Setup DNS with AWS Route 53 from Scratch – Most Convenient

Posted on by Montgomery Auber

Always use AWS Route 53.

I have dealt with may DNS issues for clients.  Some popular DNS hosts won’t even allow you to point an MX record towards your mail server. AWS charges a fair price starting from $9 for .click domains. Of course I have purchased charming.click Which leads right back here. IN honor of new charming products, especially email servers, I have decided to make VERY clear instructions about how to set up your domain from the beginning.

Setup your DNS

We suggest having your DNS COMPLETLY setup before launching your server

To do this you need to create and  Elastic IP which will get attached to your Server Instance after it is launched. You need this for Domain Authority as t the IP address will not change if the server is turned off and back on.

We always prefer to use the AWS Route 53 DNS servers as these are both simple and integrated. They are also not limited in the ways that many other  DNS services are. One very popular host won’t even let you point the DNS to another mail server. The instructions below show how to use Route 53 as the DNS.

IN these images and instruction I am registering and setting up a domain called charming.cloud  Any links that you see with this domain or with instructions to open your server at http://YOURDOMAIN or the like must be replaced by your real domain name.

Sign in to console.aws.amazon.com/console/ with your AWS Username and Password, this might be different from your Amazon Login.

Under AWS Services select Route 53.

Click Domain Registration

Route 53 Domain Registration

Check to see the availability of your domain. AWS charges reasonble prices with no tricks for the second year. Like Godaddy might sell you a domain for a dollar then 50 for next year.

Fill in contact details as required

 

 

Select your desired privacy setting

 

 

Press continue then agree to terms  and  complete purchase

 

After completeing the registration you need to wait some time, depending on which Top Level Domain you ordered.

 

So! this can take a few days. Put off launching your PhpList Free Trial until your DOMAIN and DNS are organized. But alas it took only 15 minutes.

You then need your DNS to have an A record to point to the IP address of the server. The A record is the domain or sub-domain that you plan to use for this server.

You then need to make an MX record point to that A record. This makes the Instance open to receive email from the rest of the Universe. You will receive bounces to bounce@YOURDOMAIN.com . Without the MX record set correctly your server might be blacklisted since it can’t process the bounces properly.

Be sure that you Allocate the Elastic IP in the region you intend to use for the PhpList Server on Windows.

Click in the lower left column Elastic Ips

Then Allocate again,

Now copy the IP address into the Route 53 to create an A record for the domain we registered above.

Go back to Route 53 under services click your new domain from the list of domains in hosted zones.

Now you will see a window like this. Select Create Record Set towards the top of the window.

Create an A record pointing towards your new IP address either with your domain name or a sub-domain, that the A record creates, then create an MX record that points to it. I really like my new domain name of charming.cloud and want the web address to go to my Charming Cloud WebSite. In order to get email to charming.cloud we will set the MX record of charming.cloud

The MX record tells the universe that a server named mail.charming.cloud will receive email to anyone@charming.cloud .

Click on your domain.

So if your mail server uses the same server as your Web server, you can use a single domain or subdomain.

In the right column next to Name: fill in the subdomain that you would like the server to be known as. You can use your top Level Domain if you plan to use the same IP address as your webserver. In other words, leave Name field blank if you are not using a subdomain. paste the IP address that you got from Elastic IP into Value. Then Press Create

 

Now create an MX record that points to your A record Fully Qualified domain name. IN our case they are different.

Again , Select Create Record Set, in the right column select MX record.

 

Now, next to Value put the number 10 followed by space then the Fully Qualified domain name used in the A record. Then Press Create.

 

Now you will see the records.

Although we haven’t yet launched the server instance , we have done a lot of the hard work needed to create your PhpList Server. Lets verify that the Internet knows what we did.

I like to use mxtoolbox

 

Here we see that the domain that we looked up charming.cloud has an MX record as we set up that points towards mail.charming.cloud  . If you made changes to a DNS it takes time for them to propagate, this depends on TTL setting which is measured in seconds. If your TTL is really high, you might need to wait a day or 2 to see the changes.

Also See:

 

http://floatingcloud.io/setup-dns-with-aws-route-53-from-scratch/

Setup MX Record in Route 53 with a domain that you registered with AWS

 

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