Every time someone visits your website or sends you an email, a quiet system called DNS does the work of pointing them to the right place. Most of the time you never notice it. But when you move hosting, set up email, or add a new service, DNS is usually the thing you will be asked to change, and a little understanding goes a long way. This guide explains what DNS is and what the main records do, in plain English.
DNS is the web’s address book
Computers do not find each other by name. Behind every website is a string of numbers called an IP address, which is how servers are actually located. People, though, are far better with names than numbers. DNS, the Domain Name System, is the address book that connects the two: you type a friendly name like yourbusiness.co.uk, and DNS looks up the number it points to, so your browser knows where to go.
It happens in a fraction of a second, billions of times a day, entirely out of sight. You only really meet DNS when you need to change where a name points, which is exactly when knowing the basics pays off.
The records that matter
A domain’s DNS settings are a small set of entries called records. Each type does one job. You do not need to know them all, but a handful come up again and again:
- A record. Points your domain to the IP address of the server that hosts your website. This is the one that decides where your site lives.
- CNAME record. Points one name at another name rather than a number. It is often used for the “www” version of your address, or to connect a third-party service to a subdomain.
- MX record. Points your email to the right mail server. Get this wrong and your email stops arriving, which is why email and website settings are best changed with care.
- TXT record. Holds small pieces of text used for verification and email security, including the SPF, DKIM and DMARC settings that help your messages reach the inbox.
Why changes take time to appear
Change a DNS record and it rarely updates everywhere at once. This is because DNS answers are cached, stored temporarily, by networks all over the world, so they do not have to look everything up from scratch every time. Those cached copies last for a set period, after which they refresh.
The result is that a change can take anywhere from a few minutes to a day or so to be seen by everyone, a process often called propagation. It is not that anything is broken, simply that the old answer is still remembered here and there until it expires. Knowing this saves a lot of worry when a change does not seem to work instantly.
A quick word on TTL
Each record has a setting called TTL, or time to live, measured in seconds. It tells the internet how long to remember an answer before checking again. A lower TTL means changes take effect faster, at the cost of slightly more lookups; a higher one is the opposite. If you know a change is coming, such as a hosting move, lowering the TTL a day beforehand can make the switch quicker and smoother.
Where your DNS is managed
Your DNS records are usually managed in one of two places: with whoever you registered the domain through, or with your hosting provider. It is worth knowing which, because that is where you go to make changes. Keeping your domain and hosting together often makes this simpler, since everything sits in one dashboard rather than being split across accounts.
You do not have to do it alone
DNS is one of those areas where a small mistake can have an outsized effect, taking a website or email offline until it is put right. That is a good reason to lean on people who do it every day.
With Lucid Cloud Platform your domain, website and email can live together, with DNS managed for you and a support team on hand to make changes safely. If you would rather not touch a record yourself, you do not have to. And when the time comes to move a site or set up email security, having it all in one place makes the whole thing far less daunting.
Related reading
- How to choose a domain name for your business
- Why your emails land in spam: SPF, DKIM and DMARC made simple
- Moving to new hosting without the downtime
