How do I set up host records for a domain?

The Host Records section is available only for the domains using Namecheap BasicDNS, BackupDNS (a legacy option) or PremiumDNS. To set up host records for your domain, use the following instructions:

1. Sign into your Namecheap account.

2. Select Domain List from the left sidebar and click Manage next to your domain:

3. Select the Advanced DNS tab at the top of the page:

4. In the Host Records section, click the Add New Record button (not able to edit Host Records?):

Host: If you need to create a record for a bare domain (e.g., mydomain.tld), it is needed to put @ in this field.
In case a record for any subdomain (like www.mydomain.tld or blog.mydomain.tld) should be created, put only the name of your subdomain into the Host field without mentioning the domain itself. As such, the record for www.mydomain.tld should have only www in the Host.

TTL: A TTL value of 1800 seconds (30 minutes) would mean that, if a DNS record was changed on the nameserver, DNS servers around the world could still be showing the old value from their cache for up to 30 minutes after the change.
Our default TTL is 30 minutes. You can select it from the drop-down or just leave it "Automatic".

Here are the types of records that can be created on our DNS servers, along with a brief description of each:

Address Record Type

Description

A (Address)

Allows you to associate a host with an IPv4 address. The IP address that you use does not have to be on your network.

For example, you can have the host record for www pointed to 207.46.130.14 (the address for the Microsoft website).

AAAA (IPv6)

Allows you to associate a host with an IPv6 address. The IP address that you use does not have to be on your network.

For example, you can have the host record for www pointed to 2001:0db8:11a3:09d7:1f34:8a2e:07a0:765d

MXE (Mail Easy)

Allows you to specify the address of your mail server. When you use a mail record, you must use an IP address in the address field.

Note to professional users: Creating a mail record actually creates both the MX and A records in DNS. Also, when using multiple mail servers, a preference value of 10 is used on all entries.

MX (Mail)

MX (Mail) can be either a host name under your domain name (for example, mail3), or the name of a mail server (for example, mail.yahoo.com).

When using a mail server name, it should end with a period ("."). If you forget to add it, the system will do it automatically.

NOTE: MX records for a domain can be created in the Mail Settings section. For more details, please refer to this article.

CNAME (Alias)

Is used to associate a host name with another host. The host that you wish to point to does not have to be on your network.

Please don't set up CNAME for a naked domain (@ hostname) since it may affect the operation of the domain's MX records and, consequently, the email service.

When you use a domain in the address field, you must add a trailing period ("."). Unless you do so, the name server will add your domain to the end of the given domain .

(Available on BasicDNS and PremiumDNS only)

Are primarily used if you want to divide your domain into subdomains.

Subdomains indicate that you are delegating a portion of a domain name to a different group of nameservers, thus creating NS records to point the hostname (name of the subdomain) to different name servers.

URL Redirect

Standard method for URL Forwarding. When users type in your domain name, they are redirected to the web server that hosts your pages.

One drawback of this option is that the browser will display the URL that is on the actual web page, not your domain name.

You can prevent this by using the URL Frame method instead (see below).

URL Redirect (301)

(Available on BasicDNS and PremiumDNS only)

Preferred way to redirect URLs since it informs search engines that the URL has moved permanently. The new URL page should then be shown instead of the old URL in the search results, while still maintaining the page rank of the old URL.

URL Frame

Similar to URL Redirect except that instead of redirecting the client to your web page, the web page is displayed in a frame from our web server.

With this option, the browser will display your domain name (for example, www.yourdomain.tld) and not the actual URL of the page's host (for example, http://home.infospace.com/user33).

Wildcard record

The star * record is a wildcard record which is used to include any records or subdomains that you have not specified to catch typos or mistakes.

SRV record

Service record is a specification of data in the Domain Name System defining the location (i.e., the port number) of servers for specified services (e.g., Minecraft).

That's it! If you have any questions or need assistance, our Support Team is available 24/7 to help you.

We welcome your comments, questions, corrections and additional information relating to this article. Your comments may take some time to appear. Please be aware that off-topic comments will be deleted.

If you need specific help with your account, feel free to contact our Support Team. Thank you.

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How do I set up host records for a domain?

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