A domain alias is an alternate name for a website. A common use for domain aliases is so mysite.com and mysite.net show the same information. It’s easy to set up domain aliases in Cloud Sites.
When setting up domain aliases in Cloud Sites, remember the alias you create will show the same content as the website where you set up the alias.
When working with domains and DNS management understanding what a FQDN is can be very helpful. This article will help explain the concept of a FQDN and a domains different components.
A domain is made up of a two essential parts, the Top-Level Domain (TLD) and the main Domain Name which is what you register. The other component of domain names are the subdomains. Continue reading “What is a FQDN?”
When setting up your new website with Liquid Web it’s often beneficial to use our DNS servers. If you’ve purchased your domain through a 3rd party registrar then we are not able to assist with DNS issues. By using our DNS servers this will allow our Support Team to provide DNS assistance for the domain.
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is a way to attach an encrypted digital signature to your email. Like adding an SPF record to your server, DKIM helps prevent email spoofing. Email spoofing is when spammers send email that looks like it’s coming from your email address. Spammers spoof your address to make it more likely that recipients will open spam emails, less likely that messages will be marked as spam, and harder to find the true spam source. If your address is spoofed, your server could get flagged as a spam server and you can have trouble sending legitimate mail, even if you aren’t doing anything wrong. This is commonly known as having a bad mail reputation.
Outgoing DKIM works by generating an encrypted digital signature that is attached to email messages sent by your server. This signature is generated using a public key you save as a DNS record. Theoretically, only you have access to your DNS records, so mail signed using this key should be unmodified and verified as coming from your server. If you don’t use your server to send mail, adding DKIM records to your server will have no effect on your mail reputation.
DKIM is not natively supported in Plesk 12. Instead, Plesk uses DomainKeys. If you’d like to use DKIM, it is supported with certain Plesk MailEnable plans. If you specifically need DKIM, contact our Heroic Support team to learn more about MailEnable.
There are three parts to enabling DKIM:
On a cPanel server, generating a DKIM key is easy! cPanel does it for you.
default._domainkey IN TXT "v=DKIM1; k=rsa; p=MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAyGm4KfaLQsOiNqfNGT0DDa+XE+TmIyr03F3/AMU8SXFwgItBU/PikYTmIyr07yhQoqlPrSL27l8XHf8AMIIB1LtxU2/490wRkuu9ZorEjRkIXSbev1GyAinBQNa5Rln2S+8AMIIBhZzfkNw7panbVJ0HPREiZAJ5TQEX1LjTqB/nArmNaMXaRUCwmYzGY45z8" eW2BJMM7Ftsj3nOTmIyr0LFSL27l8OaMDdcvpCglrFWoF1dXA78ORuvMSL27l8A5+UWRFBQ4NP6awWYj2LTSyeNeTlafawRk2B3C/dNcwpoLjz3T1wBHctcLnuC13+nMzzyUtgIVgz/7Ka8AMIIBQIDAQAB\;
Copy this record and paste it into a text document to prepare for the next step: adding your DKIM record to DNS.
Now that you’ve generated your DKIM record, you need to add it to your DNS records. These directions are different depending on where your DNS is hosted:
If you don’t know where your DNS is hosted, read our article on how to find out first!
If you are using Liquid Web’s nameservers, you can update your DNS records right in your Liquid Web account. Liquid Web’s nameservers are:
As long as your domain is using one of these nameservers, you’re good to go!
"v=DKIM1; k=rsa; p=MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAyGm4KfaBhFDhZzfkNw7pan+XE+TmIyr03F3/AMU8SXFwgItBU/PikYlddmgf7yhQoqlPrUMEqPZXHfIE8uGg1LtxU2/490wRkuu9ZorEjRkIXSbev1GyAinBQNa5Rln2S+AeBhFDhZzfkNw7panbVJ0HPREiZAJ5TQEX1LjTqB/nArmNaMXaRUCwmYzGY45z8" eW2BJMM7Ftsj3nOPYRbYxLFCzroSSOaMDdcvpCglrFWoF1dXA78ORuvMSL27l8A5+UWRFBQ490wRkuu9ZorEjRNeTlafawRk2B3C/dNcwpoLjz3T1wBHctcLnuC13+nMzzyUtgIVgz/7KaGQv5rnQIDAQAB\;With those few edits, you’re all set to load your DKIM record into your Liquid Web account.
Now that your DKIM record has been added, all that is left is to add a TXT policy record.
If you are using private nameservers on the same server as your email, cPanel will set up your DKIM records automatically! So, once you follow the steps to auto-generate your DKIM record, they are automatically added to your DNS zone in WHM. Just confirm they are correct in WHM:
Now that your DKIM record has been added, all that is left is to add a TXT policy record.
If you registered your domain at another company and host your DNS there, you log into your account with that company to manage your DNS. Find their DNS record editor and enter your DKIM record according to their specifications.
Now that your DKIM record has been added, all that is left is to add a TXT policy record.
A policy record is a DNS TXT record that talks more generally about DKIM on your server. It shows your server uses DKIM verification and makes DKIM work more smoothly. A policy record is just one more DNS record. Wherever you added the DKIM DNS record, you’ll also add the policy record.
