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Revision 11 as of 2008-07-07 04:28:03

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MemberManual / GettingDomain

This page explains how to buy yourself a domain name from a registrar, and how to manage it at HCoop.

Find a registrar

If you want to manage a domain with DomTool, you must first buy a domain from a domain registrar. Search for "domain registrar" via your search engine of choice to see several of the available options.

HCoop as a whole does not endorse any particular domain registrar. That said, here are a few that some of our members like.

Registrar pitfalls

DNS options

If your registrar provides a web interface for managing the DNS records of your domain, then you can either use their web interface to fully manage your DNS, or you can use DomTool.

Before choosing either option, you will first want to request control of a domain using the HCoop Portal.

Be aware that it sometimes takes a while for the changes that you make to the DNS records to propagate to all ISP's, depending on how long various ISP's cache data. Usually by 3 days they are all updated.

Managing DNS using the registrar's website

If you want to use your registrar's web interface to manage DNS for you domain, you can do that. Just be sure to set the DNS option to noDns in the DomTool configuration file for your domain. Here's an example:

domain "yourdomain" where 
  DNS = noDns
with
  (* Other directives go here. *)
end;

Using Domtool to manage DNS

If you want to use DomTool to manage your DNS, then use your registrar's web interface to specify the nameservers ns1.hcoop.net and ns2.hcoop.net for your domain.

Then read the DomTool User Guide for instructions on using DomTool. There's also a thorough overview of the DNS directives at DomTool/Examples, in the DNS section.