This is outdated. I have since learned to do all this with the registrar itself. Roderick will be doing the updates. Wondering if this page is in proper context with rest of server build documentation. I'd much prefer to see this as part of a server installation pre-checklist worksheet - some kind of document at project outsite that lays out the hostname, ip address, domain names.

Register A Domain

I used www.domainsatcost.ca and registered a domain name. krypton.com is registered with someone, but since I am a Superman fan we'll use www.krypton.com as an example.

Protect Your Domain Name

Domain hacking is becoming more common. At minimal, it is recommended to enable in your account, auto-renew and registrar lock. Often registrars will have more advanced features (at a price) that you might want to enable if your domain is particularly valuable.

Not so obvious, is that it is actually better to put dummy information for your Adminstrative and Technical contact information. There have been cases where the email address harvested also happened to be the account name for the registrar and used to hijack the domain.

Lastly, ensure you have a strong password to protect your registrar login account.

Protect Your Privacy

You should though use a working email address in case some one want to contact you. In the Bonsai Framework we often setup an email address specifically for this, dns@krypton.com.

Configure DNS

Next you need to Configure your Domain Name which involves 3 basic components,

Obtain a static IP address on the Internet
Have DNS (Domain Name Servers) to propagate your domain name.
Configure your Domain Name to use the Domain Name Servers.

Both Rackspace and Slice provide you with your own IP address and also have their own Domain Name Servers for you to use.

Configure Domain with Rackspace

Log into your Rackspace account. There are decent instructions on the Rackspace Knowledge Base. For your convenience here are my notes,

Go to the DNS tab. Click Add button.

Domain Name = krypton.com
Click OK

On the resulting screen, your new domain name should show up. Click it. In this case, krypton.com to add your Records.

Type: A
Name: krypton.com
Data: 67.18.4.2 # Replace this with is the IP address of your server.
TTL : 300

Your record should now be in the list.

We will now add a CNAME, think of it as an alias. This allows both http://krypton.com and http://www.krypton.com to work. Click Add again,

Type: CNAME
Name: www.krypton.com
Data: krypton.com
TTL : 300

Finally record the IP addresses of the Domain Name Servers that Rackspace provides.

Configure Domain with Slice

Log into your slice management account at, https://manage.slicehost.com. There are decent instructions on the SliceHost website on these screens. For your convenience are my notes,

Select DNS and then New Domain
Domain = krypton.com. # Note the period after the domain name. You must have that.
TTL = 86400
Select Create this zone

This should create the domain and it should now appear in your list of domains. Next you will want to add Records. Select the Records link which appears beside your domain name. Click new record.

We will now add a CNAME, think of it as an alias. This allows both http://krypton.com and http://www.krypton.com to work.,

Name: krypton.com.
Data: 173.203.126.22 # Replace this with is the IP address of your server.
Type: A

Click new record again and fill in the following,

Name: www
Data: krypton.com.
Type: CNAME

Configure Domain Register System to DNS Servers

These steps will be slightly different depending on the Domain Registrar you use. Following our example, I use, www.domainsatcost.ca and apply the Doman Name Servers supplied by Rackspace using the following steps,

Click on your domain name.
For Name Server Information select Use Third Party Hosting
Nameserver 1: dns1.stabletransit.com
Nameserver 2: dns2.stabletransit.com

The last step is to wait for the things to propagate. You know that things are working when you are able to ping the domain name from a computer on the Internet and it resolves to your server's ip address,

in-Phams-iMac:\~ tinpham$ ping krypton.com
PING krypton.com (67.18.4.2): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 67.18.4.2: icmp_seq=0 ttl=51 time=76.786 ms
64 bytes from 67.18.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=77.240 ms
64 bytes from 67.18.4.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=51 time=74.919 ms
64 bytes from 67.18.4.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=51 time=72.771 ms
64 bytes from 67.18.4.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=51 time=74.733 ms
64 bytes from 67.18.4.2: icmp_seq=5 ttl=51 time=75.996 ms
64 bytes from 67.18.4.2: icmp_seq=6 ttl=51 time=74.408 ms