New Domain Records for eMail

Aug 2024
WARNING!!! - THIS GUIDE IS NOT YET COMPLETE!!! - WARNING!!!

Introduction

When you add a domain, if you wish to use the domain for email, there are some records that you will have to add to ensure your email works, and works reliably.
Here we will see what records to add, and how to get the information for them. I am using Porkbun as my domain provider, so for other domain providers the information you require will be the same, but where they list it will differ.
The records we need to add are a variety of CNAME, MX and TXT records.
This guide assumes you are using Porkbun for your domain host and MXRouting for your email host.

CNAME Record

A “canonical name” (CNAME) record points from an alias domain to a “canonical” domain. A CNAME record is used in lieu of an A record, when a domain or subdomain is an alias of another domain. All CNAME records must point to a domain, never to an IP address.
Here is an example of a CNAME record.

CNAME	mail.mymail.co.uk	mail.acutaldomain.net	600

In the above example, we are using mail.mymail.co.uk to point to the domain mail.actualdomain.net, this means if multiple personal domains are all using the same mail domain, you can give each one a pretty name.
From Porkbun, open your list of domains and find the domain you want to start adding mail records too, hover over the domain name and you will see a menu for DNS | NS appear.
Select DNS.
The following page will appear.

We need to fill out the following:

CNAME - mail
ANSWER - pixel.mxrouting.net
TTL - 600
PRIORITY - leave blank
Notes - you can enter useful information for reminder in here.

Click Add
At the bottom of the page you will now see a new record has been added.

CNAME Second Record

The first CNAME record was for use with mail clients (its the address you put in the IMAP and SMTP boxes). While pixel.mxrouting.net isn't too hard to remember, if you have a record with your own domain, in this example mail.therlowe.uk its much easier to remember.
The second record we are using for webmail. Rather than an email user having to remember to go to pixel.mxrouting.net to get access to their webmail, we can use a CNAME record to direct them their from a more memorable address.
Again, open up your DNS page to add a record.
We need to fill out the following:

CNAME - webmail
ANSWER - pixel.mxrouting.net
TTL - 600
PRIORITY - leave blank
Notes - you can enter useful information for reminder in here.

Click Add
At the bottom of the page you will now see both the records that have been added.

Add Domain and User

Before we can move on to the next step of adding TXT records, we need to add our domain and user to our mail provider, otherwise we will not be able to look up the pertinent information that is required in our TXT records.
Please follow this guide Link Here to do the following:

1. Add a Domain
2. Add a User
3. Find the three records you will need for your domain provider (DKIM, SPF and DMARC)

TXT Records

TXT records are a type of Domain Name System (DNS) record in text format, which contain information about your domain. TXT records also have information that helps external network servers and services handle outgoing email from your domain.

Add DKIM Record

We found out from our mail provider MXRouting that our DKIM record should be:

1. The Name - x._domainkey
2. The TTL - 3600
3. The Type - TXT
4. The Value - This is the really long string you can see.

We can add this record in Porkbun.
Open the DNS Settings for the domain.

Enter the DKIM record values above (need to get the DKIM record from MXRouting mail provider).
Click ADD.
You should now see the DKIM record at the bottom of the page under Current Records (I have removed part of the key for security reasons (not sure if it can be abused or not ))