Some of you noticed the downfall of our services as we underwent a minute migration from our older host to the current one, though it was a few hours thing, we forgot updating our Domain Name Servers (DNS).
Our failure to paying attention to that minor issue led towards a humongous loss we are experiencing now as some of our customers might have been trying to get hold of us via any of our emails channel. Pitt, we are not aware of those who wanted to connect with us. We kindly urge each of you to resend the email and as the director of the business writing this post, shall personally respond to such mails within few minutes of sending the mail to us. We are unreservedly apologetic for such uncalled for demeanour, we promise such won’t happen again.
What is DNS / DNS records?
Find it best to dismantle this one for you. According to Cloudflare, this simply means the domain name system which is the phonebook of the Internet. This helps human to interact on the internet with a particular business with a dedicated website and/or name server (i.e, pietkoeneraadstore.co.za) which follows Internet Protocol (IP) address.
Every website has a unique IP address which is substituted by a domain name as the only way of helping people to easily memorise the domain name thereof unlike IP address, surely it is not easy to memorise these numbers ‘65.634.230.08’ but is easy to memorise www.stufnews.com. Hopefully you now comprehend the importance of DNS as the functionality thereof is minutely explained.
How does DNS work?
Thus domain name’s brought into being to substitute web browsing through and/or using IP address. DNS emerge to be of great significance as it helps converting a hostname (www.pietkoeneraadstore.co.za) into a computer-friendly IP address as highlighted previously. Each device on the internet has its unique address, you can ping it from a Command Prompt from your computer. Recall, address is used to find a particular home, so that’s the functionality of DNS which is the substitute for an IP address. Have to make it clear here, an IP address isn’t wholly removed, it’s hidden from your eyes, but not hidden from the public as it is locatable or visible when you ping “domain name” from your computer.
How does DNS function with email addresses?
I merely know of webmail as records like webmail.pietkoeneraadstore.co.za store in the DNS settings, makes it easy to receive incoming email as there’s a set up to follow and Mail Exchanger (MX) records are vitally significant as they are created in the DNS record. MX records seem to be a style used by Google in Google G Suite, that’s for businesses where a business department / employee’s / employer’s name is used and followed by (@) the IP address (domain name) of the business. For instance, Orders Handling Department of Piet Koeneraad Emporium Store (Pty) Ltd, the department is shortened “orders” and connected and/or attached (@) to the business’ name which registered a domain name “pietkoeneraadstore.co.za.”
Literally, orders@pietkoeneraadstore.co.za is a business group email address accessible to all employees at the aforesaid department. In a nutshell, MX records directs mails to a particular IP address which alone directs to information of a particular business. Our mailing address, that is to say outgoing and incoming servers went down as the MX records where missing on our website hosting account, they were merely in the DNS settings located in our domain name hosting account, all of them in a Cpanel, that’s something you need to research about for undressed comprehension.
The IP protocol is quite wise. To get something straight here, there’s a unique IP address to any website automated by the hoster thereof. I just learned and discerned something interesting, previously we were having a storefront page with ‘234.655.26.84’ kinda IP address and since we chose to go for a fully functional ecommerce website, we had to change a website hosting company, I hope you now can relate, we did abandon our previous IP address to a new one which is ‘65.135.636.86.7’ kinda IP address of which I recorn exhibits details of the hoster not our business, to have one we must buy a dedicated IP address.
Recall, there’s a change in IP addresses, if web browsing were located using those address it should’ve been even more difficult for our customers to memorise the two different IP addresses, but DNS made everything simple for us as the IP address needs an ‘A’ file record to be created in our DNS settings from our domain hosting company as they have given us a domain name hosting account with a full control over it.
I hope you enjoyed reading my synopsis. I will be answering questions here, you can whatsApp or email me as well.
