Hi,
I have two web hosts one that hosts .com domain and one that hosts .co.uk domain.
I have an old website and email services with the .co.uk host and have just created a new website with the ,com host.
My client does not want ANY disruption to email and therefore wants to keep paying for both hosts, leaving the email on the .co.uk alone.
I therefore need to rdirect the .co.uk domain to the .com server.
If I change the DNS settings on the .co.uk server, will that bugger up email too, or is it possible to direct just web traffic and not email?
I understand that there are different record types in DNS settings, but am not very familiar with them.
I do not want to do a HMTL redirect as there will always be a slight delay in the redirect.
The DNS settings of the .co.uk domain are:
80.82.115.24 / 24 PTR owendevenport.co.uk.
ftp.owendevenport.co.uk. CNAME owendevenport.co.uk.
mail.owendevenport.co.uk. A 80.82.115.24
ns.owendevenport.co.uk. A 80.82.115.24
owendevenport.co.uk. NS ns1.xenserve.com.
owendevenport.co.uk. NS ns2.xenserve.com.
owendevenport.co.uk. A 80.82.115.24
owendevenport.co.uk. MX (10) mail.owendevenport.co.uk.
smtp.owendevenport.co.uk. CNAME smtp.xenserve.com.
webmail.owendevenport.co.uk. A 80.82.115.24
www.owendevenport.co.uk. CNAME owendevenport.co.uk.
Thanks for any advice.
I suppose server side redirect should work for you.
Hi,
Just so you know, when you switch host mail servers you dont actually lose any email. The email simply switches servers. Lets say you have your domains registered in one place with say Netfirms and your webhosts are separate.
Then you switch hosts by changing the DNS at your domain registrar. What happens is that people browsing to your site go to one host and then as the switch progresses they start going to the new host.
They never actually stop going to one host or the other. There is never a break. Just a switch. Its the same with email.
As you switch hosts (and before you do the DNS name change) simply set up duplicate email addresses at the new host. Then do the DNS swap. As the DNS change propogates throughout the internet the email just switches to the new email accounts at the new host.
You’ll suddenly see email stop at the old host and start at the new host. There shouldnt be any mail lost.
If you dont want to do that you can use a new webhost for the actual site and just bounce email back to the old host. You do that by changing the MX records at the new hosting account and entering the mail server details for your old host.
If you wanted you could actually host your domain at one place, your site at another and your email at a 3rd place (like gmail or smtp dot com). Look for details on the MX servers in in your hosts help files.
Cheers
Max
The only difficulty then is accessing the mail account on the old hosting so as to access the mail that is there that hasn’t been downloaded yet.
You can do that by temporarily updating the hosts file on your own computer to point the email address back to the old hosting to download them.
Yes you can do that. Or leave it as it is and once you see the switch has happened you can login to your old mail server using a webmail program (most cpanel and host control panels has a webmail system built in) to see if there is any mail left there.
Cheers
Max
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN”>
<html>
<head>
<title>Your Page Title</title>
<meta http-equiv=“REFRESH” content=“0;url=http://www.the-domain-you-want-to-redirect-to.com”></HEAD>
<BODY>
Optional page text here.
</BODY>
</HTML>