[afnog] Domain registration and web hosting

[Stephane Bortzmeyer]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2007 at 01:57:41PM -0700,
 Noa of Ark <ncmaina2001 at yahoo.com> wrote 
 a message of 59 lines which said:

> Now i have this client who has a registered Domain name, a mail
> server at his premises and a web server. They want to use our
> internet services but at the same time they want us to Host their
> domain,mail and web server.

This is confusing. They want *you* to host the *mail* and *web*
servers or not?

> How can i achieve this through both my DNS Name servers. I
> understand that it would require me setting up zones in my name
> servers but i am not sure of how i can do that. 

This is a very basic DNS question so I suggest that you read DNS
resources first.

> My colluegus say it is possible for me to host this clients domain.

Let him do the work, then :-)

> I have not done domain hosting before and this will be my forst time.

The simplest solution is to have the Customer host a "stealth" name
server, one which will not be announced and then configure your name
servers are "slaves" of the stealth. That way, the Customer has
complete control of the content of the domain.

If he does not want or cannot host the stealth, then you have to
configure one of your name servers to be the master of the domain. To
provision data in the domain, you have to use a protocol for instance
phone calls from the Customer or a nice Ruby on Rails / Django /
whatever Web application to allow the Customer to change his data.

In both cases, the NS records of the domain have to be modified to
indicate your name servers. The exact way to do it depend on the TLD
the Customer uses. (See Eddy Kayihura's reply: you gave very little
details.)