Domains, DNS, oh no

Hello Class of CS4116

So we use domains every day, even if ye dont know it

52.30.181.100

52.30.181.100 - Brightspace

209.85.203.94

209.85.203.94 - Google

Those numbers arent very human friendly

So what is teh solution?

Getting a domain!

There are many domain hosts to go for

And prices range from €1/year to €infinity/year

  • .ie
  • .com
  • .tk
  • .coffee
  • .eu
  • .me
  • .gay
  • ...

There is even .cat, though that is off limits to most of us.....

I recommend using https://www.blacknight.com/ for .ie

And https://www.namecheap.com/ for everything else

I am going to focus on .ie

These will set ye back ~€7 for the first year.

Then €30 for every year afterwards

Enter your perfect domain name into the big box

img.png

It will then show ye a list of options

img.png

Select one, add it to the cart

In the config select I'm hosting my website somewhere else

Then add these two as nameservers:

  • nadia.ns.cloudflare.com
  • neil.ns.cloudflare.com

Press Update then Checkout for payment

You will verify that ye have a connection to Ireland

Your Student ID will work for this

Couldnt find a name that suited you in ASCII text?

Have no fear!

Punycode to the rescue!

Say you want brendán.ie

But because of the á it is not a "normal" domain.

Go to https://www.punycoder.com/ and enter in your special domain

Boom: xn--brendn-tta.ie

Or say ye wanted to go wild and have an Ogham domain name?

ᚁᚏᚓᚅᚇᚐᚅ.com for example (brendan in Ogham)

ᚁᚏᚓᚅᚇᚐᚅ.com becomes xn--7ueiah2bis.com

Magic!

And congrats! You now have a domain.

As we saw in the earlier slides a domain points to an IP address.

Ye can point your domain to another domain.

These go to the same location

  • https://brendan.ie
  • https://brendan.coffee

So anyone in CS4116 would love to point
https://hi-conor-ryan-please-give-us-an-a1.ie
To their InfinityFree instance

For that we need DNS

InfinityFree has their own (good) docs for this.
But I prefer to use CNAME for this

Cloudflare is one of teh best DNS providers

https://cloudflare.com

Signup, you should know how to do this.....

On teh homepage select Add a site img.png

Enter in your domain (hi-conor-ryan-give-me-a1.ie)

Will take little while for it to be activated.

So go make a cuppa.

If ye are using InfinityFree checkout their CNAME docs

Thats kinda the end of this, it is targeted to CS4116.