How to Edit Your Hosts File on Windows to Preview Your Website Before DNS Changes

If you ever set up a new domain hosting or migrate a domain to a new server, you will want to check to make sure that the changes are good before changing the DNS to the new server.

We often get asked this question a lot as in many cases, clients change the DNS before checking to see if there site actually works. This can lead to frustration, downtime and lost revenue and customers.

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Basic DNS Setup with DNSMASQ

Dnsmasq is a lightweight, easy to configure, DNS forwarder and DHCP server. It is designed to provide DNS and optionally, DHCP, to a small network. It can serve the names of local machines which are not in the global DNS. Source: https://wiki.debian.org/dnsmasq Basic DNS Setup First things first, let’s install the package: If your goal … Read more

Add MX Record to Godaddy

This article describes how to add an MX record to Godaddy if the DNS is hosted at Godaddy. Create an A record for “mail”. Point the record to the primary IP where the mail will be hosted. This can be the same IP as the website or a different IP if mail in on a … Read more

DMARC

Amazonon DMARC (http://sesblog.amazon.com/post/Tx22ZELXSSZRYZR/What-is-DMARC-and-should-you-use-it). This Google article is also helpful: https://support.google.com/a/answer/2466563?hl=en If you scroll down to the ‘Example records’ section, you’ll see a number of examples on how to write the TXT record. Here’s an example of that record: _dmarc.advancedmediawebs.com. 3600 IN TXT “v=DMARC1; p=quarantine; pct=5; rua=mailto:mark@domain.com”

DNS open resolver test

Other Information Test your server for an open DNS resolver here: http://openresolver.com/ Closing DNS Resolvers on Windows Server 2003/2008/2008 R2: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc787602(v=ws.10).aspx Windows Servers running Plesk: http://kb.parallels.com/en/116463 Closing DNS Resolvers on Servers running Bind: http://www.zytrax.com/books/dns/ch9/close.html

Disabling Recursive DNS in the Plesk Panel and No Panels

To Disable Recursive DNS in the Parallels Plesk Panel Log in to the Parallels Plesk Panel as administrator. Click Tools & Settings. From the General Settings area, click DNS Template Settings. Click DNS Recursion.Select Localnets, and then click Ok. For Windows Servers: Log in to your  Server  through a Remote Desktop Connection. From the Start … Read more

Cannot Contact Outlook.com

Mail for some reason is not delivering to outlook.com Find your namservers. – in this case the example is 69.xx.xx.xx $ dig MX outlook.com @69.xx.xx.xx ; DiG 9.9.2-P2-RedHat-9.9.2-3.P2.el5 MX outlook.com @69.64.66.11 ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADERHEADER