Knowledgebase

WestHost Name Servers

WestHost offers the ability to become a reseller or to run a dedicated server. Many times you may wish to resell the space rather than using it yourself. In most of these cases, you may wish to keep WestHost as transparent as possible to your clients. Custom name servers are one way to create that transparency.

As shown above, under normal circumstances, the name servers listed for a domain would be one of the standard WestHost name servers. With custom name servers, you can set up the name servers for their clients to look like this:

          ns1.domain.com
          ns2.domain.com

This is a huge advantage for clients who wish to keep WestHost anonymous to their clients. To get custom name servers set up, you need to make a request. For Cloud Hosting and Dedicated Servers log in to your https://cp.westhost.com/ account and navigate to >> Add-ons. You will need to order them if they are not included. When the form is filled out, the request is sent to the Accounts department. After the order is received, and payment is confirmed as needed, Accounts sends a ticket to WestHost admin teams requesting that Hosting Systems set up the name servers for ns1/ns2.domain.com.

When Hosting Systems receives the request, they essentially assign two IP addresses to be used for the new name servers and then they reply to Accounts with those IP addresses.

Accounts then send you the IP addresses back with a confirmation that the name servers have been assigned to IP addresses along with a list of the 2 IP addresses. If the domain that has the name servers set up for it is registered at WestHost, Accounts will register the name servers for the client. Otherwise, Accounts informs you that you need to contact your registrar to do so.

Clients should also add the name servers as A records to the domain from the site manager or cPanel. The A records should point to the appropriate IP addresses. This helps in domain name resolution on the name servers.

Non-WestHost Nameservers

Clients are welcome to use their registrar's DNS nameservers or any custom ones they would like to use. If they are not using our nameservers, then we are unable to modify their DNS at all.

Some common issues can be seen at certain providers:
     CloudFlare: Clients should use the "direct" subdomain per Cloudflare's KB here:  https://cloudflare.tenderapp.com/kb/troubleshooting/why-cant-i-access-my-cpanel