevent spoofing as anything that doesn't match will be spam foldered or bounced depending on how severe you run the DMARC policy.

I have my DMARC set as = quarantine, so email purporting to come from my domain not having valid SPF/DKIM authentication will be spam foldered (quarantined is generally a business grade inbox alternative option).

If you have a DMARC policy of = reject then the receive end will bounce (NDR) or possibly even 'silently drop' the email if it really thinks you are spoofing/spamming (a habit some of the big webmail providers have...).

This is why it is important these days to make sure all your DNS/TXT ducks align as there is less wiggle room with domains because of spoofed spam / hacking etc.
viewtopic.php?f=39&t=43200

I've got my Domain name and domain email hosting with Fasthosts and have customised my DNS/TXT (SPF + DMARC) records for email to the way I want it, rather than their generic TXT settings. If you want an easy life host everything at Fasthosts and then their auto generated DNS/TXT will suffice for most situations.

It does take a while for hosting DNS 'rational' to sink in so if you are still lost have a search online for tutorials to get your head around the general concepts. Once you are comfortable save current DNS/TXT settings (copy paste will work) and try customised settings, knowing that you can revert back if needs be having broken something. Syntax is important.

HTH

[mc2fool]

At that point then hopefully everything should work as the tsohost name servers should have the necessary setup for your domain hosted with them.

The domain name isn't hosted with tsohost, but I'll try your suggestion. Tsohost never mentioned their own nameservers, just said I should get over to Fasthosts, but I've had no joy using fasthosts nameservers.

Your domain name is registered with Fasthosts and one of the things in the registration entry is which name servers have the entries that define where your domain services (website, email, etc) are to be found, which in your case is on tsoHost.

You can see this if you go to https://mxtoolbox.com/supertool, stick in your domain name and use the drop-down to select and then click Whois Lookup.

The three (domain name, name servers, domain services) can be all with the same provider or each on its own provider or a mix. You could use the Fasthosts name servers, the tsoHost name servers or some third party name servers. However, in the first and last of those you'll have to manually set up the DNS entries to point to your domain services, whereas if you use the name servers of the host of your domain services (tsoHost) that should be set up already.