# So, I bought a domain name, now what?

## nunogt

I bought a cheap domain name to play around. I'd like to somehow connect it to my gentoo box. What would be the best method to achieve this, keeping in mind my IP address is dynamic? At the moment i'm forwarding it to my dyndns account, but I believe there are better ways to do this, aren't there?Last edited by nunogt on Tue Mar 28, 2006 12:58 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## Camakazi

In order for yourself or others to connect to your domain name, it needs to be hosted, especially if you plan to 

actually do anything with it, such as posting a web site... there are basically 3 ways to do this, I will list them 

from most expensive, to least...

1) Become an ISP and sub-lease a range of IP's from a larger ISP...   :Cool: 

(if you can afford this I do take monetary donations, how generous are you?)

2) Talk to your ISP about leaseing a static IP for your internet connection, and set up your own servers... 

Most ISP's will only do this if you are a bussiness and have money to burn...   :Sad: 

3) Get the Domain name hosted from one of the ever-increasing web hosting companies available...    :Very Happy: 

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## nunogt

I've already setup all the servers I need actually (http, ftp, sshd, postgresql). I've been running services for a couple of years now, but i'd like to connect to them using my new domain instead of dyndns.org. Is static IP mandatory to achieve this goal? I'm also confused about nameservers. Suppose I had static IP, what would I have to do then so the domain links to this machine?

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## Camakazi

Correct me if i'm wrong, however from memory, dyndns.org is a simple hosting service that allows you 

to connect to the net dynamically, log into thier site, tell them your current IP, and they then forward 

any hits on your domain name to your current IP...

generally speaking for all domain names to work, they need to be attached to a IP address, and to help

the internet from being slowed dramatically by constantly updating routers brought about by a domain name 

resolving on shifting IP's, the Domain Name's IP need to be static.

the best help I can give you is this link...

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## neysx

If you meant connect to your services from the outside world, check out http://freedns.afraid.org/. They provide dns services for free and the guy in charge is friendly and helpful. They have ways to let them know about IP address changes. Letting the DNS server know that your IP address has changed will always be a requirement. Either get over it, or get yourself a static IP.

If you meant connect to your services from the inside of your own lan, you did not even need to buy the domain, just set up your own resolver (named, dnsmasq, or just /etc/hosts e.g.) and make the domain point to your own server.

Hth

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## phate

perhaps you could simply forward your domain to your dyndns address? :roll

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## rev138

There is no "forwarding" with DynDNS. They provide DNS for your domain, period.

What makes them handy for dynamic IPs is that you can set up a client that will update their DNS records whenever your IP address changes. See "ddclient" in portage.

-S

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## neysx

DynDNS and others can only be used free of charge if you use a subdomain of one of their domains. If you own a domain and want to use dyndns, they'll charge you for it (USD 25/y iirc). freedns.afraid.org is free and I am a happy "customer"  :Smile: 

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## nunogt

Yeah, thanks for the great tip. I've already setup freedns and is working like a charm. It's a shame there are no update clients for it in portage, though :\

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## PMcCauley

You can host a domain from a dynamic ip you need a dns provider that is all.  You could have 24hrs of downtime if the ip changes.

Patrick

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## bookstack

 *nunogt wrote:*   

> Yeah, thanks for the great tip. I've already setup freedns and is working like a charm. It's a shame there are no update clients for it in portage, though :\

 

Do we need to ? wget or curl works without any problem.

I meet the same problem:

I host my blog in dreamhost: kunxi.org. And I have setup the apache+plone on a linux box in my home. I managed to forward the sub-domain playground.kunxi.org to kunxi.mooo.com, using the FreeDNS service. But it still looks silly to show the users the REAL dynamic domain. Any idea to configure so that the user could use playground.kunxi.org/foo to access without exposing kunxi.mooo.com to the external world?

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## commanderfoxtrot

I know this is an old thread, but everyone's making a simple thing complex.

Dyndns gives you a dynamic IP: e.g. mydynip.ath.cx.  Fine.

Now set up a free account at everydns and set your domain (mydomain.com) to forward to the CNAME mydynip.ath.cx

You could use everydns to do dyn as well, but if dyndns works, don't change it.

You will need to ensure your domain registrar points requests at everydns's nameservers- that's all explained at everydns.

Simple and easy.

If you donate to everydns you'll also be able to change the timeout on your domain to minimise the effect of downtime from your IP address changing.

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## rev138

Actually, I think you're overcomplicating things. If you use dyndns, all you have to do is set up your account on their site, and run ddclient on your host. That's it. No everydns, no worrying about where shit is pointed to. It's very straighforward.

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## neysx

 *rev138 wrote:*   

> Actually, I think you're overcomplicating things. If you use dyndns, all you have to do is set up your account on their site, and run ddclient on your host. That's it. No everydns, no worrying about where shit is pointed to. It's very straighforward.

 This is not what nunogt asked for. He owns his domain and you can't have dyndns handle your own domains for free. Freedns offers that and is trivial to update as you don't even need any client software. I'm not familiar with everydns but it looks similar to freedns.

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## morphal

Yes, http://zoneedit.com also has completely free DNS service for your domain name and ddclient can be used (as well as several other methods, some involving curl, wget, et al) to update any changed address.

I use them for the DNS on my domain. I can have something like 5Gb of DNS traffic a year before they get cranky. I don't think that should be a problem.

People definitely over-complicated matters. DNS just resolves a domain name to an IP address. Any DNS will get the job done, so long as they let you use your own domain name. I know zoneedit offers this though I assume freedns and everydns offer a similar service.

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