Understanding those pesky DNS entries ...

Monday, April 24, 2026

You have a live website and you're happy. Then prices go up or service isn't great and you are unhappy! What to do?

Your site has three key elements: the website, the mail service and the domain. You'll need to find another internet provider for these. Which means research on your part.

You may choose to transfer the "whole kit and caboodle" to a single vendor. Or, you can search for vendors with the best prices and services for each element.

Either way, you'll need to make changes to the DNS settings. The vendor you buy your domain name from is the keeper of that domain's DNS directory.

DNS (Domain Name System) is like a telephone book. It translates your domain names (like www.example.com) into machine-readable IP addresses (like 192.0.2.1) that computers use to identify each other.

When you buy a new house, your address changes in the phone directory (do we even still have these?). When you change vendors, your vendor address changes in the DNS directory.

If you are lucky, the vendor will do this for you. Otherwise, it's a manual process.

1. Get the values you need to enter from your new vendor.
2. Go to the website of the vendor where you purchased your domain.
3. Log on, locate the DNS settings area and enter the new values. This may involve typing/pasting in the new values; or adding a new record and deleting the old. Depends on how the vendor handles these changes.

Example: I have three (imaginary) domain names:
I own these for one year terms, renewable at yearly or multi-year rates. But they are not "attached" to anything. I just own the name. If I don't renew, it goes back into the pool and someone else can buy it.

Now I decide to build a website for each domain name. I need a vendor to host my websites and provide email, security and privacy. Financially, it makes more sense to find a single vendor with a hosting package that allows multiple websites. (Tho, if $$ is no object, I could have 3 different vendors if I wanted, one for each site.)

By way of definition, "security" is SSL (which I covered in a previous blog). "Privacy" prevents someone from seeing your contact information when they search for a new domain. The results of a domain search are usually: it's "available" or info on who owns it and the hosting service.

There are other things to consider in my search for a hosting vendor. Is there free SSL or only paid plans? Are websites backed up daily? How much band width is there? What are email limitations; ie monthly limits on mailings or subscribers? Are there site builders to make design easier? etc.

I decide on SmarterASP. The pros: it allows me to set up to 6 websites, can run Classic ASP and the price is right. The cons: it has a modest email package, limited to ten recipients on a single email.

I buy a three-month license to test out the hosting service and begin building the three websites. If I am happy with the service, I'll buy the yearly or two year plan at the end of my three months.

There are 3 DNS entries that direct the domain name to the correct hosting platform.

A	WWW	123.45.678.9
A	*	123.45.678.9
A	@	123.45.678.9

The first website I build is for magic.com. That domain was purchased from SmarterASP, so no DNS changes are necessary.

The domain marcia.com was purchased from Whois.com. For that website, I need to go to Whois.com, logon and update these three pointers with the values I get from SmarterASP. Anyone looking for marcia.com will be directed to the website at SmarterASP.

The domain sampson4.com is already an established website, with site and domain hosted by Network Solutions. I decide to move/copy the site onto my SmarterASP hosting platform. SmarterASP's hosting is cheaper, so I'll eventually cancel the Network Solutions hosting. I could leave my domain at Network Solutions, just logging in there and changing the DNS values for those provided by SmarterASP.

Instead, I will transfer the domain name to SmarterASP. My year of ownership at Network Solutions is almost up. Transferring and paying for another year(s) at SmarterASP will be cheaper than renewing at Network Solutions. I'll let you, know when I do this, what was actually involved.

Eventually, I may decide to transfer the marcia.com domain too, if I decide to keep it. It's a nice cheap playground for me to try out new things. That would effectively bring all three domains, websites and mail services within a single vendor.

We're not quite done yet.

SmarterASP is too restrictive on email sends, hoping to rule out spammers. One of my websites, magic.com, needs to send an email blast to about 200 subscribers twice a month. And I would like some automation in adding/removing subscribers from the subscriber list. Since my volume is low enough, I started looking at free email services.

There are lots with paid plans as well.

I select Mailerlite.com and open a free account for "subscribe@magic.com". Only caveat to the free plan ... it places a small mailerlite logo at the bottom of the email. I'll cover the integration between Mailerlite and the web page in a future blog.

Again, there are DNS changes to point to this service.

Mailerlite gave me three entries to add to DNS (highlighted on image). Instructions said to delete any other spf as there can only be one entry in the DNS.

This was not quite correct.

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) specifies what IP addresses are allowed to send emails on a domain's behalf. SPF checks against the mailfrom address to authorize sending IP addresses.

Mailerlite had given me:

TXT	v=spf1 a mx include:_spf.misend.com ~all

I will be sending regular mail from SmarterASP and the bulk "Suscribe" emails from Mailerlite. All mail servers in use need to be identified in the spf line.

The mail server for Mailerlite is: include:_spf.misend.com. Why the a mx in the line? Since they receive mail (from my subscribe form), the "mx" allows mail servers listed in my domain's MX records to send email. The "a" authorizes hosts listed in my domain's A (and AAAA) records to send email.

The mail server for SmarterASP is: include:_spf.site4now.net.

That makes the corrected line:

TXT	v=spf1 a mx include:_spf.misend.com include:_spf.site4now.net -all

There was also a difference between -all, which rejects all emails from addresses not listed in the SPF, and ~all, which accepts but marks addresses not listed in the SPF. Commonly referred to hard fails or soft fails.

An +all, btw, allows all servers to send on domain's behalf and ? is neutral, no checks at all ... hello spammers and spoofers.