Your own nameservers and DNS zones

Authoritative DNS appears in two places, and knowing which you want saves a lot of hunting. On the server, Zones on this server lists every zone the machine answers for. On a website, the same section edits that one website's own zone, under Managed records.

A zone can only be claimed by the website that owns the domain, so one customer cannot create a zone for a name that belongs to another.

Adding a record asks for four things: Name, Type, Value and TTL in seconds. UHost answers for the types a hosting domain actually needs:

• A and AAAA — the addresses a name points at
• CNAME — one name that follows another
• MX — where mail for the domain is delivered
• TXT — the record type that carries SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and domain verification
• SRV, CAA and NS — service discovery, which authorities may issue certificates, and delegation

One rule catches people out: TTL is shared by every value in the same name and type. Two A records on the same name are one set with one TTL, not two records with two. Changes are saved with Apply change.

Serving your own zones is only half of it. The other half is your registrar pointing at you, and that is where your own nameservers come in: names like ns1 and ns2 on a domain you control, each with an address, set in the panel rather than in a configuration file.

1. Set the nameserver names and their addresses in the panel, under Nameservers.
2. Register those names at your registrar for the domain they belong to, with the same addresses. Registrars usually call this registering a host or glue.
3. Point each hosted domain at them, at the registrar for that domain.
4. Wait. A delegation change is not instant, and the old answer stays cached until it expires.

Every zone carries a Serial, which changes when the zone does. If a secondary or a checking tool disagrees with the panel, comparing serials tells you whether it has caught up.

Pointing a domain at a website for the first time is covered in hosting your first website.