{"id":10,"date":"2017-11-08T09:48:36","date_gmt":"2017-11-08T15:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/help.marketingservices.dev\/?p=10"},"modified":"2020-03-03T12:23:18","modified_gmt":"2020-03-03T18:23:18","slug":"what-are-dns-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/help.marketingservices.dev\/?p=10","title":{"rendered":"What are DNS records?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Domain Name System [DNS] refers to a collection of standards and internet infrastructure that allows a client (like Chrome, Safari, or Edge running on your laptop).\u00a0 They allow us to use an easy-to-remember domain name to represent a server address.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s like being able to ask a Taxi Driver to take you to “the mall” instead of giving the exact street address. The Taxi Driver can look up a listing for the mall and find the address and directions.<\/p>\n

DNS records act like listings for website addresses. They are set up on NameServers, whose purpose is to answer questions about domain names. Like “where do I find mybusiness.com?”<\/span><\/p>\n

The standards are detailed and in general, require a lot of explanation. Website Pro only concerns itself with 3 kinds of records:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A Records<\/strong>\n
      \n
    • The “A” stands for “Address Record”<\/span><\/li>\n
    • These are records that point from a domain name to a specific Internet Protocol [IP] address<\/span><\/li>\n
    • In general, an A Record says<\/span>\n
        \n
      • “if you’re looking for mybusiness.com you should be able to find it at the address 216.239.38.21”<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
      • CNAME Records<\/strong>\n
          \n
        • This stands for “Canonical Name Record” (in this case<\/em> <\/span>Canonical means “the rule that must be followed” and CNAME Records override some other records)<\/i><\/li>\n
        • These are records that point from a domain name to another domain name<\/span><\/li>\n
        • For instance, if you set a CNAME Record for “mybusiness.com” then it will trump records set for subdomains like “<\/span>www.mybusiness.com<\/span>” or “smpt.mybusiness.com”. If these are configured incorrectly it can cause problems.<\/span><\/li>\n
        • In general, a CNAME Record says<\/span>\n
            \n
          • “if you’re looking for www.mybusiness.com you should be able to find it at mybusiness.com”<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
              \n
            1. <\/li>\n
            2. CAA Records<\/strong>\n
                \n
              • This stands for “Certificate Authority Authorization”<\/span><\/li>\n
              • A Certificate Authority is an organization that can give out the\u00a0SSL\/TLS Certificates\n
                  \n
                • Those certificates prove “I’m the website I claim to be”<\/li>\n
                • They are also used to make your communication with that website private<\/li>\n
                • This is what allows the giving you the “s” in “https:\/\/\u2026”<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
                • The CAA Record says:<\/span>\n
                    \n
                  • “If you are one of these authorities then you are allowed to make SSL\/TLS certificates for this domain”<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
                  • If there is no CAA Record (or the record is empty) then anyone is allowed to generate certificates for that domain. This is the most common case.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                    The Domain Name System [DNS] refers to a collection of standards and internet infrastructure that allows a client (like Chrome, Safari, or Edge running on your laptop).\u00a0 They allow us to use an easy-to-remember domain name to represent a server address. It’s like being able to ask a Taxi Driver to take you to “the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/help.marketingservices.dev\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/help.marketingservices.dev\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/help.marketingservices.dev\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/help.marketingservices.dev\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/help.marketingservices.dev\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/help.marketingservices.dev\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":420,"href":"https:\/\/help.marketingservices.dev\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions\/420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/help.marketingservices.dev\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/help.marketingservices.dev\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/help.marketingservices.dev\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}