OK so this is going to be a long question, I thought should I make many smaller questions or just one long one so you can see what the aim is, the result of my query was the long version so here goes.

I host my own website at home with a 4mb adsl line on a macintosh that is quite fast, because I live in South Africa my line is expensive and so I can not afford to go with a static IP at this time, I have registered my domain with http://co.za and had to give then up to 5 static IP addresses, so I signed up for a custom dns solution through dyndns and gave their addresses to my domain registration company, on my mac I now run a dyndns updater that tracks my IP address changes and sends that info along to dyndns who then propogates my new address for me. On the same computer I run my own dns server with almost the same records as dyndns but only for me internally and so my mail server works.

Example: domain name: example.co.za, webserver works on either: http://www.example.co.za or http://exapmle.co.za, mail server is on mail.example.co.za

Now this has all worked very well for the last 3 years or so, but now my friend asks if I can host him a site with web and mail, so it seemed simple enough, I asked him what domain name he would like and registered it, went to dyndns signed him up for some custom dns, entered his records on my dns server and it all worked out for me. It was all fairly painless, untill he told his wife and she said great her company also wants a site and she would like me to host it, BUT she already has a service provider that has given her a domain name and 5 email addresses, so now I am in a jam, so after thinking about it for a bit I got a headache and came here.
I could if I like leave her mail where it is and just host a website for her is my one thaught but then how do I do the dns, well someone must be in controll of her dns records do I ask them to make one for me as www.anything.co.za but what ip address do they then point this to cause mine is dynamic, do I make another custom dns account with dyndns and will that work with just www.anything.co.za, and if it does work then do I give the existing dns provider dyndns's ip addresses and he poits www.anything.co.za to dyndns and dyndns points to me, would this cause a problem, maybe that would not be allowed, do I try take over her mail and dns, in this case how, I have read that she must ask her company to cancel and tell them that she is moving to another provider and then I have give them a ticket or something, how do I do that, can I download the ticket and submit it online, so many questions I am going in circles, if I do all that and submit this ticket thing then how do I switch over without too much interuption of her existing mail and dns, do I just update with the domain resistrant with my details or does her service provider or her have to something for them to release it to me. The if all that works out how can I tell when the existing people turn off so I can turn on.

I have more questions around this same topic but I will wait to see the response to this first. If you got this far thanks for reading that was already hard work im sure, please try answer all the questions posed not just the scenario you think I should be looking at cause I do not know what else may arise in the future and it is nice to have more knowledge than you need rather than less.

TIA

Ok so after spending some hours reading all about fiveacehosting, I see why people here are a bit concerned about answering any of the proposed questions, I assure you all that I resigned myself to the fact a long time ago that I would more than likely never become rich by doing anything on the web, I have tried, and tried and tried to no avail, the market seems very saturated but that is not to say that it is not good to know as much as possible and to always try keep ahead of the pack. The questions I asked are not to make money but to try help out a friend and his wife within ministry.
Sorry if there was any misunderstanding.

If you have question which is connected to the certain company why don't specify that with them?

I was more trying to get a general overview on how it all works, lets just say that I would like to take over a website that is hosted with someone else that has mail and dns and web, then how do I go about step by step taking it onto my own server.

Are you looking to upgrade from shared account to the dedicated server?
I suppose there a lot of articles about that

No not at all, I just have my own little computer at home and a limited amount of knowledge, and want to host my very own little website with some mail, and I managed to get that to work. Now I want to help out a friend who wants me to design her a website and I said okay BUT she already has a domain name and mail going to that domain so I need to know how to take over her domain that she already has that is hosted by another company altogether, so I can design her site and give her some mail from my own little computer in my home. My first intention was just to get the answer with extended information just so I could know for my own use. Thanks for your patience guys as this does seem to be a bit of a sensitive subject for some reason. Thanks

Paul, it is not possible for most of us to do what you are doing therefore there is little help we can offer. Most parts of the world have the necessary ports blocked and would terminate our home service if we field engineered a solution around that.

Your home line may support one site with limited traffic but I doubt that it will support more.

IMO, your best bet is to design the sites and host them on a commercial server. Hosts that use cPanel are the most popular and widely used. The actual brand of the control panel does not matter if it is secure and does the job the client needs.

With all the commercial control panels all you need do it point the nameservers to the ones provided by the host, upload the files and create the mailboxes.

If you want to take cPanel for a test drive go here: http://www.cpanel.net/products/cpwhm...l11/index.html

Whm is what you use if you are a reseller and cPanel is what the client uses.

Questions here if you have them.

Set up a bind server, and create yourself a set of nameservers. Be sure to set the TTL to something low, so that there is limited downtime when your IP address changes.

Basically, you would point the nameservers to your computer, and then give the domain name the nameservers you created. Then you create a zone file for the domain in BIND and tell it what to do in terms of mail and hosting.

