Configuring your personalised DNS

Three distinct interfaces allow you to configure your zone with Gandi:

• "simple" : lets you edit an A and/or MX record
• "normal" : gives you total control on your DNS zone thanks to an intuitive graphical user interface
• "expert" : gives you an empty text field for you to enter your zone file manually and entirely.

Gandi's 'simple' zone management interface:

You must enter the IP address of the web server where your pages are hosted in the form's 'A' field, in order for your site to be accessible via your domain name. You will also need to provide the name of your mail server in the MX field to have e-mail addresses linked to your domain.

This is the default interface for your zone file management. This interface shows a table containing all your existing zone records:

Each line corresponds to a record in your zone file that you can edit or delete. Of course, you can also add more records if you want.

Below is the list of available records:

• "Name" : the record's name (subdomain, wildcard, www, etc…)
• "Type" : The type of record. For the time being, our 'normal' interface accepts the following records:
  • A (Address)
    This is the most common resource record. It enables associating an IP address to a name.
• AAAA (IPv6 Address)
  This is a new record that is used for IP addresses in the IPv6 format.
• CNAME (Cannonical Name)
  This record allows a domain name to be used as an alias for another name.
• MX (Mail eXchanger)
  This record indicates the name of a mail server associated with a domain name.
  • TXT (Text)
    This record allows a chain of characters to be stored in one's DNS.
  • WKS (Well known services)
    A WKS record is a list of servers that provide known services such as HTTP or POP3.
  • SRV (SeRVice record)
    A SRV record corresponds to a record of information on services that are available (defined in RFC 2782).

• "Data" : Information regarding the record itself (for example: server's IP address, name of the mail server, etc…).
• "Aux" : This is the priority index for mail services.
• "TTL" (Time to Live) is the amount of time during which a DNS server is allowed to keep this information in its memory before being updated.

The two last columns (the pencil and the orange cross) are not related to your record data, but let you edit or delete the record.

How to use the Gandi zone configuration 'expert' interface:

Gandi provides an empty text zone so you can write up a zone file yourself. You can enter all records you need as long as the syntax is properly followed (be particularly with the full stops at the end of lines).

The DNS system is an extremely vast topic. Unless you possess sufficient knowledge regarding its configuration, we strongly recommend that you avoid using the "expert" interface and stick to "simple" or "normal".