How do you point a subdomain to DigitalOcean without using or the original domain or changing nameservers?

January 20, 2017 2.5k views
DNS Ubuntu 16.04
thomasgorczynski
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thomasgorczynski

I am using namecheap as my domain registrar for a domain, say example.com. Because of the way I have things set up and example.com pointing somewhere else, I cannot change the nameservers or use example.com and therefore want to use a subdomain, say ocean.example.com, to point to a Ubuntu 16.04 droplet with an example IP of 1.2.3.4

Based on what I have been reading, I believe it is possible to point to subdomains without changing the nameservers of example.com on namecheap, but whatever I try does not seem to work.

My questions are:

  • What exactly do I need to do to the DNS settings on namecheap?
  • Is example.com OR is ocean.example.com my domain that I create under DigitalOcean?
  • What exactly do I need to do for the DNS configuration on DigitalOcean?

Thank you all for any help!!! :)

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2 Answers
Woet January 20, 2017

Create an A-Record pointing to that IP wherever you control your current nameservers.

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MastroMisciu June 8, 2017

Very useful post.

I'm using GoDaddy as register and my web server is hosted elsewhere. I'd like to point a subdomain to a Digital Ocean's droplet.

May I ask if, adding an A record as you said, allows me to install and secure Nginx with Let's Encrypt on the droplet following the provided tutorials from Digital Ocean itself?
Will I miss something when comparing to the standard procedure of creating a whole new domain and pointing on Digital Ocean using ns1.digitalocean.com, ns2.dig....etc ?

Thanks for the support.

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