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Hosting Only

Boxersoft
Rising Star
Posts: 132
Thanks: 20
Fixes: 1
Registered: ‎25-07-2009

Hosting Only

I have a domain registered with 123-Reg, and I've been using their 'WebForwarding' facility to point web requests for that domain at my PlusNet webspace, which works but has its limitations. Since noticing that my tariff allows for the hosting of up to 5 domains at no extra cost, I thought I'd arrange for PlusNet to host the domain directly, whilst keeping 123-reg as the registrars. However, I gather this means that I must set the domain to point at PlusNet's name servers. I don't really want to do that, because I have a lot of mail-forwarding rules set up at 123-reg and don't want to have to lose/recreate them. I thought I would be able to leave the domain using 123-reg's name servers and just set the domain's 'A' records to point at the PlusNet web server, leaving the MX records (and therefore the mail routing) unaffected. Apparently that's not possible, but I don't understand why.
The way I understood web hosting to work is that the server needs to be configured to 'expect' requests for a given domain name, and it then simply routes the request to the appropriate directory. Once that's in place, if the server receives a web request that has a handled host header, it should all just work - or so I thought. If that was the case though, I don't understand why it should be necessary for the domain to use PlusNet's name servers - I should be able to continue using 123-reg's and just set the A record as I wanted, but apparently that's not possible. Rather than take up Customer Support's valuable time trying to educate me I thought I'd raise the question here. Can anyone explain to me the ins and outs of why it's not possible to do what I expected?
3 REPLIES 3
Ben_Brown
Grafter
Posts: 2,839
Registered: ‎13-06-2007

Re: Hosting Only

Hi,

My post here should answer your query.
Boxersoft
Rising Star
Posts: 132
Thanks: 20
Fixes: 1
Registered: ‎25-07-2009

Re: Hosting Only

OK, thanks. The finer points elude me but I won't bother trying to get my head around them any further.
If I were to do as the previous poster intended (change the name servers then point the MX records back to where they were), is there any way I could put incoming mail 'on hold' until I set the MX records appropriately?
Boxersoft
Rising Star
Posts: 132
Thanks: 20
Fixes: 1
Registered: ‎25-07-2009

Re: Hosting Only

Thinking about it, even if I don't want to point MX records elsewhere, I'll still have to make arrangements for dealing with mail addressed to [various names]@mydomain. The obvious thing to do is set up aliases to my PlusNet mailboxes, but doing that singly via the web UI will be a pain. I don't suppose there's any way to create aliases in bulk is there?