Connect your domain without breaking anything
DNS sounds like a spell from a fantasy novel. It's really just a phone book with two entries you need to change.
A domain name is the address people type. DNS is the internet's phone book that turns that address into the actual location of your server. To connect a domain, you change two or three entries in that phone book. Nothing explodes. Worst case, you change them back.
Step one: find the DNS page
Log in wherever you bought your domain — Namecheap, Cloudflare, GoDaddy, your cousin's reseller account. Look for “DNS”, “DNS records” or “Manage DNS”. You're looking for a table with columns like Type, Name, Value and TTL. TTL just means “how long the internet remembers this answer”, usually measured in minutes.
Step two: add the records Sling gives you
- 1Copy the A recordType A, name @ (or blank, depending on the provider), value = the IP address from your Sling dashboard. This points the bare domain at your server.
- 2Copy the CNAME recordType CNAME, name www, value = the hostname Sling shows you. This makes www.yoursite.com work too.
- 3Leave everything else aloneIf there's an existing A record or CNAME with the same name, edit it rather than adding a second one. Two answers to the same question is how DNS mysteries begin.
Step three: check it worked
Open your domain in a private browsing window. If you see your site, you're done. If you see a parking page, give it another twenty minutes. If you see a 404 from your own server, DNS is probably fine and the site just needs its domain saved in the Sling dashboard.
What about email?
Email uses different records — MX, and often SPF and DKIM. Don't delete those while tidying up your DNS. If your email stops working after a domain move, those records are almost always the reason.
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