Now Hosting DNS
DNS servers tell web browsers how to find your site. They’re an important, if sometimes obscure, portion of the internet. Lightning Base has historically asked customers to use an outside service for this, but is now launching a DNS network for our clients’ WordPress-based websites.
Why the Change?
When Lightning Base started, hosting DNS seemed unnecessary – many domain registrars provide it free, and Cloudflare also provides high-quality, free DNS. It didn’t take long, however, to realize that many clients found using an outside DNS service confusing, and that it stopped us from helping clients manage their records when they needed help.
We could have just stuck a DNS service on our webhosting servers and called it a day, but with the importance of DNS I wanted to do it better.
Our New Global DNS Service
Today we’re launching a new, global DNS service (existing clients may have noticed the manage DNS links popping up in their control panels over the last few days). Our network includes servers on the US East and West coasts (New York and LA area), Europe (London) and Asia (Tokyo).
For the main domain on a hosting plan, there is an easy to use management area in our billing/support panel:
Lightning Base DNS Management
For those of you running multiple domains on a single plan, add-on domain DNS can be accessed in our advanced control panel:
Advanced Panel DNS Editor
The distributed network of servers should make for good performance anywhere in the world, and also provides an important level of redundancy. To test it out, you can visit the website http://lightningbase-dns.com. Existing customers that host DNS elsewhere are free to continue using their current service, or move to this new option. Feel free to contact support if you need help making the switch.
New domains automatically have the records needed for our hosting added to their settings, and will get Google-Apps compatible MX records automatically as well (as most of our clients use this free email service). If you’re moving over an existing domain, please check the records in your control panel before changing your nameserver settings.
What’s Next
The DNS service was put together partially so that new site setup can be completely automated – from purchasing a domain to having WordPress installed and running. We’ll have an announcement regarding that in the next few days.
We’re also updating and improving our WordPress-specific Varnish configuration, which will lead to even better performance for everyone’s sites.
Finally, we’re working on more reseller solutions – the DNS service can be rebranded, which is one piece in creating a truly white-label offering, which will hopefully be announced next week.
Stop back for more updates, or learn more about our WordPress hosting plans.
