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Help with Custom DNS for email from Hostway

  1. jbfairchild
    Member

    I moved my website from Hostway to WordPress, but left my email service with Hostway. Hostway gave me three "A" records (Mail, POP and SMTP) to use to update my DNS with WordPress. When I tried, WordPress said I could not update "A" records. So Hostway instead gave me an MX record, which I have entered as a custom DNS (format is MX [#] XXX.XXX.XXXXXXXXXX.com). I enter this DNS at Worldpress over 12 hours ago, and my email is still not working.

    1) Is this the correct approach?
    2) If not, what is?
    3) If so, how long will it take resolve my email problem?
    4) Why don't I get a response when I email WordPress customer support?

    Thank you!

    The blog I need help with is fairchildlawoffices.com.

  2. auxclass
    Member

    This might help a bit:

    http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/custom-dns-record-not-working-cant-collect-email?replies=10

  3. jbfairchild
    Member

    Thanks. I used only an MX record. Do you know if I need to enter something else as well? It is not clear to me from this other post (which I read before).

  4. auxclass
    Member

    I was able to get my email working with just two records.
    A mail 255.255.255.255<br /> MX 10 mail.my-domain.com.
    Other hosts and systems have different requirements. The staff is a good resource also - you can contact them directly or make a Forum Post to just their area - you can also post the records you are trying to make work and maybe someone will help a bit - the only "official" support is for the Google Aps method - I think that has to do with the fact that here are many different ways to make mail systems work so supporting 100 different hosts would be difficult -

    I did find the Staff to be very helpful when I crashed my mail system on the move - it did take a couple of days to get things working with their help - since I had an existing site up and running and could not loose the email I actually created a new domain mapped it and got the mail working on it before the move of my main site - I know that is cheating a bit but I am not an internet guru so I took no chances.

  5. jbfairchild
    Member

    Thanks. Did you map to a subdomain of your main site, then? Is that what the "mail" entry would be in your examples above?

    Would you mind walking me throught the steps you took, step by step?

    I am trying to map over my main site, and maybe that is the problem.

    Thank you!

  6. auxclass
    Member

    The site linked to my name is one of the two sites I moved - I did the regular domain mapping here for a domain name that I already had.

    My old host had my site set with a static IP address - that is why the numbers. My old host sent me the info I needed (see above) to make the main work on their servers but with my main web site here on WordPress.COM - but I had to get help with the format from the staff here. I put things in and the mail started working -

    Sorry I don't have a real set of steps, but the tough part was getting the correct info from my old host put into the format required to work here.

  7. jbfairchild
    Member

    Okay thank you. One last question - once you had the correct information entered into WordPress, how long did it take for your email to start working?

    Thanks for your help!

  8. jbfairchild
    Member

    Sorry, I did have one more thing - in your example entries, your reference to "mail" - what information was that? For example, if your domain was blog.com, what would you enter for the "mail" in the first record?

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