Domain names, DNS, Website and Email Hosting – What Dentists Need To Know

These important Internet elements are key building blocks for your web presence – here’s what they do and why.
Here at Dental Media we provide fully managed website and digital marketing solutions for dentists ensuring that dental professionals can concentrate on what they do best whilst we look after their web presence.
However, even with a fully managed web service, there are a few key elements which a dentist or dental practice manager should understand and how they support important website and email services. So for example if they wish to change provider at some point, then they know exactly what needs to be shifted over and how to make sure it’s done quickly and efficiently with no loss of service.
In today’s blog we will discuss domain names, the DNS system associated with domain names and website and email hosting. These are the key elements which work together to support your online presence. How they link together and how well they are managed is important for any business to understand, dentists included.
Let’s step in and take a closer look.
Your dental website domain name
This is effectively your Internet address, often prefixed by www (world-wide-web) albeit that isn’t essential these days. There are numerous domain extensions e.g. .com, .co.uk etc and you can ‘rent’ one of these as the address for your website. It’s probably worth clearing up here that no-one actually owns a domain name, it is leased to you by a domain authority for a certain period of time via companies called domain registrars. However, the domain is for your exclusive use as long as you keep paying the renewal premiums.
Dental Media manages many hundreds of domain names on behalf of dentists but it is also possible for the dental practice or dentist to register and manage their own domain name(s). The key considerations for a domain name are a) make sure it is registered in your name and not the name of an agency who may be looking after it for you and b) ensure it does not expire – we see this too many times where a client manages their own domain name and simply forgets to renew. This results in a panicked call to us to report that their website and email has stopped working!
If you do decide to allow your design agency to manage your domain name, please be certain that they are trustworthy and will transfer the domain elsewhere quickly and professionally should you ever need this to happen. Unfortunately we’ve seen quite a few cases where an agency has ignored domain transfer requests and made it as hard as possible to take over the website and hosting services. Whilst there is a domain recovery service, for example via Nominet for .co.uk domains, this is convoluted and should only be a last resort.
The DNS – domain name system
In short, DNS translates domain names to IP addresses, so like a telephone directory for the Internet. This allows web and email traffic to be sent between various devices – so when you search for a website in your browser, the DNS system looks-up the IP address of the website hosting server which then serves the files to your browser. A similar process happens for email traffic travelling between devices.
The DNS Zone and DNS Records
The DNS Zone is an administrative space which houses different DNS records related to a particular domain name.
The DNS records (also known as zone files) all have different jobs when it comes to handling requests on the domain in question. For example MX records dictate how email will be routed, A records hold the IP address of the domain, TXT records are used for storing text notes within the DNS zone and can be used for security validation etc. There are 8 or 9 different types of record all with different purposes and whilst we use them as designers and hosting providers, it is highly unlikely that a dentist would ever need to touch these. However, it is still useful to know what they do and why.
For example, where the team at Dental Media transfers a website or email to our services from another provider, we need to access the domain name DNS zone to update the records accordingly – re-setting the web sign-posting if you like.
Name Servers
Name servers are another important element within the overall DNS. They store and organise DNS records which pair a domain with one or more IP addresses. So when you enter a domain name in your browser, the DNS locates the name server associated with that domain, locates the required DNS record and returns the required IP address to your browser. Your browser then uses the IP address to ‘ping’ the hosting server which then delivers the requested web page to your server. Email routing happens in a similar way but uses different DNS records.
Name severs can be hosted in different places but only one set will be in use at any one time. For example name servers can be hosted by the website hosting company or by the domain registrar. It is important to know this and have appropriate access when setting up web hosting and email services for clients. Consequently it is important for dental business owners to know who looks after their web assets and where they are.
Dental Website Hosting
This is the server where your website files are hosted and served for users 24/7/365. It’s the DNS discussed earlier which links the hosting server with the users who are viewing your website. As discussed elsewhere in the Dental Media blog, servers must be fast, reliable, up-to-date and secure to ensure that your website is presented quickly and consistently. There are lots of cheap hosting services available but very few cheap, good services – like everything, you get what you pay for.
Our servers at Dental Media are designed specifically with dentists in mind – they are ultra-secure, fast and housed in the premier UK 27001 approved data centre. We feature incremental daily back-ups and also nightly back-ups to an off-site secure location for additional peace-of-mind.
Dental Email Hosting
There are many similarities between email and dental website hosting and certain features e.g. security and back-ups should apply to both.
Email can be hosted alongside a website or independently. It can also be hosted at a completely different provider to the website hosting – in this case we simply adjust the appropriate DNS records to “point” at the remote email hosting server. This is important where we design a new website for a client but they wish to retain their existing email service – here we simply change the DNS record on their domain to route website traffic to one of our hosting servers while the email traffic routing is left as-is. It’s simple enough to configure for someone with experience and assuming that appropriate access can be provided – so please make sure that you have this access in case you need it at some point.
Summary
How your domain name, website and email services are all linked together is not something you should need to get involved with too often, particularly if you outsource the service to an experienced IT team. However, it is important to have an overview of the key elements discussed above, what they do and who looks after them.
Should you need to change service provider, as a minimum you need to have access to your domain registration account and be sure that you or your incumbent IT team can (and will) provide relevant details to whoever will be working on your behalf in future. Don’t let it be a “black box” and assume all will be OK should you ever need to change things around. Most companies act professionally but not all, so don’t fall victim to someone holding you domain name or email service etc to ransom!
If you need to assistance with any aspect of web design and hosting services for dentists, please get in touch with the team at Dental Media on 01332 672548 for no obligation advice.