Hi all. This is the situation: We've tried to setup our own Web Server following the perfect setup tutorial. We bought and registered a domain, but on the registrar website we have to enter DNS1, DNS2. Which from what i've read you need to have two servers with two different IP's right? Well since the DNS stuff were way too confusing, we bought a pack of extras with the domain that created for us DNS servers (i guess), and now on that registrar all we had to do was put in the Server IP. After a while, the emails had trouble getting into providers like hotmail ect.. also lot's of them we're getting right through the spam box. So after a while since here it's somewhat difficult to get some technical support to explain to us and tell us what was going on, we've decided to buy a simple web hosting pack from a hosting company. We've left there the emails, and set up the A Records to point to our IP, so that way the website was hosted on our webserver and the emails hosted there. Now with the number of email accounts growing we decided to give another try on setting eveything up so that everything is on our server. Here it's pretty much imposible to get some formation or a course on web servers and configuration, so we're hoping a little help from you. We have a basic / good understanding on the linux OS, although all this technical jargon is really confusing us. What do we need to do after we sucefully install the server following the tutorial, what do we need to do to get everything working? We've already have a domain, what is the next step? Do we really need two domain servers? Does the information needs to be redundant on both ect... Also we're also available to pay for support from Till, Falko, if they are willing to do so, we just want some simple explaination on how everything works and how to set eveything up. Not really sure how much it costs, could you please PM me with some details? Thanks everyone.
If your registrar is running the DNS servers for you, then you don't have to bother with the DNS part of ISPConfig at all. But if you want to run your own DNS servers, take a look here: http://www.howtoforge.com/ispconfig_dns_godaddy http://www.howtoforge.com/ispconfig_dns_providerdomain_schlund For email, you must set up an MX record pointing to the mail server, and you should also set up an SPF record and a PTR record for your server - otherwise your emails will most likely end up in the spam folder. If you're having problems with Hotmail, do a search here on the forum, this has been discussed multiple times (Hotmail's very strict, and my impression is that only people that don't want to receive emails should have a Hotmail account ).
Thanks for the reply Falko. I've read both, i guess it's somewhat a start, and i understand some things that i didn't before. Although on my Registrar there's no option on putting the DNS IP, only it's address (ns1.website.com), will it still resolve itself? Another question if we decide to run our own dns servers, i've read how that's done on the godaddy tutorial you linked to thanks for that, does that mean we need to have the same content (website content, emails ect..) on both servers if one goes down, so that the page remain online?
Are you in the DNS management on your registrar's web interface, or the domain registration part? When you register a domain, you must fill in the name servers (like ns1.example.com), but in the DNS part, when you create a name server record, you must fill in the IP address. The content can also be on a totally different server, it does not need to be on the name servers. But if you want to achieve high availability, you should place the content on at least two servers in an IP failover configuration (check out our "High Availability" category).
Well i guess everything is set up correctly. Thanks again for your help. I'm setting now spf records, and i need some little help. After configuring the spf doing a dig txt i get: v=spf1 a mx ~all And from what i've read it better be set to -all, although i cannot find a way to change it in ispconfig only doing it manually. What setting should i change to get a -all ? Also do i need to set 'mail.domain.com' in Are emails sent from other A Records?: and Are emails sent from other MX Records?: And set my provider ip in Inherit SPF Record from this zone?: Or is it all above unecessary since it already defined previously in the zone record? Thanks again!
ISPConfig does not support the "-", so what you can do is write that record manually into the zone file at the end (there's a line in the zone file that tells you where to put your manual changes) and delete the SPF record in ISPConfig. Not if mail.domain.com is the MX for domain.com. No.
