HostGator Web Hosting Help

What Is an A Record? How To Edit an A Record

Summary

A record (Address Record) points a domain or subdomain to an IP address. For example, you can use it for store.website.com or blog.website.com and point it to where you have your store. This is a common practice for people who use Amazon, eBay, Tumblr, etc.

A Records

DNS records are used to control the location of a resource on the Internet. As an example, an A Record is used to point a logical domain name, such as "google.com", to the IP address of Google's hosting server, "74.125.224.147".


These records point traffic from example.com (indicated by @) and ftp.example.com to the IP address 66.147.224.236. They also point localhost.example.com to the server that the domain is hosted on. This allows the end user to type in a human-readable domain, while the computer can continue to work with numbers.


Updating an A Record

To learn more about updating an A Record, please see DNS Management - How to Add, Edit, and Delete Records.

Glossary

Zone File:
This is where all the DNS records are stored for a domain.
Host Record:
This is the domain or subdomain you wish to use. The @ symbol is used to indicate the root domain itself. In our example the Host Record 'ftp' would be for the subdomain ftp.google.com and '@' would be google.com itself.
Points to:
This is the destination server that the domain or subdomain is sending the traffic to.
TTL:
The 'time to live' value indicates the amount of time the record is cached by a DNS Server, such as your Internet service provider. The default (and lowest accepted) value is 14400 seconds (4 hours). You do not normally need to modify this value.
Action:
This allows you to modify or remove existing records.


Was this resource helpful?

Did this resolve your issue?


Please add any other comments or suggestions about this content:





Recommended Help Content

What are the commonly used DNS entries?
Knowledgebase Article 842,259 views tags: a aaaa cname dns record srv txt zone

How to Modify Your DNS Records
Knowledgebase Article 1,542,849 views tags: a aaaa access cname dns editor management mx nameserver ns ptr server spf txt update zone

A definition of AAAA Records
Knowledgebase Article 344,218 views tags: aaaa dns record zone

Related Help Content

Definition of a TXT Record
Knowledgebase Article 466,512 views tags: dns record txt zone

Definition of an SRV Record
Knowledgebase Article 318,463 views tags: dns record srv zone

The hosts file is a plain text file that allows you to set IP Addresses for a domain on your computer. This may override authoritative DNS.
Knowledgebase Article 113,646 views tags: admin development dns file hosts ip test

I would like to change my MX Record so I can use a mail server with another provider.
Knowledgebase Article 658,675 views tags: dns email exchanger local mail mx remote routing

Definition of a CNAME
Knowledgebase Article 825,888 views tags: cname dns zone

Any time DNS is updated, it can take up to 48 hours for those changes to take effect. This period of time is called propagation, and it applies to any and all DNS updates. This article will explain what propagation is and why it's important.
Knowledgebase Article 163,701 views tags: a cache cname dns domains mx propagation txt

Definition of an MX Entry
Knowledgebase Article 382,841 views tags: dns entry mx zone

Do you support wildcard subdomains or wildcard DNS entries?
Knowledgebase Article 315,420 views tags: dns domain subdomain wildcard zone