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Setting up Vanity/Dedicated Name Servers

Julian Lister
Written by
Julian Lister
Warning

This article is now deprecated and is here for reference only. You can now setup vanity dns name servers following the instructions in this link instead: Setting up your SEO DNS Server

A vanity nameserver is a name server that is branded to a website of your choice, instead of our public name servers. This can make your site appear more professional and prevent some potential footprints.

A vanity DNS server hides any trace of the service provider that you use and is highly recommend to all our SEO hosting customers.

When you do a Whois lookup on your domain anyone can see the name servers that your domain name points to. For instance if your domain was example.com here is what you’d see:

Before vanity name servers:

NS.SOMEHOSTING.COM
NS2.SOMEHOSTING.COM

After vanity name servers:

NS1.EXAMPLE.COM
NS2.EXAMPLE.COM

Using vanity name servers allows you to hide the fact that your website relies on a your provider’s name server.

To Create a vanity name server follow these instructions:

  1. Login to your WHM account.
  2. Xelect “Edit Zone Templates”
  3. There you will have 3 options simple, standard and standardvirtualftp. You have to click on each of the above items and change the content of Zone Template for all 3 of those with:
    ; cPanel %cpversion%
    ; Zone file for %domain%
    $TTL %ttl%
    @      %nsttl%    IN      SOA     ns1.%domain%. hostmaster.%domain%. (
            %serial%    ; serial, todays date+todays
            86400        ; refresh, seconds
            7200        ; retry, seconds
            3600000        ; expire, seconds
            86400 )        ; minimum, seconds

    %domain%. %nsttl% IN NS ns1.%domain%.
    %domain%. %nsttl% IN NS ns2.%domain%.

    ns1.%domain%. IN A 46.101.205.177
    ns2.%domain%. IN A 142.54.181.243

    %domain%. IN A %ip%

    mail IN A %ftpip%

    localhost.%domain%. IN A 127.0.0.1

    %domain%. IN MX 0 mail.%domain%.

    www IN CNAME %domain%.
    ftp IN A %ftpip%
  4. Now you need to go back to your domain name provider and create 2 records for your Name servers. Different providers name these records differently. For instance GoDaddy whom refers to them as host names while other providers may refer to the process as “registering a nameserver” or “creating a host record”.
  5. You need to create 2 records:
    ns1.yourdomain.com -> 46.101.205.177
ns2.yourdomain.com -> 142.54.181.243
Note

Here we assumed that yourdomain.com is the name of your domain.

  1. Change the NS record for your domain to ns1.yourdomain.com and ns2.yourdomain.com.
  2. Create a new domain under your WHM account.
  3. From this point forward WHM creates DNS Zones that looks and acts like very own dedicated name server.
  4. Check your domain name at www.intodns.com

Finally if you need more help just open a ticket and we will gladly help you.