Pro Blog | PK Tech

Don't Let Your Website Developer Touch DNS

Written by Megan Schutz | January 12, 2019

 

Here’s a free tip that will save hours or even days of email and remote access downtime for your business.

 

First, you’re probably wondering,  what is DNS anyway?

The Domain Name Services (DNS) is a service used to convert a computer’s host name into an IP address.  Everything on the internet is truly an IP address — the DNS name is a human-friendly alias for the IP address. Example, you go to google.com and not 172.217.14.110. DNS is the transparent system in the background that enables this to work.

So, why does DNS matter?

We’ve established that DNS is critical. If your DNS isn’t configured correctly, email won’t flow and services such as Remote Desktop Server or VPN could stop working for your employees. Downtime will result. Avoiding downtime and hits to productivity (and ultimately your bottom line) is the name of our game.

Which bring us to the question: why shouldn’t you let your website guy or developer touch DNS?

The answer is simple: criticality.  Proper administration and knowledge of the bigger picture of your environment is necessary for your DNS to be set up correctly and keep your email flowing and other critical services functioning.   Your IT company or department most likely functions as oversight to many of your solutions and vendors — your primary business software program, email, servers, wireless, internet, etc. Your web developer is one of your many vendors that may require DNS functionality and should go through the “oversight” channel so that your business can continue to operate smoothly.

How can you avoid problems with DNS?

Always loop your IT company in with your website developer early and never hand over credentials to your domain host (Godaddy, Enom, namecheap, etc.) for the purpose of DNS changes or you may experience downtime and incur IT support costs for remediation.

Our goal at PK Tech is to help our clients make technology decisions that protect and benefit their business. Feel free to call us at (602) 639-9900 or email hello@mypktech.com and we’ll be happy to answer your questions.