this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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Help making sense of IPs and A records (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by Maroon@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I am trying to host my first website + service.

#My server setup

I have a static webpage in server 1. A gotosocial installation in server 2. They are connected to a reverse proxy (server 3). This has a public IP of (not exact) 204.230.30.104.

#My router setup

I can open ports 80 and 443. I just don't know to which IP (I'll explain why down).

#My registrar

In have a domain, say 'newexample.com'. The @ has an A record for the IP (not exact) 208.145.80.33

#My confusion

  1. If I want to make a subdomin for GoToSocial like 'gts.social.new example.com', do I use CNAME or A record?
  2. If I want to serve the static website to be served at 'www.newexample.com' , do I remake an A record for www.newexample.com ?
  3. There appears to be a CNAME in my DNS record already by the registrar for www that goes to some "redirect" link. What's up with that?
  4. How do I make the domain connect to my server and how to make the server connect to my domain properly?
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[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 1 point 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

An A record maps to an IP address. A CNAME record maps to another URL. Since you are trying to map to an IP address rather than a URL, you will want an A record.

If all of your sites will be served from the same proxy server at 204.230.30.104, you can create a single, wildcard A record for *.newexample.com. This will point every subdomain to your proxy's IP address. You don't need to create an A record for each subdomain.

If you are planning on serving some subdomains from 204.230.30.104 and other subdomains from another proxy at 69.4.20.187, you would need multiple A records for pointing the subdomains toward their respective proxies.

If you wanted to serve from proxy running on a dynamic IP address, and you're using a DDNS provider to point newexample.ddns.net back to your current IP address, you could use a CNAME record to point newexample.com to newexample.ddns.net.