What has Andrei said that is absolutely right and I'm sure that better have few $ paid per month and forget about all that, unless your goal is teaching how to organize everything around

Originally Posted by colbyt

Paul, it is not possible for most of us to do what you are doing therefore there is little help we can offer. Most parts of the world have the necessary ports blocked and would terminate our home service if we field engineered a solution around that.

Your home line may support one site with limited traffic but I doubt that it will support more.

IMO, your best bet is to design the sites and host them on a commercial server. Hosts that use cPanel are the most popular and widely used. The actual brand of the control panel does not matter if it is secure and does the job the client needs.

With all the commercial control panels all you need do it point the nameservers to the ones provided by the host, upload the files and create the mailboxes.

If you want to take cPanel for a test drive go here: http://www.cpanel.net/products/cpwhm...l11/index.html

Whm is what you use if you are a reseller and cPanel is what the client uses.

Questions here if you have them.

Thanks Colbyt, I appreciate all the answers I really do, I did not realise that ISP's blocked people from doing this at home, I will have to try and find out if mine does, you see the thing is that South Africa has very limited internet in terms of speed and bandwidth, we have a monthly cap limit of 3gb per month in most homes and once you go over that your international bandwidth is cut off and you may only view local sites, it is becouse of this that I decided to try and host at home, this way it is all local no matter if the user is capped, second is from a speed perspective most home users here due to cost have opted to go for a line speed of 384kbits per second download and 192kbits per second upload, whereas I have gone for the max here and even that is only 4096kbit p/s download and 512kbit p/s upload, terrible hey well it gets worse they then cap international from the 1st meg at a 60/40 ratio so international only uses 40 of the bandwidth, hosting internationaly to South Africans is just a no no.

Alternativly I could get a large isp in South Africa to host my sites for me but, they are not to great either, and costs for anything are terrible.

Thanks for the info on cpanel and whm but are both of these only good for linux or could I possibly find something similar that works on a macintosh server.

Thanks again

Originally Posted by andrei155

Set up a bind server, and create yourself a set of nameservers. Be sure to set the TTL to something low, so that there is limited downtime when your IP address changes.

Basically, you would point the nameservers to your computer, and then give the domain name the nameservers you created. Then you create a zone file for the domain in BIND and tell it what to do in terms of mail and hosting.

I have read it and read it but am confused, please rephrase like you are talking with a dummy if you do not mind, I know it is frustrating but I am just starting with this whole thing essentially.

This is my understanding on what I have read.

Set up a bind server, okay I am on mac os x server and it has a dns server built in that uses bind as do all as far as I know, I have this already set up but only internally so on my local network it works, I have used dyndns to do my main dns hosting as they have 5 static IP addresses and I only have one line that gets its IP dynamicly.

TTL is set by dyndns and is low. when my ip changes an application called dyndns updater tells dyndns and they change it to match right away.

Point the nameserver to your computer. On dyndns I have custom dns for all my domains and each one has a zone record that changes to my IP as it changes, I also have some A records for www and mail.

My problem is this, if you asked me to host you a website on my own home computer as www.andrei155.co.za and you had already registered your own domain name as andrei155.co.za and already had your own computer at home running the dns server or bind server as ns1.andrei155.co.za and ns2.andrei155.co.za and your own mail server as mail.andrei155.co.za and I asked you to make me an A record pointing to my IP address with a name of www.andrei155.co.za, I assume this would be fine but i would have had to give an IP address for me and my IP Address is going to change every day, can I get around this problem by asking you to point you A record to either a domain name that will auto check the name back with dyndns and complete the correct IP Address for me something like this www.andrei155.co.za = scorpioserve.co.za or would I have tro take over your entire domain and provide you the mail and dns and www from my computer.

I hope that I am making some sense.

Thanks for your patience guys

Does dyndns allow you to alter the zone records? If it does, why don't you give the domain the nameservers you have with dyndns, create a zone file for it with dyndns and then change the records to your liking. If your friend wants to host their mail server elsewhere, you would then just proceed by editing that zone file.

When I had this setup, I had a BIND server running, and pointed my own nameservers to my dynamic IP. I set the TTL really low, and tried very hard to NEVER disconnect the internet (which would cause an IP change ). It was a large hassle, but I really learned a lot about the "hosting industry".

Instead of using their BIND server to make an A record for your hosting. You'll have to use dyndns's DNS server and point the mail records wherever. This way, that IP change checker thing will work .

Originally Posted by andrei155

Instead of using their BIND server to make an A record for your hosting. You'll have to use dyndns's DNS server and point the mail records wherever. This way, that IP change checker thing will work .

Sorry I just need to see if I have this all correct in my head so what you are suggesting is telling my friend that he needs to disable his own dns or only use it locally, then set up his dns and my dns on the dyndns server with say mail.example.com linking to his static ip address and then www.example.com linking to my dynamic ip address then I can use my DNSUpdater application.
If it is then great that should work perfect I just need to ask if she is happy with doing that I must say I cannot see whynot.

Thanks for all the help guys.