Moving Website host

Website, Application, Performance DNS & Network
1

I currently have a website hosted on GoDaddy’s CPanel.

And I have three A records:
A @ 143.255.154.123 ← this points to my www.mywebsite.com
A admin 143.255.154.123
A mail 143.255.154.123

I am now moving my website to AWS hosted by a CloudFront distribution. So, it has a target of blah.cloudfront.net. But I still want to keep my cpanel, because it also hosts my email

My questions:

  1. What do I do to only move the hosted website?
  2. I have now set up a cname record to point a subdomain, e.g. live.mywebsite.com to cloudfront and it’s successful.
  3. Can I simply delete the existing “A @ 143.255.154.123”, or do I always need an “A” record?

thanks

2

On which URL is cpanel?

4

I actually don’t know. However, there are the following CNAME records. I am assuming the ones with “admin” would point to cpanel???

CNAME autoconfig @
CNAME autoconfig.admin @
CNAME autodiscover @
CNAME autodiscover.admin @
CNAME cpanel @
CNAME ftp @
CNAME webdisk @
CNAME webdisk.admin @
CNAME webmail @
CNAME whm @
CNAME www @
CNAME www.admin @

5

Well, you should probably clarify all of that before you move.

“cpanel” is the most likely, however that would also point to Amazon if you point your naked domain there. You essentially need to point all website related records to Amazon, but keep everything email related with your current host.

6

Do you know if an “A” record with @ and the IP address mandatory?

If not, can I remove “A @ 143.255.154.123”?

Now, if I would like to point www.mywebsite.com to point to blah.cloudfront.net? How should I specify the CNAME record? I don’t have an IP address, so I can’t create an “A” record.

I could leave A both below records as they are, so I can call the cpanel/email via admin.mywebsite.com or mail.mywebsite.com, and they would point to the current GoDaddy addresses:
A admin 143.255.154.123
A mail 143.255.154.123

7

Yes and no. A CNAME cannot be configured for technical reasons, however on Clouflare you can do that as they will dynamically turn this into an A record.

If you change the naked domain, all your other CNAMEs will point to Amazon as well, so you’d need to change these too.

8

I think you are right. as it is now, I could not reach mail.mywebsite.com, which mean what I thought the A record “A mail 143.255.154.123” would take me there, is not actually correct.

But I could reach webmail.mywebsite.com. This means it takes the configuration “CNAME webmail @”

So, if I changed naked domain to AWS, then I would lose connectivity to my GoDaddy cpanel.

Nevertheless how do you point naked domain to AWS using a CNAME record, which you said would turn into an A record?

9

Simply create a CNAME and point it to the hostname in question. Cloudflare will take care of the rest.

Just make sure you have a valid certificate on Amazon’s end.

10

Thanks Sandro. But what is the CNAME name? do I name it “@” as well? Just like an A record?

11

Yes, the at sign is for the naked domain.

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12

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