I recently had to setup external domain in my GoDaddy account as one of my clients had already purchased their domain name before getting me to do some work for them. I couldn’t transfer the domain as it was within 60 days of being registered so the only option I had was to change to NameServers and point the domain to my account. So how do you do this? Read on ;)

For this exercise we are going to be repointing a domain called repointingdomain.com. Be sure to change that domain to whatever it is that you’re using when setting this up on your GoDaddy.com

Step 1: Configure your IIS settings on your GoDaddy.com account.

Log into your account and go to your Hosting Account Control Panel. This is usually under ‘Hosting & Servers’ nav item, called ‘My Hosting Account’.

Click on ‘Manage Account’.

Because the domain we want to setup in GoDaddy doesn’t exist there it can be tricky to know where to go. The first thing to do is to setup IIS for this new domain. Do this by going to ‘Content’ on the nav bar and clicking on the ‘IIS Settings’ menu item.

Next you want to ‘Create’ the new directory for the domain you want to transfer. When you click create you will see options asking for a Directory Name. Enter in the domain name (eg repointingdomain.com) so you can easily identify later. Be sure to leave Anonymous Access ticked and click OK. You should now see the domain in your IIS list with ‘Pending’ next to it. This will change to Setup once GoDaddy have set it up on their side. For now assume everything is ok and move onto the next step.

Step 2: Add the domain to your Account in GoDaddy.com

OK, now that IIS is setup for the new account lets actually create the folder and add the domain to your Domain Manager. Do this by going to Settings and clicking on Domain Management on the drop down. Enter the domain name, repointingdomain.com, and put it in its own folder called repointingdomain, so you can keep these files separate from your master domains files.

As before, when you add this you should see ‘Pending’ in the status. This will change to Setup once GoDaddy has completed this task. You don’t have to worry about it.

Step 3: Configure the DNS on your account (This is the tricky part!)

Add a new A Record for this domain. Click on Add New Record. Enter the domain name with no www. and make sure to put a full stop AFTER the domain name. For example repointingdomain.com. (Note the full stop at the end). Put in the IP of your server (you can see this next to the @ under host on this screen eg 45.123.43.56, you can leave TTL to be 1 hour and click Add.
Now we need to add some CNAMES for this domain. Usually you will want to setup mail.repointingdomain.com for email accounts, webmail.repointingdomain.com for webmail access and www.repointingdomain.com so people who put the www. before your domain will get to your site.

Click Add New CNAME and enter in www.repointingdomain.com. as the ‘Alias Name’ (again note the full stop at the end of the domain name) and enter in repointingdomain.com as the ‘Points To Host Name’ field. If you look at what you’ve just typed it should make sense – if someone types in www.repointingdomain.com send them to repointingdomain.com folder that we have setup in our previous steps.

For the mail.repointingdomain.com and webmail.repointingdomain.com CNAMES I kept the same settings that the original reddybrek.com CNAMES were using.

Finally on this page you want to add a new MX Record for the domain so click on Add New MX Record and enter in repointingdomain.com as the Host Name. The ‘Goes To Address’ field should be the same as the existing MX account (smtp.secureserver.net).

If required you can add an FTP CNAME by following the same instructions above.

Step 4: Final Step!!

The last step to do is to change the NameServers on the domain you are repointing. This can only be done with the company you bought the domain name from. Usually these companies have their own control panel to use. If they do not explain to them that you want to change the NameServer details and they will understand what you mean.

So what do you need to change the NameServers to? Well that depends! GoDaddy change these regularly. If you take a look at this article on GoDaddy it tells you what the NameServers should be called: http://help.godaddy.com/article/664
One point to note is that I assumed the NameServers I was setting up on repointingdomain.com server was to be the same as my reddybrek.com account but this is not the case! You need to set the NameServer to be the newest ones on the list from the link above.

Summary:

Wow! You made it this far! Well done! Now that you have setup the account in GoDaddy for your repointing domain and you have changed the NameServers on the repointingdomain.com server that’s hosting the domain all you have to now is sit back and let the whole thing propagate over. This usually takes about 6 – 24hrs. You could upload a simple html file in the ‘repointingdomain’ folder on your GoDaddy server so that when you type in the domain name and see that html file you will know everything worked out for you. Give it a shot and it you have any issues with trying this let me know.

In my next post I will explain how to setup an email account for an external domain that is not in your GoDaddy account.

It's been a while since I've posted anything but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy! In Dragnet Systems I am putting the finishing touches to a new Hertz/AerArann integration that will allow travelers to book their car hire through the AerArann, all without re-entering their personal details or leaving the website.

In my spare time I am helping out a local comedy agency called White Man Boogie Promotions Limited. I met Dave Dineen through my cousin, David Duff. Right now things are small for White Man but this time next year will be a different story if everything falls into place for Dave Dineen and his crack team of comedy associates!

