Im sure there’s someone here who can help. And I’ll even pay for pie-charts!*

Originally, I registered a domain with Fasthosts and had them host a website at that domain and provide POP3 mails service too.

Many moons ago I moved to a paid Google Apps service and following an un-fathomable online instruction guide I somehow managed to get all my mail handled by Google instead and keep my domain.

But, I’m still paying Fasthosts £6.78 a month and I’d just like to know if I still need to. Nothing’s broken, everything works, Id just like to make sure Im not throwing money away because I’m ignorant.

As far as I can work out I think this is my setup:
# Fasthosts manage my domain name registration and renewal. This is fine.
# Im currently paying Fashosts for their “Windows Home” domain management package which provides website hosting and a mail service which I no longer need. (Old package too)
# I have set my nameservers in Fasthosts for my domain to zoneedit.com servers
# I have a free account at zoneedit where I appear to have set my zone records to correctly direct urls to the Google server (ghs.google.com)

My questions are:
– If I dont need webhosting, and mail is handled by redirects from my domain to google, do I still need to be paying Fasthosts for a Domain Management Package at all?
– If I dont, how do zoneedit know Im allowed to screw with my domain settings (I cant work out how they allowed me in the first place)?
– If I do, whats the bare minimum Domain Management Package I need from Fasthosts?
– Do I need to stay with Fasthosts?

* Anyone willing to help sort this out for me gets 12x the monthly difference between my current Fasthosts package and whatever I end up paying in cold hard paypal gift. No real pie charts needed!

If you don’t have anything hosted with them, then you don’t need to pay for hosting – all you need is the domain registration. So as long as Fasthosts let you change DNS info, you’re fine.

Fasthosts have the “tag” for your domain – everyone else assumes that the person with the tag is the person who’s allowed to change details. So because you’ve changed the DNS entries through Fasthosts, it’ll trickle down to Zoneedit.

You don’t need to stay with Fasthosts, but you do need someone to register the domain for you (usually). So someone has to hold the “tag”.

So was it the “tag” (given to me by fasthosts somehow, I guess) I used to identify myself to zoneedit so they knew they could let me change my zone forwarders?

If I’m understanding you correctly,

You need someone to act as a registrar for your domain name. I use 123-reg for this and it come out at about two quid a year.

You need the DNS ‘A’ and ‘MX’ records to point to your website and mail provider, respectively. This should be free to manage once your domain name is registered.

That’s it. I’m not sure where Zoneedit come into this, it seems to be an extra layer of complexity. Can you not manipulate your DNS records directly within Fasthosts? I’m not familiar with their packages but if FH hold your domain name then you should just be able to point to their name servers and then add the names in there, for free. If you can’t do that then you might want to port your domain to one where you can.

https://www.123-reg.co.uk/fasthosts.shtml (-:

Yes, not sure what you need Zoneedit for – as far as I understand, you point your domains at the Zoneedit DNS servers, who then point at your domain.

Unless you’re running a massive site that needs fallover protection, you don’t need that middle step.

scared now 🙁

In Name Servers on fasthosts dashboard I appear to have changed from Default nameservers to
ns3.zoneedit.com and
ns4.zoneedit.com

from the defaults of
ns1.livedns.co.uk
ns2.livedns.co.uk
ns3.livedns.co.uk

However, I see now that I can also edit my DNS settings in Fasthosts, particularly that MX and CNAME stuff that it seems Ive done in zoneedit instead.

SO yes, I probably have added an extra unnecessary layer.

I will have a look at 123-reg then and see if I can completely close my fasthosts account. Will I need to do something at zone edit too, or will DNS control move directly to 123 reg automatically you think?

You don’t necessarily need to move away from Fasthosts, unless they’re rubbish in other ways. But if they can register domains and let you change DNS entries, that’s all you need.

I use Easyspace for similar stuff.

If you want to move away completely from Fasthosts, you’ll need to get them to release your domain – that’s less hassle than is used to be, but some companies can be a pain about it.

You shouldn’t need to change anything with Zoneedit.

Indeed.

Edit your DNS settings so that they’re correct first, then reset the nameservers back to Fasthosts. There’s no need to move unless you can’t do that, or they’re insisting on charging you seventy quid a year for domain registration and DNS services.

brilliant.

i shall do ad you say cougar, and then close the hosting service.

cheers both. will let you know how it goes.

123reg are my favorite out of all the ones ive used over the years.

A domain is fairly cheap, think about 3.99 for two years, maybe a few quid more.

I seem to reclal now that I had to use zone edit because fasthosts never used to let you change the DNS records (MX and CNAME) which you need to do to get google apps to work. Now they do I can get rid of the zone edit step.

I have added the CNAME records and all the gmail MX records too. Switched the Fasthosts default nameservers back on and have all my toes crossed that it all hasnt gone to shit…

Need to give it 24 hrs to settle I gather.

Have emailed fasthosts support to close the hosting package too. So if that does save me £70 a year, you two will find yourselves with some beer vouchers 🙂
Thanks again.

(and note, not once did I refer to anyone as geeks or nerds. I know not to bite the hand… 🙂 )

<– geek.