There are different tags that make up the text of a policy record:
Most likely, your policy record will look like this:
_domainkey IN TXT "t=y; o=~; n=Interim Sending Domain Policy; r=postmaster@mysite.com"
Using t=y; and o=~; will help your email be delivered even if the DKIM signature gets broken in transit from your server to the receiving server. Of course, replace “postmaster@mysite.com” with the responsible email address.
Entering your policy record is the exact same procedure as entering any other DNS record. Wherever you entered your domain-specific DKIM record is also where you should enter your policy record: either in your Liquid Web account interface, in WHM, or in the control panel of your external DNS provider
You’ve successfully created a DKIM record for your domain! You can check to make sure it’s working by sending a test message from a domain email account to check-auth@verifier.port25.com. You don’t have to include a subject or any body text. You’ll receive an automated reply with the status of DKIM, as well as other services you may have.
From time to time, you’ll have to make changes to your DNS records. For example, if you change IP addresses, your DNS A records will change. You’ll also change DNS if you want to add SPF records to help email authentication. For these changes to work properly, it’s vital to know where DNS is hosted.
DNS is always hosted at your domain’s authoritative nameservers. Your authoritative nameservers, and therefore your DNS, can be in three places:
If you are using Liquid Web’s nameservers, you can update your DNS records in your Liquid Web account interface. If you use private nameservers on your server or another server, you can update DNS records in the control panel for your server (most likely WHM or Plesk, sometimes cPanel for SPF records). If your nameservers are where you registered your domain name, you’ll need to log into your account at that registrar and edit DNS there.
If you aren’t comfortable using your terminal program to look up WHOIS information, use an online WHOIS checking tool.
You can easily find out where your DNS records are hosted using your server’s WHOIS entries.
whois mysite.comDomain Name: LIQUIDWEB.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 2
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: http://networksolutions.com
Name Server: NS.LIQUIDWEB.COM
Name Server: NS1.LIQUIDWEB.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 04-aug-2016
Creation Date: 05-aug-1997
Expiration Date: 04-aug-2026One of the many challenges that can face a person while attempting to make modifications to a zone file is knowing what all of the different records are used for. This article highlight several of the commonly used records in an attempt to help demystify them.
Specifically, you’ll need to:
If you have access to cPanel, setting up the redirect is a simple process using the method detailed below. If you don’t have access to cPanel, though, you’ll need to set up the redirect manually. You can find tips for doing so in the bonus content section of this article.
Once you’ve entered the correct value, click the green checkmark button.
Because CloudFlare acts as a proxy, sitting between your website and the rest of the Internet, your server will, by default, log all visits to your site as having originated from CloudFlare. Fortunately it is a simple matter to configure your web server so that site visitors’ actual IP addresses will be logged. Proceed to Part Three to get started.
If you don’t have access to cPanel or are using a web server other than Apache, you’ll need to set up the “www” redirect manually. These instructions cover the general steps for popular web servers:
Apache redirects are accomplished via .htaccess files. The one you’ll need to edit will be located in your web site’s root directory, but you may need to check a box in your FTP client to show hidden files in order to see it. If you don’t already have a file named “.htaccess” in your site’s main directory, you’ll need to create one.
To redirect your non-www domain to www, simply add these lines at the beginning of your .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301]
The non-www to www redirect can be made in IIS by adding the following redirect to the site’s web.config file:
<rule name="WWW Redirect" enabled="true" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="(.*)" ignoreCase="true" />
<conditions>
<add input="{HTTP_HOST}" negate="true" pattern="^www.(.+)$" />
</conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="http://www.{HTTP_HOST}/{R:0}" appendQueryString="true" redirectType="Permanent" />
</rule>
Nginx redirects may be configured in the site’s virtual host (.vhost) file or main configuration file, depending on the server version and operating system. Since Nginx is not supported by Liquid Web, we’re assuming that you already know how to edit the virtual host configuration.
To redirect your non-www domain to www, you’ll need to ensure that the primary server is configured to use only the “www” subdomain for its server name.
First, back up the configuration file and then locate the server block for your domain. If both the www and non-www versions of your domain name are listed in the same server block, remove the non-www reference to your site from that server name line. Then create a separate server block for the main, non-www, domain, similar to this one:
server {
listen 80;
server_name yourdomainname.com;
return 301 http://www.yourdomainname.com$request_uri;
}
This will direct all traffic directed at your site’s main domain to the www version of your domain name. Once you’ve finished, restart nginx for the change to take effect.
To manage a domain’s DNS records in your account management interface, it must use one of our nameservers, which are:
If you already know that your site is using Liquid Web’s nameservers, skip ahead to Step #2: Adding or Editing a DNS Entry.
There are several methods to determine which nameservers are considered authoritative for your domain. You can either:
If your domain is not using our nameservers but you do want to be able manage DNS records through your Liquid Web account interface, you will need to log into your account at the registrar and update the nameservers to one of the pairs noted at the top of this article.
Whenever you create a new server (or change the name of an existing one) you will need to add (or update) the DNS record for its parent domain.
If the hostname does not resolve, you will not be able to:
Fortunately, adding the record is a simple process, and you can add the record in your Manage dashboard.
