3 replies to this topic

[mrdee]

My domain name is pointed at the Xisto (or Computinghost, if you prefer) nameservers (obviously).

However, I also run a forum on my website, but it is a free forum which is hosted elsewhere (so, the databases and all that are on their own servers).

As a result of this, my domain name does not appear in my forum URL.
However, it is possible to use your own domain name with their forums, if you point your domain name at their nameservers (and they mention 3 of them).

I obviously need my domain to keep pointing at Computinghost, as I need them for my website hosting, but I would also like to use my domain name for my forum URL.

I asked a question about this on the forum of the forum providers, and they sent me a reply which I do not understand 100%.

This is what they sent me:

Quote

You can fully control your DNS

Either via your current name servers or with an account on our name servers.
We recommend against our own ad then two systems are needing to sync control it does generally work but it seems simple tho avoid the issue.

Can anyone make a bit more out of this reply than I can, and, can I also just go to my control panel at my domain registrar and just add the nameservers of the forum providers to the DNS records that already exist, in other words, make the domain point to more than one place.

Does anyone know if this would work?

Please, advise me further if you can.

thank you very much in advance.

[velma]

Quite honestly I do not think it is possible for a site to point at two different places since the nameservers are specifically designed to help connect the path(address) to your data. Isn't there a way you can have the forum content migrated onto your hosting account instead of the other host? Trying to point your website at two places could cause a DNS havoc and it is best to avoid any tricks that could cause a downtime.

[mrdee]

Yes, I didn't think it would have made a lot of sense to try and point my domain name at two different places.
It is only the explanation they gave confused me a little bit.

I could download my own PHPBB package and install it on my website, but the company I host my forum with charge a lot of money for releasing a backup of your files and helping you migrate, so, that is not really an option.

Maybe best to leave things as they are.

[rpgsearcherz]

velma, on 05 October 2011 - 07:11 AM, said:

Quite honestly I do not think it is possible for a site to point at two different places since the nameservers are specifically designed to help connect the path(address) to your data. Isn't there a way you can have the forum content migrated onto your hosting account instead of the other host? Trying to point your website at two places could cause a DNS havoc and it is best to avoid any tricks that could cause a downtime.

This. As far as I know it's not possible to have the domain pointing to two locations, as that's more or less like saying "I have two addresses" and leaving everything else in the open. For example, you're not telling the client (visitors) which server has what file(s) you need, therefore their system would have to guess and it'd cause too many complications.

What you could do, however, is set up a subdomain and have that link to the forums (possibly? never tried it off-site before) so that you could use an address like forums.yourdomain.com to use the forums.

I'm not 100% sure on whether or not that'd work with the separation though.