Knowledge base
A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, SRV, CAA and the rest — in one sentence each, and which one you probably want.
DNS is a lookup table that turns a name into an answer. The record type says what kind of answer.
A — points a name at an IPv4 address. www.example.com → 203.0.113.10. This is what points a domain at a website.
AAAA — the same thing for IPv6. Add it alongside the A record, not instead of it.
CNAME — points a name at another name, and follows wherever that one goes. Useful when the target's address may change. ⛔ A CNAME cannot sit on the bare domain (example.com) alongside other records — use an A record there.
MX — where email for this domain is delivered. Nothing to do with the website; changing your site's A record does not affect mail, and changing MX does not affect the site.
TXT — free text, read by other systems. Used for domain verification and for the SPF, DKIM and DMARC records that stop your email being treated as spam.
NS — which nameservers are authoritative for the domain. Changing these hands the whole zone to somebody else.
You add all of these from Domains → your domain → DNS records → Add record. The editor asks for each part separately, so you never have to remember the order.
SRV — where a service lives: a priority (lower is tried first), a weight (shares load between equal priorities), a port and a target host. Microsoft 365, Teams, SIP phones, XMPP chat and some games ask for one, with a name like _sip._tls.
CAA — which certificate authorities may issue certificates for the domain. Choose a tag (issue for normal certificates, issuewild for wildcards, iodef for where to report a refused request) and a value such as letsencrypt.org. Leave flags at 0 unless you know you need 128. ⚠️ If you add a CAA record, include every authority you use — one missing here stops its certificates renewing.
PTR — a name for a name, pointing at a host. Reverse DNS for a mail server's IP address is set by whoever owns the IP, not here; ask your server provider for that.
TLSA — pins a certificate for DANE (mostly mail servers). It has a usage, a selector, a matching type and the certificate data in hexadecimal; your mail software or provider gives you all four.
HTTPS and SVCB — tell browsers and apps how to connect before they ask, such as which protocols (alpn=h2,h3) a site speaks. Priority 0 is alias mode (a target only); 1 or higher is service mode with optional parameters. A target of . means the name itself.
If a type is missing from the Type menu, the DNS provider holding this domain's zone cannot store it; domains on our nameservers (ns1.zinndigital.com, ns2.zinndigital.com) can hold every type above. DS records (DNSSEC) are not added here — they live with your registrar.
SOA — the zone's own settings: its primary nameserver, the administrator address, a serial that goes up with every change, and the timers other nameservers use. It belongs to the DNS provider, so it is not in the Type menu; open Zone settings (SOA) under the records to see it, read live from the nameservers. A serial that has moved means your last change is being served.
When you move a domain onto our nameservers we copy the common records it already publishes, CAA and the usual SRV records included, and list anything we could not copy on the domain page so you can add it by hand before switching.
Each record has a TTL — how long other systems may cache the old answer. A change is visible to anyone who has not looked recently within seconds, and to everyone else once their cache expires. Lower the TTL a day before a planned change and you cut the wait to minutes.
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