Adding your records at DNSimple

DNSimple can take every Issue Mint record, root of the domain included, because its record types include ALIAS. The editor is one list with an Add record button, the fields are Name, Content and TTL, and what each record is for is the same at DNSimple as everywhere else.

None of it is urgent. Your newsletter sends and its website stays live on the issuemint.com address for as long as these sit pending.

Open the domain’s records

Sign in to DNSimple, choose the domain from your account, open its DNS section and go to the record list. Add record opens a type picker, and the form changes to suit the type you choose.

Name is what other providers call Host, Content is what they call Value or Target, and an empty Name means the domain itself, where most providers want @. DNSimple prints the resulting hostname next to the field as you type, which is the fastest way to catch a doubled domain.

Add the root record as an ALIAS

Choose ALIAS, leave Name empty, and paste the website destination into Content. An ALIAS is DNSimple’s answer to the rule that forbids a CNAME at the root of a zone: it resolves the target and answers with its addresses.

Issue Mint lists this row as a CNAME because that is the name the same record has at most providers. Verification accepts an ALIAS in its place, for this record and the two below it.

Add the www and tracking records

Both are CNAME records, with the bare label in Name.

The go record is what serves your click tracking links from your own domain instead of ours, so a link in an issue looks like it belongs to you.

Add the certificate and DMARC records

The three certificate records are CNAMEs on _acme-challenge hosts, and each value carries an identifier that exists only inside your account, so copy them from the domain tab rather than retyping them.

Keep these as CNAME records, not ALIAS. Add them once and HTTPS renews on each hostname for as long as the domain is yours.

The DMARC record is a suggestion, and Issue Mint never asks you to replace a policy you already have.

Add the sending records when they appear

Five more records arrive in the domain tab a little after the domain is added, once Amazon has minted your DKIM tokens. They are what let issues arrive from your own address rather than ours.

The MX record has its own priority field at DNSimple, so the number goes there rather than into Content. Copy each DKIM value with the button beside it: the host is the token followed by ._domainkey, and the values are long enough that hand-copying is how one of them ends up wrong.

Checking what you added

Issue Mint rechecks a newly added domain every ten minutes for its first two days and hourly after that, reading the public resolvers at 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 rather than asking DNSimple.

The domain tab counts how many records have verified, sorts the ones still outstanding to the top, and prints what it found underneath any row that resolved to the wrong thing. That found value is the fastest diagnosis available, and a record that will not verify reads it with you.