What is Custom Name Servers?
A Name Server tells the registered domain where to point when a request is made for the domain on the internet. Every registered domain must have a public Name Servers that point the domain to a DNS manager. This is usually provided by your Registrars like GoDaddy or Enom.
Custom Name servers are not so important if your just a basic user and host on shared hosting. It is very useful if you have a Reseller Hosting plan and wish to brand your own business using your custom name servers. You can learn here on What is Reseller Hosting. You can set records like ns1.yourdomain.com and ns2.yourdomain.com. Your client can use this as their name servers to point their domain to your hosting services. This way it will look more professional to run your business with proper branding. These are the 3 basic steps to do at any registrar.
Step 1
You certainly have a Registrar now where you used to register your domains like GoDaddy, namecheap, eNom, ResellerClub and so on. Each registrar will have the function to create custom name servers. Some registrars call it custom name servers, some call it child name servers, some call it private name server while some call it glue records. The terms used may differ but the function is the same.
You need to create a record using “ns1” or your preferred hostname to point to the IP address of the server where this account is located. The IP address to use is your server IP address. You can also use the same IP address that was provided by your host when you sign up for the Reseller Hosting account.
Step 2
Once you did that, you will need to head back to your WHM and update the name servers in Basic Webhost Manager. If you are using WHMCS, you will need to add the name servers there as well.
Step 3
You are done. You can now use your custom name servers but do bear in mind that it may take up to 24 hours for the DNS changes to propagate globally. You can use DNS Checker to check if your name server is propagated.
You can still use the steps to create your own custom name servers even if you are not thinking of starting a hosting business. You can simply skip the second step. Feel free to drop a comment if you have trouble creating custom name servers. Please find the links below on how to create custom name servers at registrars. We will try our best to provide tutorials for all major Registrars.
No doubt, after the configuration of custom nameservers, you have to wait for the DNS changes to propagate globally. During my Google search, I found a tool https://dnschecker.org/. When I compared it with whatsmydns.net. DNSChecker.org has more public servers available to check the live propagation results. Sharing this tool, for the users, to have more detailed propagation results.
Thank you for the suggestion, Lily. Well, I personally do use that as well as one of my preferred DNS Checker. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.