Adding your records at Namecheap

Namecheap can take every Issue Mint record, including the root of your domain, because its record list includes an ALIAS Record type. All of it happens on one screen, the Advanced DNS tab, and what each record is for is the same here as anywhere else.

There is no rush. Your newsletter sends and its archive stays online on the issuemint.com address for as long as the records are pending.

Open the Advanced DNS tab

Sign in to Namecheap, open Domain List, choose Manage beside the domain, then open Advanced DNS. The records sit under Host Records, and Add New Record is the button below them.

Namecheap’s fields are Type, Host, Value and TTL, and its type names carry the word Record, so the list reads CNAME Record, ALIAS Record, TXT Record and MX Record. Host is what other providers call Name, and Automatic is a sensible TTL for everything on this page.

Add the root record as an ALIAS Record

Choose ALIAS Record, put @ in Host, and paste the website target into Value. An ALIAS is how a provider points the root of a domain at a hostname, which a plain CNAME is not allowed to do.

Issue Mint asks for this row as a CNAME because that is what it is in every other provider’s vocabulary. An ALIAS resolves the target and answers with its addresses, and the verifier accepts that for this record and the two below it.

Add the www and tracking records

Both of these are CNAME Records, and Host takes a bare label because Namecheap appends your domain.

The go record is the one that puts click tracking on your own domain instead of ours, so the links in your issues read as yours.

Add the certificate and DMARC records

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

Use CNAME Record for these three rather than ALIAS Record. A certificate is renewed by following the CNAME itself, so an ALIAS on an _acme-challenge host would resolve to something correct-looking and never renew anything.

DMARC is a suggestion rather than a requirement, and a _dmarc record you already have should stay as it is.

Add the sending records when they appear

Five more records turn up in the domain tab shortly 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.

Namecheap keeps mail records in their own section of the Advanced DNS tab rather than among the host records, and the MX row has a field for its priority. The send host is a hostname of its own, so this record has no effect on where mail addressed to your domain is delivered.

Copy each DKIM value with the button beside it. Those three are the records worth not putting off, because a mailbox that cannot check a signature has only the reputation of the address to go on, and a record that will not verify is the page for when one of them sits red.