Entry

How do I configure an MX Record at PowWeb to send my mail to an external mail server?

Aug 25th, 2005 13:35
Karl Fry,

To set up an MX Record through PowWeb, your domain registrar must 
first be pointing your domain to PowWeb's nameservers.  If you need 
your domain to point to other nameservers, you will need to configure 
the MX Record at those servers.
Once you are sure that PowWeb is hosting your DNS, log into your OPS 
control panel at http://ops.powweb.com, click on "Packages" at the 
top, and then click on the "DNS" tab beneath it, toward the right-hand 
side.
On the DNS page you will see three sections of interest:
* address (A)  -->  Commonly called an "A Record"
* mail exchanger (MX)  -->  Commonly called an "MX Record"
* canonical name (CNAME)
When someone sends email to your domain, the MX record for your domain 
is accessed to determine the server to route the mail to.  So wherever 
this MX record points is where your mail will go.  On the MX Record 
("mail exchanger") row of the OPS DNS tab, you will see three boxes 
which allow you to input information: Host, Priority, and Mail Server.
To enter a new MX record you want to enter the following for the first 
two fields:
Host: @
Priority: 10
For the third field, "Mail Server", you will enter the destination 
server.  There are a couple different ways you can do this.  Your 
email host will either give you a canonical address (such as 
mailserver.mailhost.com), or an IP address (such as 123.456.78.9) to 
point to.  If you are entering an IP address, simply put the IP 
address as it appears, such as:
123.456.78.9
If you are entering a canonical address, you must terminate the 
address with an additional period, like this:
mailserver.mailhost.com.
Failing to do this will cause your domain name to be added to this in 
the DNS record, which will cause the MX record to point to an invalid 
server, such as: mailserver.mailhost.comyourdomain.com - Obviously you 
don't want this, so make sure to terminate the Mail Server name with a 
period.
---
There is a third option, if you would like to set up a 
mail.yourdomain.com subdomain to act as your mailserver address.  To 
do this, you will first need to set up an A Record or CName.  A 
Records and CNames create subdomains for your domain that point to 
different places than normal www traffic to your website.
In your OPS DNS record, both the A Record field and the CName field 
will have two boxes to fill in.  In the first box you enter the 
subdomain that you would like to create.  For example, enter "mail" if 
you would like to create the subdomain mail.yourdomain.com.  In the 
second box, you put the destination server address (note: you cannot 
put an http or URL path - only a server name).  If the destination 
mailserver that your mail host has given you is an IP address, you 
will create an A Record.  If the destination mailserver that your mail 
host has given you is a canonical address (ex: 
mailserver.mailhost.com) you will create a CName.
Once you've set up the A Record or CName to create the subdomain, you 
can simply have your MX Record point to the subdomain.  To do this, 
enter the first two boxes as listed in the above section (Host: @, 
Priority: 10) and in the "Mail Server" box, simply enter: mail
As mentioned in the above section, if you do not terminate the 
mailserver name with a period, it will append your domain to the end 
of it.  So the above example, entering "mail" as the mailserver, will 
result in your MX Record resolving to: "mail.yourdomain.com" - so in 
this particular case, you want to leave that period off.
---
The final step will be deactivating SMTP on PowWeb's end, which will 
remove PowWeb's default MX, email A Records, and Email CNames.  (You 
may have noticed similar or redundant entries on the PowWeb's DNS tab 
after completing the above: this will fix it.)
To deactivate PowWeb's SMTP, log into OPS, click on "Packages" at the 
top, click on the "Email" tab on the row below, and then click 
on "SMTP/Spam Control" on the row below that.  On the final row that 
appears, click on "SMTP Overview" on the far left-hand side.  At the 
bottom of the following page, click on the very last link on the page, 
in this paragraph:
"If you wish to host your mail on your own server, you can deactivate 
your SMTP settings on PowWeb's servers for cheswoldde.us by clicking 
*here*."
Once you have done all this, you should be all set.  Please allow 2-4 
hours for the DNS changes to take effect in PowWeb's internal system 
and everything should begin to work, provided that any applicable 
nameserver changes had already propagated.