Hi all,

I have just purchased an unmanaged VPS from Bitfolk and need some advice on getting DNS configured correctly.

I have a domain (openvocabs.org) registered and currently hosted with Dreamhost. My new Bitfolk server is also called openvocabs.org. I want to put the web application onto the new server and then do whatever configuration is necessary in order that users who go to http://openvocabs.org (or www...) will load the application on my new server.

I have almost no experience in DNS matters and don't want to start making changes that could screw everything up. So could anyone advise me what change I need to make, either at the Dreamhost end or at the Bitfolk end, to make this happen?

I initially thought that I would be able to achieve what I want by changing the nameserver entries at the Dreamhost end to those of bitfolk rather than those of Dreamhost, since Bitfolk presumably has a record for openvocabs.org at 212.13.194.162. However, Andy Smith has advised that I need to insert records into the openvocabs.org domain to point openvocabs.org and www.openvocabs.org to my new server's ip address (212.13.194.162). I've looked at the Dreamhost DNS management page for this domain and it has the facility to change the nameservers for the domain or add custom records (A, CNAME, TXT, NS, SRV or AAAA) or custom MX. Is that what I need to do? I have no idea of the implications of putting an entry here. This page also shows a non-editable record for this domain, as follows:

A 69.163.156.237
NS ns1.dreamhost.com
NS ns2.dreamhost.com
NS ns3.dreamhost.com
ftp A 69.163.156.237
www A 69.163.156.237

Hopefully this isn't going to be complicated - seems like a fairly simple thing to want to do! Anyway, any advice or guidance or links to plain English explanations of this stuff would be appreciated.

Thanks,


Ian.
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Ian Piper
Tellura Information Services - the web, document and information people
Registered in England and Wales: 5076715, VAT Number: 874 2060 29
Author of "Learn Xcode Tools for Mac OS X and iPhone Development", Apress, December 2009
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