Just Web Academy · Module 01

Domains, DNS & Email

What actually connects a website — and what breaks when one piece is pointed at the wrong place.

Audience: Marketing specialists
Length: 25 minutes
Theory needed: None

One website, four separate companies

company.com

Registrar

GoDaddy — owns the name

DNS

Cloudflare — answers the questions

Hosting

Kinsta — holds the files

Email

Google Workspace — delivers the mail

Any one of these can be changed without touching the other three. That is the whole reason things break.

Slide 01 · the story

Everyone knows GoDaddy. Almost nobody knew Cloudflare — until sites started going down.

Nobody thinks about DNS until the day it stops answering.

When a large Cloudflare outage happens, thousands of unrelated websites go dark at the same moment. Clients call in a panic. And every obvious thing you would check is completely fine.

That is the lesson of this whole session: a website is not a domain plus hosting. There is a layer in between, it belongs to a fourth company, and it is the layer marketers get asked to change.

Domain registrar

Paid, active, nowhere near expiry

Working
DNS provider

Not answering — nobody can be told where the site lives

Failing
Hosting server

Online, files untouched, no errors in the logs

Working
Email provider

Mailboxes fine, licences fine

Working

Three out of four healthy. The site is still unreachable.

Takeaway

A website can fail while the hosting server is perfectly healthy. If DNS cannot answer, nothing else matters.

Slide 02 · how an address works

A domain is a company name. An IP address is the street it sits on.

Think of the client business as a physical office.
In a physical office	On the internet
The building itself	Hosting server
The street address	IP address
The company name on the door	Domain
The reception desk that directs people	DNS

What happens in the second before a page loads

A visitor

Types company.com and presses enter.
The browser asks DNS

One question only: where is this website?
DNS answers with an address

192.0.2.44
The browser connects to that server

It never sees the domain name again. From here on it is talking to a number.
The website loads

Total time: usually under a tenth of a second.

Takeaway

DNS is the phone book of the internet. Change the entry and traffic goes somewhere else — even though the name on the door is identical.

Slide 03 · who controls what

Buying the domain and controlling the domain are two different jobs.

The typical setup on a client project

The registrar sells the name

GoDaddy, Namecheap, Tucows. This is where the domain is paid for and renewed.

company.com company.ca
Nameservers hand control over
Nameservers name the DNS provider

Two lines at the registrar that tell the rest of the internet: ask this company where everything is.

ns1.cloudflare.com ns2.cloudflare.com
Cloudflare holds the DNS records

Every A, CNAME, MX and TXT record now lives here. The registrar no longer answers these questions.
Traffic reaches the hosting server

And email is routed to a completely different provider, from the same panel.

What Cloudflare is actually used for

DNS management — the panel where records are edited
Website security and bot filtering
DDoS protection when a site gets flooded
Performance — caching content closer to visitors
SSL certificates, so the padlock stays green

This is the sentence to remember. Changing nameservers changes who controls DNS. Records added at the old provider stop being used the moment the switch takes effect — including the email ones nobody mentioned.

Takeaway

The registrar owns the name. Whoever the nameservers point at owns the behaviour. Find out which is which before you promise a client a timeline.

Slide 04 · the four records

There are dozens of record types. Four of them cover almost everything you will be asked to do.

AAddress

Points a domain at a server address.

company.com192.0.2.44

Used forConnecting the website at all. Wrong A record, wrong site.

CNAMEAlias

Makes one name follow another name.

www.company.comcompany.com

Used forThe www version, campaign subdomains, landing page tools and other hosted services.

MXMail exchange

Decides which company receives the email.

company.comGoogle Workspace

Used forReceiving mail. Delete these by accident and the client stops getting enquiries.

TXTText

Stores proof and email security rules.

SPFDKIMDMARC

Used forVerifying Search Console and Meta, and keeping your sending domain out of spam folders.

Takeaway

A points the site. CNAME nicknames the site. MX carries the mail. TXT proves who you are. That is roughly ninety percent of marketing DNS work.

Slide 05 · the work itself

Four jobs you will actually be handed, and the five ways they go wrong.

Connect a website

Needs a hosting account, the domain, and the correct A record.

Result: the site opens on the client domain.

Connect business email

Needs Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, and that provider MX records.

Result: mail starts arriving.

Verify a platform

Search Console, Meta Business Manager, HubSpot, Mailchimp. Usually one TXT or one CNAME.

Result: the account is confirmed as yours.

Move a website

New hosting built, site migrated, records repointed, traffic switched over.

Result: same domain, new server.

How these go wrong

Nameservers left pointing at the old provider, so every record you edited is being ignored.
MX records wiped during a migration. The site looks perfect and the client stops receiving email.
SPF or DKIM missing, so campaign email lands in spam.
Website connected, email forgotten — they are separate records and separate providers.
Panic during propagation. The change is correct, it simply has not spread yet.

Before you troubleshoot anything, answer these four in order

Who owns the domain?
Who controls DNS?
Who hosts the website?
Who hosts the email?

Reference · keep this open

The vocabulary, in one place.

Domain: The website name people type.
Registrar: The company the domain was bought from.
Nameserver: The pointer that names the DNS provider.
DNS: The phone book of the internet.
Cloudflare: A DNS, security and performance platform.
Hosting: The server where the website files live.
IP address: The numeric address of that server.
A record: Points a domain at a server.
CNAME: An alias to another name.
MX record: Routes incoming email.
TXT record: Holds verification and security text.
SPF: Lists who may send mail as your domain.
DKIM: Signs mail so receivers know it is genuine.
DMARC: Tells receivers what to do with mail that fails those checks.
Propagation: The wait while a DNS change spreads worldwide.

End of module

Four questions, four records, four providers. That is enough to hold a confident conversation with any developer, host or client.