Modifying your zone for Simple Hosting with a domain not at Gandi

This also applies if you want to link your instance to a domain that you are not the owner of.

When adding a vhost address to your Simple Hosting instance, you may receive a message like this:

The message means that, for some reason, our system is not able to make the automatic update to the domain's zone file that is required for it to point to your instance. Consequently, you will need to make the changes yourself manually before proceeding.

This requires making two changes to the domain's zone file:

  1. adding (or modifying) a CNAME or A record, and
  2. Adding a TXT record.

Both of the necessary records are provided in the message you received when you tried to add the address.

How you can accomplish this depends on the reason the automatic update is not possible:

  • If the domain is registered at Gandi, but you do not have the necessary rights to edit the zone file, you should ask the domain's owner, administrative or technical contact to add the entries for you. (Visible in the Whois)
  • Otherwise, ask your registrar (or external DNS provider, if you have one) for instructions on adding the entries.

The TXT record will look similar to this:
@ IN TXT www=234567890580d93470770e76e46bab67
At some registrars (for example at OVH), it is not possible to input '@' in the 'name' field. In that case just leave the field empty, and add the key as value.

See Also

Last modified: 12/18/2012 at 09:50 by Ryan A. (Gandi)