I also just want to say best of look to the two Davids as they are off to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival next week....rather you than me guys, hehe ;)

I recently managed to get 2 new PC's for the office and I have spent more time than I had wished trying to get the things to play nice. I was amazed when we got the machines as they were such a great deal from Dell - Intel Quad Core 6600, 3GB Ram, 22" Monitor for €850! - I couldn't wait to get the PC's setup and find my productivity shoot through the roof. Little did I know that Microsoft had other ideas in store for me.

First off, I need to make it clear that I am not a Microsoft hater. In fact I find the majority of their products are well built and I know I would not have my job if it wasn't for them but when you have problems with Visual Studio 2008, their flagship programming environment, running on Vista, their flagship OS, then you know things aren't good. Add to this the Word crashing incident I had and I was starting to wonder why I decided to upgrade at all!

Let's take a look and see what the problems and solutions were!

Problem 1: Fresh install of Word doesn't open. Splash screen loads up and then nothing.

Solution: This one caught me for a bit. I tried to do the 'Detect and Repair' option for Office from the Add/Remove Programs option in the Control Panel. This didn't work. So I tried to uninstall Office, restart the machine, and reinstall it. This didn't work either. The problem remained. Excel worked fine, Outlook worked great and Access would open and close perfectly. Next stop - Google :) After much searching I came across some posts that were similar to my issue. The problem was to do with a Printer Driver I had installed. There was an issue with that driver in Vista - even though it installed without issue and printed a test page for me! I set my default printer to the default one in Windows Printers and Faxes and sure enough Word opened up without any problems. A few more searches later and I found the right driver to use. One issue down!

Problem 2: SQL Server 2005 installation fails to install.

Solution: This only happened on one of the new machines I bought. At first I was stumped. Surely if it wasn't compatible with Vista I would have had issues on the other PC? I quickly found the solution though when I noticed that there was an Office Web Component download that needed to be installed in Vista from the Vista Auto Update Tool. Sure enough once I installed this I didn't have any problems with the installation and it went on perfectly for me. Of course, this isn't the end of the road if you plan on using SQL Server 2005 on Vista as you need to download SQL 2005 Service Pack 2 before it will work but Vista should give you this warning before your install.

Problem 3: Visual Studio 2008 will not debug. Internet Explorer 7 will open up ok but your page will not be displayed.

Solution: By the time I got to this issue I was beat. All I wanted was a new PC that was faster and would help me work more efficiently. I don't want things not to work. I hate when things don't work! So when I opened Visual Studio 2008, made a very simple test page that did nothing more than output a 'Hello' in a label and pressed F5 to debug I couldn't believe it when the page didn't work. *Sigh* Why is this happening to me? Who doesn't want me to have a new PC out there? I tweaked the IIS settings, I downloaded every patch out there and prayed to the Gods but nothing. Then I thought about some issues I had before with Norton Internet Security in the past. I have Nod32 on my Vista machine at work and this had an Internet security setting. By excluding Visual Studio from Nod32's filter I should have gotten my test page to show. But it didn't. What I had to do was locate the following file:

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

Open it in Notepade and remove the line that says

::1             localhost

Your debugged site will now show up. I'm not sure if it is just Nod32 that causes this or not but it's handy to know for anyone else experiencing this issue

So there you have it, my trials and tribulations with my new PC. Even though it broke my heart to get the machines setup it is great to finally have a dual monitor setup for me and my other developers. The new machines are super fast with Visual Studio 08. I just can't wait to start doing some development work now.

Just a quick post to let you all know that PrizeQuestion.com is finally live. I've been working on this project for a few months and it's great to see it finally launch. I'd like to wish Jason the best of luck with the site.

Head on over to the site and see what all the fuss is about yourself! Let me know what you think.

I really don't understand this. It happens all the time. No matter what company I contact for support it's always the same. No matter what the issue is - hardware related, software integration assistance, new sales enquiries even - I always seem to get rubbish response times.

Maybe it's just me? If I email into a support desk I expect at the least an auto email telling me a ticket number or a response from an actual person. If I phone for support I expect to be able to talk to someone who knows a bit about the product I'm looking for support on. Yet this is the exception and not the norm for all businesses big or small that I've dealt with in the past.

Inside in Dragnet Systems we pride ourselves on our level of support. It's true that you pay a bit more to be with us but you definitely get your money's worth! If someone rings our support line they get through to someone who knows about their product or if a more technical question needs to be answered and someone can't take the call we take a message and call back within 2hrs usually. If someone emails us a request, it's usually done within the hour and the customer updated.

The amount of business we get alone because other companies don't offer proper support is amazing. It happens at least once or twice a week and it's rising. I believe people are fed up of crap support and I agree with them. There's no excuse. No matter what size a business is.

To give credit where it is due, there is only one company I could put my hand on my heart and say offers exceptional support and they are our hosting providers RackSpace. They offer us outstanding support and if I ever have any queries I will get a response in around 10-15mins by email or instant if I ring in. They are also the only hosting partners that have never over promised and under delivered.

But enough of the back patting. I just wish other businesses would follow in our foot steps and offer customers the level of support they deserve. I mean, we did pay for the service when we bought your products which you were quick enough to take money for.....