GoDaddy and CNAME pointing

[flutem3]

David wrote:

<<Anyway, I use Godaddy and recommend the company.>>

Hi,

I have a question for somebody. I have started another project for a food pantry which was very little money. The donations they get go to food. It would be helpful if they had their own domain name so I checked out Homestead which was expensive. And I wrote them. I also checked out
GoDaddy which is inexpensive.

The guy from Homestead said to be sure that whatever I got had "CNAME Pointing." Does anyone know what this is? And does anyone know whether GoDaddy has it?

Thanks. Keep cool.

Carol :cool:

[David Gillaspey]

The guy from Homestead said to be sure that whatever I got had "CNAME Pointing." Does anyone know what this is? And does anyone know whether GoDaddy has it?Hi Carol,

I have never heard of "CNAME". They could be referring to DNS pointing. DNS stands for Domain Name Server.

(The following could be info you already are fully aware of.)

For example, my website, Great Church Websites, could be located on the server of any hosting company in the world. When you enter "www.greatchurchwebsites.org" in your browser's address bar and hit Enter, how does the browser find the files that constitute my site? That's what DNS is all about. It involves databases throughout the internet (managed by some organization; I don't know who) that keep track of where every domain name is actually hosted in the world.

When you buy a domain name from a company like GoDaddy, you have to provide information to them about where your site is actually hosted. (That is, unless you leave the site at GoDaddy and sign up for their hosting services, in that case, they handle things internally for you.) If you choose another hosting company, they will provide you with what is called Name Server information (actually, servers, that is, information for Name Server 1 and Name Server 2) that you have to provide to GoDaddy. (There's a place for doing this on GoDaddy's site.) Name server information for my hosting company, Midphase, looks like this:

NS1.......: e21ns1.midphase.com
NS2.......: e21ns2.midphase.com

You only provide GoDaddy with the information on the right, after the colon. Once you have submitted this information to GoDaddy (or whatever registrar you use), it takes several days for the information to "propagate" to all DNS databases in the world. Thus, it takes several days for your site to be accessible by typing "www.yournewdomainname.org" in a browser.

When you sign up for a hosting account (with GoDaddy or any other company), they will provide you with a backdoor URL to use to see your site during these initial few days, as well as with ftp information to allow you to upload files to begin with.

*****

On the other hand, the person giving you advice may have been referring to a control panel (or cpanel). This is a set of web-based hosting account management tools that let users manage their own account: add and subtract features, get stats, access databases, etc. These days, any professional web hosting company will provide control panel features.

Regardless, GoDaddy will work just fine for you, whether you choose to only purchase the domain name there and host the site somewhere else, or you choose GoDaddy both to register a domain name and host the site. You may prefer, however, to actually host your site with a Christian web hosting company, as is the case with some of our forum members.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[flutem3]

David wrote:

<<I have never heard of "CNAME". >>>

Hi, David,

I don't know what it is either. I wrote to GoDaddy and whatever it is, they support it...and gave me a list of instructions about how to go about getting the domain name, moving it, etc. Pretty nice, don't you think? And that kind of response gives me a terrific impression of the company!!

Thanks,

Carol

[Craig]

CNAME is short for canonical name which is typically used for email alias or DNS forwarding if I recall correctly. It masks the hosts domain name, i.e. hosting_company.com/~username forwarding to my_domain.com. Only thing that immediately comes to mind is a host that doesn't use it's own namesevers relying upon forwarding. I'm not a big fan of Homestead if it's worth anything.

[flutem3]

Craig wrote:

<< I'm not a big fan of Homestead if it's worth anything.>>

Hi, Craig,

Lots of people are not fans of Homestead. However, it works for me. As I learn more, I may change. I am 64 and started with zero knowledge of the computer or of designing websites. In fact, I had no idea I would be working on a website. When I decided to try, I went with what I was able to learn in a relatively short length of time.

By the way, what are the issues that you have with Homestead?

Keep cool. It is hot here, and it is going to continue in the 90's for the next week. I don't like it a bit!!!!!

Carol