Using a Foreign Nameserver
From DreamHost
While using Dreamhost's nameservers is by far the best option, under some circumstances it may be difficult or impossible. This article will look at the options for making your domain name point to your Dreamhost site using DNS records entered into some other system (such as your registrar's nameserver).
One possible scenario is that you only want one (or a few) of your subdomains to be hosted by Dreamhost. With some registrars it is not possible to "delegate" these subdomains to Dreamhost's nameservers.
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The Problem
The only way to see your site in a browser is if the following two things are what Dreamhost expects them to be:
- the domain name (www.example.org) as it appears in the address bar, and
- the IP address the browser makes an HTTP request to.
To find the IP address, your browser will ask "What IP address is associated with www.example.org?". The computer's answer should match with Dreamhost's answer.
Solutions
In general, you need to do two things:
- Let Dreamhost know that you want a certain domain name to be associated with a website
- Make the DNS system resolve that domain name to the IP address that Dreamhost is using for it
Small-scale
If you only want this to work on one computer (for testing purposes, say), it's enough to put an entry in your host file or set your computer to use Dreamhost's DNS servers (in which case you don't even need to own the domain name). But if you want anyone on the internet to have access, you're going to have to set up the DNS records properly.
By IP Address
You could manually enter the same IP address that Dreamhost's nameserver provides into the nameserver your domain is using (this would be an A record), but since Dreamhost may change this IP address at any time, this method should only be used if no better choice exists.
