Domains & DNS

A Netlify staff support guide on connecting a new or existing domain to a site, comparing External DNS (recommended) with Netlify DNS. Reminds you to copy existing records, especially email ones, before changing nameservers, and to allow 24-48 hours before asking for help.

Netlify's docs for pointing a custom domain at a site. For external DNS it lists the record to use: ALIAS/ANAME to apex-loadbalancer.netlify.com or an A record where flattening is unavailable, and a CNAME for www and other subdomains. Verify with dig after propagation.

Cloudflare's guide to creating, editing and deleting DNS records in a zone. It explains the record fields (proxy status, TTL, comments) and gives examples such as updating an origin IP or using placeholder addresses for originless domains.

Introduces a site that gives you a free subdomain on a live DNS server and shows incoming queries in real time, with experiments in weird, useful and tutorial groups. The post also describes how it was built.

Julia Evans announces her illustrated zine on how DNS works and points to the companion Mess With DNS playground. She notes that DNS security (DoH, DoT, DNSSEC) is deliberately left out of the zine.

Walks through making Cloudflare your authoritative DNS by adding the domain and changing nameservers at your registrar. It stresses checking records first, turning off DNSSEC before the switch, and verifying with dig. Warns that propagation can take up to 24 hours.

Compares hosting your DNS records at Netlify versus keeping them with your current provider. Netlify DNS enables wildcard certificates and delegating a single subdomain; external DNS suits many existing records because Netlify cannot accept zone transfers. Do not use both at once.

An index of Cloudflare's fix-it articles for DNS problems, such as DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN, a zone stuck in Pending Nameserver Update, unexpected records, exposed IPs and email issues. A good starting point when a domain on Cloudflare will not resolve.

Explains how Cloudflare lets you put a CNAME at the zone apex by resolving the chain and answering with the final IP addresses. It also lists the caveats: cross-account targets give Error 1014, flattening everything can break third-party domain verification, and a dangling CNAME returns an empty answer that can look like a propagation problem.

Describes the orange cloud (proxied) versus grey cloud (DNS-only) behaviour. Gotchas covered include: only A, AAAA and CNAME can be proxied, MX and TXT are always DNS-only, proxied records have a fixed Auto TTL, DNS-only records expose your origin IP, and one proxied A/AAAA record makes all on that name proxied.