Unit 9 · Ship it and keep it alive
Nameservers vs DNS records: change with care
Nameservers decide where all of your domain’s records live. Change them and every record moves at once, email included. To fix one wrong record, edit that record and leave the nameservers alone.
The mix-up
What people often think
“Nameservers are just another address for the site.”
What the tutor says
NS records name the servers that answer questions about your domain. Change them and every record moves, email included.
How it works
NS records are not another address for the site. They name the servers that answer every question about your domain: the A record, the CNAMEs, the MX records and the rest.
If you do switch, copy every existing record to the new provider first, or mail and other services stop working.
Close cousins of this mix-up
The tutor watches for these in the same lesson.
“Switching nameservers is a quick fix for one wrong record.”
Nameservers decide where every record lives, email included. Fix the one record and leave the rest alone.
Practise it with a tutor watching
Domains and DNS
Point a domain at a host, read DNS records, and fix a broken one without panicking about the wait.
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