We know, the phrase "DNS Nameserver Setting" sounds complex and technical. In reality, it's not that complex and with a very brief introduction into what it means, and how to change it, you should be just fine. It's painless, we promise.

Every time someone visits your website's URL (like myawesomeclub.com) there is a setting which tells the URL where to find the information it needs to display. This setting is called the DNS Nameserver, and it can be found on the site where your URL is registered, called the domain registrar. For more info on buying a URL and choosing a registrar, check out the Buying A New URL article.

Most groups we work with use their URL as their custom web address and don't have any other custom DNS settings or custom email addresses associated with it (for example john@myawesomeclub.com). If you do use a custom domain email address or have other domain settings you need to preserve, please jump down to the Advanced section below.

Every URL has a space where you can adjust the name servers. The first step is logging into your URL's registrar. If you don't know where your URL is currently registered you can check WhoIs.net for the public profile of the URL. Knowing who is listed as the website contact can sometimes help jog the memory of whoever in your group initially registered the URL. Usually from within whois.net you also have the ability to email the current site contact if you are really stuck on who has the login information for where your URL is registered.

Some frequent sites where URLs are registered are GoDaddy, Hover, MyDomain, NameCheap or Register. If you haven't registered a URL yet - and you don't have to, you can always use your groupname.alumnispaces.com URL. Here is a short listing of some of frequently used registrars guides on how to locate the DNS Setting:

Once you're inside your the registrar of your site and inside the area where you can adjust the DNS setting you'll usually see four lines titled NS1, NS2, NS3, NS4. You will want to enter the following items for these:

After you have changed your DNS settings be sure to notify our team of the change and your new URL so we can make the final change on our end to ensure your site shows up. You can click the ? button in the lower right corner of your site's admin or email us at support@alumnispaces.com.

After that...

Your changes can take up to 24 hours to truly take effect. Some people will see the new URL within 20 minutes, but others take a full day because of the way the internet works with domain records.

Once it's all updated, you'll be able to go straight to your URL and see your Alumni Spaces site.

If you prefer to manage your own domain settings, you can point your site to Alumni Spaces using either an ALIAS or A record. If you're not sure what these are, please contact your domain provider and they can help you out.

After you have changed your DNS settings be sure to notify our team of the change and your new URL so we can make the final change on our end to ensure your site shows up. You can click the ? button in the lower right corner of your site's admin or email us at support@alumnispaces.com.

Some domain hosts allow you to add an ALIAS record which allows you to point your site to a specific server using a URL rather than IP address. Not all hosts support this and some (like Cloud Flare) use a different term like CNAME-flattening. If your host offers that, the process is mostly the same, you may just need to add a CNAME rather than an ALIAS record.

Regardless, you will need to add a record for the top level domain example.com and another for the WWW version www.example.com and point the ALIAS record to one of these URLs, depending on your school:

Every domain provider out there will support an A record. The only downside of using one is that if Alumni Spaces ever changes servers, we will need you to make updates to your DNS settings. This has happened about 3 times over the past 8ish years.

Regardless, just like using an ALIAS, you'll need to update the records for you main url example.com and the WWW version www.example.com to point to our IP address: 35.237.255.184

If your group is part of Florida State, your process is a little different. You need to add 2 A records for both the main url and WWW version, making 4 records in total. So for both the main and WWW records, please add A records that point to these two IPs:

141.193.213.10

141.193.213.11